Richard’s actions were not a crime in the UK because his website did not host the files but rather hosted links to the websites that did host the files, like Google does. Quite simply, it goes against the terms of the Extradition Treaty if his actions were not a crime in both countries. If extradited, Richard could face 10 years in a federal US prison.

This situation is a clear abuse of the extradition treaty established between the US and the UK and represents an obvious breakdown in justice.

While the appeal and decision of the Home Secretary are ongoing, Sheffield Hallam University Liberal Democrats will campaign for Richard O’Dwyer not to be extradited. The campaign will target Nick Clegg, who is Sheffield Hallam’s MP, for his Cabinet muscle and his previous opposition to the extradition of Gary McKinnon, and Home Secretary Theresa May whose signature is required before Richard can be extradited.

Richard’s mother Julia O’Dwyer had the following to say:

“In order to help prevent the extraditions of Richard O’Dwyer who was last week rubber stamped for extradition to the US as well as those other UK citizens have been accused of ‘crimes’ committed on UK soil never having set foot in the US, the UK government needs to act swiftly to introduce the “Forum Amendment” which is already written and ready to be enacted. If this were agreed by both sides of the House of Commons, it would be up and running within one month. The Forum Amendment was recommended by the Joint Committee on Human Rights in 2011 as part of the Government’s extradition review as well as being debated and the motion carried as a matter of urgency, in Dominic Raab’s debate in Nov 2011. It is endorsed by Liberty, the Human Rights Organisation and many other British campaigners including 100 Lawyers & Barristers who signed a letter to that effect. Pressure needs to be brought upon the Prime Minister & Deputy Prime Minister to keep their pre election promises to the country and make the necessary adjustments. Please send E mails to PM & DPM and to the Home Office please as letters take too long.

The fact that  two British citizens were rubber stamped for extradition on the same day is an extreme cause for concern which some could argue warrants an emergency debate in Parliament.

Richard O’Dwyer is under threat of extradition for conduct which the whole IP Legal community are aware is not a crime in the UK and yet is not afforded a hearing by a technically educated Judge in order to dismiss the dual criminality requirement for extradition”

Please like our non-partisan Facebook page and there is an e-petition here. Let’s try and reach the 4000 signature milestone today.

If you want send e-mails, Nick Clegg can be contacted at and Theresa May at  

You may also want to contact your local MP about the specific issue of the Forum Amendment.

If you are sending an email, ask for a substantive response rather than a generic paragraph about the state of the extradition system.

Please act to try to stop the unfair extradition of Richard O’Dwyer.

Flatly, I am worried that the Government is importing dodgy methods of event management to Stratford and the rest of London. The security measures recently announced are especially concerning. I hope no Liberal in Britain is reassured by military presence during civic life, whatever form it comes in. If the Met don’t have the money and manpower to police this event, then we had no place bidding, and if hosting the Games is so dangerous for the public, why do it?

Then there is the talk of protest camps being removed ‘in time for the Games’. From Westminster.  I assume if there can’t be camps in Westminster, there certainly can’t be protest in Stratford. The decision has been taken at some level that the Olympics trump mere domestic politics. So are we using the excuse of looking good on an international stage to clear the streets of dissenting voices? Or, more worryingly, have we been told by the IOC and corporate sponsors that the city must look pristine, whatever the ramifications?

Of course, these are all rather wishy-washy liberal concerns about inalienable rights that won’t interest many people. What will incense ordinary Londoners will be what the press has dubbed ‘Zil lanes’, hundreds of miles of coned-off  road reserved for corporate bigwigs and IOC officials. In a city like London, this will cause traffic chaos, and for what? So VIPs can be on time for canapés before the archery. So we are left with VIP lanes, protest crackdowns and armed forces policing our capital. That is not Britain. For 3 weeks, we’re the USSR, or China. Not worth it.

To be honest, I’ve never been especially keen on London hosting the Olympics. They are so bloated and expensive, and so blatantly impact only one small area of the country for the price, that I felt we should be leaving them for other nations with more money than sense. We are spending billions on London infrastructure whilst making once-in-a-generation cuts, with investment in London already dwarfing what the rest of us get. However, we’ve got the Games and must make the best of them now, but for me that means some Lib Dem common sense on how they are to be run.

In our briefing document ‘Privacy Under Threat’ NO2ID recently gave the coalition 3/10 on sticking to some of these promises. The proposed sale of information from our private medical records is the latest example that illustrates why we have the coalition such a poor rating. The reasoning behind such schemes is a utilitarian argument that the perceived benefit to sharing information trumps any rights or control we as individuals have over our own information.

Sadly we as citizens are losing even more control of our own information.  Our medical records continue to pass from doctors to central systems within the NHS, census data can now be widely shared with a range of bodies, and attempts to reclaim data capture by the police on the network of travel tacking ANPR cameras have been met with a stonewall.

Despite the coalition’s initial promises it ia business as usual for Whitehall data-sharing projects.  What started under the program of ‘Transformational Government’ is now wrapped up in the language of ‘Open Data’. The new language is attractive – after all we all want public data to be open and accessible.  Sadly bureaucrats too often conflate public data with private data collected and stored by public bodies.

Our private NHS medical records should belong to us, we as citizen s should be in control of them. They are not the Department of Health’s to trade and share. If we want to share our medical records so others can benefit there should be a clear opt in system where active consent is sought. This principle of clear consent operates throughout all medical research and should apply to how our data is used too. When government starts taking control of our information alarms bells should ring in those who are liberally minded. After all a society in which government assumes control of information is a society in which the government controls us.

* James Baker is the campaigns manager for NO2ID

‘The Independent View‘ is a slot on Lib Dem Voice which allows those from beyond the party to contribute to debates we believe are of interest to LDV’s readers. Please email if you are interested in contributing.

Here’s a short excerpt from the piece:

Negotiation over the bill has been long and intense, especially with the Home Office and police over the deletion of innocent people’s DNA from the national database, which accounted for the three-month delay in publication. “I am amazed how far we pushed the whole security establishment and the Home Office in a liberal direction,” he says. “They are in such a different place to where they were a few months ago.” Last Tuesday, he presented the bill to the cabinet, where he has quite a few Tory supporters (Ken Clarke, Oliver Letwin and Dominic Grieve), and sold it to the rest by saying, “Let’s remember how this government is different to the previous government. This is something that distinguishes our government. Bit by bit, in quite imperceptible ways, these measures tell you profound things about the country we are trying to create.” He compares the bill to the efforts to reduce the deficit. “In terms of a lasting adjustment, or what it is to be British, this may be more significant in the long run.”

All true maybe, yet reading the bill after our interview, I find it hard to ignore the imprint of Labour’s boot on the statute book. The formalised mistrust of every adult who has anything to do with children in the vetting and barring scheme has not been abolished, merely reduced to affect half the estimated nine million to be vetted under the original scheme. And there is no mention of the interception modernisation programme – the proposals, backed by GCHQ and the Home Office, to allow email, internet usage, mobile calls and text messages to be monitored.

Clegg concedes that the new version of the control order is not what he hoped for – it is still at base a breach of the rule of law. There is no action to be taken on CCTV in schools – a development that allows Stoke Park School and Community Technology College in Coventry to install 112 cameras on its premises, at a cost of £10,000 – and little attempt to address the databases of legitimate protesters kept by police.

But there can be no doubt that scrapping the ID card and the children’s contact database, removing the stop and search powers granted under Section 44, controlling the use of surveillance by councils, reducing the maximum period of pre-charge detention for terrorism suspects to 14 days – especially given that it was just a few years ago that police officers and Blair were campaigning for 90 days – are welcome moves. Particularly good signs are the protection of jury trial, the extension of the Freedom of Information Act so that the public have better access to data, and the proposals to curb the spread of public CCTV systems, on which Labour spent £600m between 1997-2007, a figure that the deputy prime minister has not heard before and which causes him to exhale and wonder what the money could be spent on today.

You can read the piece in full – and it is certainly worth doing so – here.

Key provisions of the Bill include the enactment of some previously announced decisions alongside some new, additional proposals:

• an end to the routine monitoring of 9.3 million people under the radically reformed vetting and barring scheme
• millions of householders protected from town hall snoopers checking their bins or school catchment area
• the scrapping of Section 44 powers, which have been used to stop and search hundreds of thousands of innocent people
• the permanent reduction of the maximum period of pre-charge detention for terrorist suspects to 14 days
• DNA samples and fingerprints of hundreds of thousands of innocent people deleted from police databases
• thousands of gay men able to clear their name with the removal of out-of-date convictions for consensual acts
• thousands of motorists protected from rogue wheel clamping firms
• an end to the fingerprinting of children in schools without parental consent
• the introduction of a code of practice for CCTV and Automatic Number Plate Recognition systems (overseen by a new Surveillance Camera Commissioner) to make them more proportionate and effective
• restrictions on the powers of government departments, local authorities and other public bodies to enter private homes and other premises for investigations and a requirement for all to examine and slim down remaining powers
• the repeal of powers to hold serious and complex fraud trials without a jury
• the extension of the scope of the Freedom of Information Act and strengthening the public rights to data

And also, dramatic drum roll please … the liberalisation of marriage laws to allow people to marry outside the hours of 8am-6pm, which does rather pose the question, what was the point of previously banning marriage at 6:01pm?

Nick Clegg has siad of the Bill,

Freedom is back in fashion – 2011 will be the year that the coalition government hands people their liberty back. I have campaigned for this for many years and I am delighted that we have been able to deliver the Freedoms Bill in government.

Home Office minister Lynne Feahterstone has said of the radical reform to the vetting and barring scheme,

I came into this department and was immediately struck by the need to look again at the vetting and barring scheme and criminal records regime.

I feel the changes that are now being made strike the balance between our own personal liberties whilst ensuring vulnerable people are protected.

One of the many examples of what was wrong with the vetting and barring scheme was the point I picked up in 2009 about the scheme’s guidelines:

Paragraph 5.6.1 of “Guidance Notes for Barring Decision Marking Process” … states in part: “even where a jury has found someone not guilty of having done something, you must always remember that, at most, this means is that the court did not find that someone did something “beyond a reasonable doubt” (the criminal standard of proof).”

My concern is simply this. When a jury acquits it may do so for all sorts of reasons. One may be that it thinks someone was probably guilty, but not “beyond a reasonable doubt”. But another is that it has decided that there is no credible evidence at all for the case.

Imagine the situation where you have been framed for a criminal act, but the truth comes out in court, the jury is completely convinced that you are innocent and you are acquitted. Can you really, hand on heart, say that in such circumstances you would be quite happy for someone to say that all your acquittal means is that “at most all the court has done is decide you didn’t do it beyond a reasonable doubt”.

It was one of the more farcical moments under Labour when official guidelines were issued saying that innocent can’t mean innocent. Thankfully those guidelines were subsequently changed and now the flawed legislation behind them is being put right.

Nick began with a nice touch, telling us why his belief in civil liberties sprang from an upbringing that “made sure that my brothers and sister and I grew up certain of one thing: you must never take your freedom for granted.” This personal insight helped set the theme for the speech; that nations used to see Britain as a beacon for protecting citizens’ rights, and that reclaiming that moral high ground so we can once again take pride in our country’s standing was an immediate priority.

For there’s little doubt that civil liberties have been eroded under the previous administration, and Nick outlined just how authoritarian a nation we’ve become and the scale of the challenge that (small-l) liberals face in reversing that trend. The over-zealous use of the Public Order Act to deny activists the right to peaceful protest, the erosion of trust in individuals and communities as exemplified by the proliferation of databases, surveillance and ID cards, the suppression of free debate by illiberal libel laws; I could go on, and as Nick rightly asserted, “Labour wasn’t laissez faire about liberty. They presided over the most aggressive period of state interference in this country in a generation.” Hard to argue with that given their record in power.

Liberal Democrats, often as a lone voice in Parliament, have consistently campaigned for the defence of liberty and against the tyranny of State power. The difference now is that we can move beyond simple criticism to action, from speeches and policy motions to legislative reform – and it is the prospect of such liberalising reform that makes this an exciting time for our Party.

Understandably the focus of the speech – not to mention the press questions that followed – was the planned overhaul of anti-terrorism legislation. I’ve written about the government’s stance on the crucial issue of control orders previously, and their rescinding has been widely trailed in the media; understandably Nick wasn’t willing to pre-empt the Home Secretary’s exact position on what would replace them, but emphasised that a balance needs to be struck between combating a “very, very real” threat to national security and liberty. He did however make it clear that he sees control orders as “a form of virtual house arrest” which cannot continue as they are – the practice of detention without charge will therefore end it seems, although it remains to be seen how a small fraction of cases where evidence for prosecution is hard to produce are dealt with. What is clear is that current control orders regime is illiberal, ineffective and broken – so Lib Dems will see to it that they are scrapped.

There was also a great deal of positive news on the opening up of government data to further transparency, in a welcome attempt to make government more accountable. We heard of concrete plans to extend the Freedom of Information Act – a decade-old law that Nick acknowledged “was a good start – but it was only a start.” Not only will (potentially) hundreds of arms length bodies – not currently subject to FoI legislation – now be told to open up their records to the public, but in response to an excellent question from the Information Commissioner Nick said considering that under the Big Society more and more public service provision would be from private- or third-sector entities, perhaps FoI should be extended to any body that affects the public good – which if enacted would be a most welcome policy.

Given my involvement with the campaign to reform English and Welsh libel laws, I was most interested in what Nick had to say about the defence of free expression – and I have to say it was heartening to hear that the first party to make a firm commitment to radical libel law reform remains firmly committed to the cause today. Nick’s rhetoric on free speech is as strong in power as in opposition; he rightly affirmed that, “The test of a free press is its capacity to unearth the truth, exposing charlatans and vested interests along the way. It is simply not right when academics and journalists are effectively bullied into silence by the prospect of costly legal battles with wealthy individuals and big businesses.” Of course being in power means delivering more than just powerful sentiment, it means delivering meaningful change; and although as Dr. Evan Harris points out there remain crucial details to be thrashed out, Nick’s speech clearly demonstrated that the government will no longer tolerate the chilling effect our libel laws have on public discourse.

The commitments Nick made – that the draft Defamation Bill to be published shortly will clarify the defence of fair comment, address the astronomical cost of defending libel cases, put an end to the “farce” of libel tourism and update free speech law to reflect the advent of online communication – are to be welcomed by all those who want to see scientific debate, public-interest journalism and investigative blogging protected from the suppressive chill they’re under currently.

Of course we want the government to go further, ending the right of corporations to sue just to silence critics, and perhaps even to reverse the burden of proof. Of course we want Nick and all Liberal Democrats to champion the cause of liberty and free expression until we live in as free a nation as we can achieve; what isn’t in doubt following this speech is that this government’s direction of travel remains praiseworthy – and what’s more, with the Liberal Democrats in government, we can ensure that our journey towards a more open, liberal, free society is in good hands.

Fanciful as it may seem, it is perfectly possible for a police officer to arrest someone, take them to a police station, have an interview with them, and then release the person on police bail for four weeks but impose a curfew from 9pm to 6am requiring the person to remain indoors; all this without any need to record the fact. Four weeks later, at a further interview ‘to help police with their inquiries’ the process can be repeated.

Now, I am all in favour of reducing paperwork, but surely someone in government should want to know if citizens are routinely, or even exceptionally, being deprived of their liberty, whilst just helping police with their inquiries? After all, this could not happen if the person was charged, because they would need to be brought before a court, and the issue of bail conditions argued by lawyers for the state and the defendant in front of judicial officers.

But, no such process exists for those arrested, but not charged.

Following a written PQ from Annette Brooke, the Home Office admitted just before Christmas that it doesn’t know what the police do with those who are arrested. So, that’s alright then.

A police state is my mind is one where the arm of the state dedicated to protecting the public decides to go further and take decisions of how to deal with suspected offenders without bothering to involve judicial process. Under Labour, it wasn’t just Control Orders but a whole raft of actions to deal with low level offending that were handed over to the police and local authorities. Penalty Notice for Disorder handed out by private security guards, traffic offences as a means of revenue gathering, and the iniquitous Conditional Cautions where prosecutors can determine individual sentences without regard to the courts at all were all introduced. It was as if, under Labour, the constitutional separation of powers was an unnecessary impediment to the control of crime.

Liberal Democrats applaud the Justice Secretary for wanting to reduce prison sentences, and not just short ones, but we must be equally vigilant to ensure that the forces of law and order don’t overstep the mark elsewhere in the criminal justice system.

No deprivation of liberty, however short, should be imposed on anyone who leaves a police station without the police first obtaining a court order. If there is insufficient evidence to charge a person, then there should be insufficient evidence to deprive a person of their liberty without the authority of a court. For a Liberal Democrat coalition to do otherwise would be to risk a fundamental principle enshrined in our opposition to Control Orders but that has a much wider application in society.

So, to sum up: the restoration of every day liberties; counterterrorism measures that uphold liberty while protecting security; free citizens able to see into, and speak out about, the organisations that affect their lives. It is a liberal approach to freedom; a British approach to freedom. It forms an important part of our programme to rebalance the relationship between the state and its citizens. Our Labour predecessors will be remembered as the government who took your freedoms away. We want to be remembered as the ones who gave them back.

And here’s the BBC News report in which Nick talks about the ‘dilemma’ the Government faces in working through how to replace Control Orders:

As promised, here’s Nick Clegg’s full speech on civil liberties:

This morning I want to talk about freedom. About the hard-won liberties that we in Britain hold so dear.

This nation is built on a faith in fair play. On a historic hostility towards those who seek to impose their will on others.

Innocent until proven guilty. Equal before the law. Each individual able to think and speak without fear of persecution.

These are the standards instilled in us. They are the hallmarks of a civilised society. They are the reason that victims of oppression worldwide still look to us as proof that there is a better way.

Yet recent times have seen those traditions badly damaged. Under Labour our civil liberties have been undermined, eroded, lost.

It isn’t just the politics that makes me care about this so much; although my party has long campaigned on these issues. It’s something I was brought up with too.

My family, like so many others, was marked by the extremes and conflicts of the last century. My mother spent part of her childhood in a prisoner of war camp. My father’s mother fled the Russian Revolution and found refuge here.

That family history made sure that my brothers and sister and I grew up certain of one thing: you must never take your freedom for granted. And you must treasure and love this country for precisely that reason.

So the Coalition Government is going to turn a page on the Labour years: resurrecting the liberties that have been lost; embarking on a mission to restore our great British freedoms.

We aren’t wasting any time, and we are ambitious about what we want to achieve. In the next twelve months we want to undo the damage of thirteen years. 2011 will be the year we give people’s freedom back.

We’ll do it in three key ways.

One: by reversing the widespread, everyday assaults on liberty that swept across Britain during the Labour years.

Two: by restoring the right balance of liberty and security in the measures taken to tackle terrorism – recognising we can and must have both.

Three: by ending the practices of closed and secretive government; giving people the information and freedom they need to hold us and other institutions to account.

Liberty under Labour

Before I elaborate on those, I’d like to just pause on the state of play the Coalition Government inherited.

Ed Balls has admitted that, when it comes to civil liberties, Labour got the balance wrong. Ed Miliband has conceded that his Government seemed too casual about people’s freedom.

But there was nothing casual about introducing ID cards. Nothing casual about building the biggest DNA database in the world, and storing the DNA of over one million innocent people.

Nothing casual about their failed attempts to increase the time a person can be detained without charge from what was then 14 days up to 90; something Labour’s new leader voted for.

Labour wasn’t laissez faire about liberty. They presided over the most aggressive period of state interference in this country in a generation.

They turned Britain into a place where schools can fingerprint your children without their parents’ consent. Where councils use surveillance powers designed to tackle crime to check if you’re cleaning up after your dog. Where thousands of new criminal offences have amassed on to the statute book. Where you are 7 times more likely to be stopped and searched by the police if you are black or Asian. Where, in one year, we saw over 100,000 terror-related stop-and-searches, none of which yielded a single terror arrest.

They made Britain a place where you could be put under virtual house arrest when there was not enough evidence to charge you with a crime. And with barely an explanation of the allegations against you. A place where young, innocent children caught up in the immigration system were placed behind bars. A Britain whose international reputation has been brought into question because of our alleged complicity in torture.

That record is an affront to everything we stand for.

It has created a fundamental imbalance between British citizens and the British state; disempowering individuals, criminalising innocent people, fuelling mistrust between communities, and diminishing this nation’s moral authority too.

It would be easier to forgive Labour if it had simply been a lack of diligence on their part.

But the problem ran much deeper. There is a divide in politics between those of us who trust people and those who trust only government.

It is a line that divides progressive politics into two camps: old progressives, who value a powerful state, and new progressives, who value powerful citizens. Labour is on the wrong side of that divide.

Because, if you believe that the state has all the answers, you will always be pessimistic about citizens.

If you believe everything must be controlled from the centre you will protect central power at all costs. Even when that cost is basic British freedoms.

Liberals, and this Government, take a wholly different approach.

Liberals believe in the dispersal of power: in the raucous and unpredictable capacity of people and communities to make the right decisions for themselves.

We believe that social progress is driven not only by government, but also by confident, free individuals and communities, able to seize opportunities and take risks.

People cannot do that when the state is forever on their back; when their freedoms are denied and their autonomy is undermined.

So this Government is going to restore British liberties.

It is part of our wider project to resettle the relationship between people and government. Our political reforms, decentralisation, changes to public services, rebalancing growth, our focus on social mobility – these are all geared towards shifting power away from its traditional centres.

And it is that fairer dispersal of power that will guarantee British liberties in the long run. We want to empower individuals and communities so comprehensively, so irreversibly, that no future Government will easily be able to behave in ways that are authoritarian or illiberal.

It’s a power shift even a casual Labour party would struggle to reverse.

Everyday freedoms

Turning to our plan to restore British liberty.

One: dismantling the many limits on freedom that have crept into everyday life.

Two: reforming specific measures used to counter terrorism.

Three: giving people the information and power to hold the state and other institutions to account.

The British people have become accustomed to a vast array of infringements on their freedom.

Widespread and indiscriminate surveillance; Their DNA being held, unnecessarily; The proliferation of new criminal offences, and the growing number of reasons state inspectors can barge into their homes; The needless restrictions on people who want to work as volunteers.

The list goes on.

These didn’t happen overnight. They accumulated gradually, bit by bit.

Some have attracted high profile campaigns, like ID cards. Others slipped into our lives. Many now feel normal, even mundane.

And it is in that chipping away of our freedom that the real danger lies. Because it distorts our perception of what level of state interference we should tolerate.

Over time, it makes us less vigilant about our freedom. And we risk our children growing up too complacent about theirs.

So this Government is restoring British liberties with the same systematic ruthlessness with which Labour took them away.

None are too big or too minor, and we want to leave no stone unturned. I hope our record so far is proof of that.

Our very first piece of legislation halted ID cards and scrapped the National Identity Register.

ContactPoint – the Government database containing the personal information of every child in England – has been switched off.

We set up Your Freedom, a website to gauge people’s views on their liberties, and they flooded-in in their thousands. Views that are now directly shaping Government policy, like work we are doing on reforming the vetting procedures for volunteers and criminal records checks.

The Secretary of State for Justice now carefully scrutinises all proposals to create new offences to make sure that they are absolutely necessary. This Government won’t criminalise behaviour lightly

And we made sure that, by our first Christmas in office, not a single innocent child was under lock and key. In Labour’s last year alone over 1000 innocent children were locked up for immigration purposes. We have drawn a line under that scandal.

Over the next twelve months, that momentum is only going to build.

In the coming weeks we will be publishing our review of counter-terrorism, and I will talk more about that shortly.

By next month we will be putting forward a freedom bill: legislation that will bring together a number of measures, for example to better regulate CCTV; to properly control the way councils use surveillance powers; to limit the powers of state inspectors to enter into your house; and to end the indefinite storage of innocent people’s DNA.

We will also be publishing a draft defamation bill to enhance freedom of speech. Again, that is something I will come on to.

In September, the independent review of the UK’s extradition arrangements we commissioned will report.

And Ken Clarke will continue to work on putting together a Repeals Bill to wipe unnecessary and obsolete laws and regulations from the statute book.

Counter-Terrorism

The second strand of our programme on civil liberties centres on counter-terrorism; on upholding civil liberties while we defend our national security, strengthening both.

Recent weeks and days have seen quite a lot of commentary about the Government’s plans. Some of it wildly speculative. Some of it even suggesting that I or others see these vital issues of national security and liberty through a party political prism.

That is utter nonsense. This Government’s duty – our first duty – is to keep the British people safe.

The threat we face from terrorists is very, very real. That is something that weighs heavily on my mind, on the Prime Minister’s mind, and on the Home Secretary’s too.

And we are clear: those who seek to hurt this nation will be rooted out; they will be punished with the full force of British justice.

But, the question we must ask ourselves is this: are the tools we have to combat terrorism effective? And do they help rather than hinder bringing to justice those who seek to destroy our way of life?

We believe, each of us in this Government, that Labour got the balance between liberty and security wrong. The created a regime that was both disproportionate in design, and ineffective in practice.

If you need any proof of that just look at control orders – the subject of much recent commentary.

Remember how they originally came about: as an ad hoc and rushed response to a number of court rulings; the creation of virtual house arrest for people who could not be tried in court; a departure from our long-held commitment to open justice.

And what is worse – as the Prime Minister pointed out earlier in the week – they didn’t even work properly.

John Reid himself described them as full of holes. Suspects have absconded. They were repeatedly and successfully challenged in the courts.

And the long running arguments around control orders have distracted from the real objectives – preventing the planning of terrorist acts and the gathering of evidence to secure prosecutions.
It was precisely to address this ineffectiveness and imbalance that the Government decided, in the Coalition Agreement, to review counterterrorism measures.

The Home Secretary deserves huge credit for the leadership she is showing on that. And I will not, today, second guess the precise outcome of that review.

Some people say we are taking too long to present our findings. But what is most important here is that we get this right.

Because this it not, as some suggest, a straightforward trade-off between liberty or security, as if one must come at the expense of the other.

It is about how we balance the two. How we underpin both. And how we can make sure people who break the law and seek to do us harm are charged, convicted, and put in prison.

The Government has not been consumed by some sort of almighty row between peaceniks on the one hand and securocrats on the other. We are determining, together, with painstaking care, how to keep people safe in a way that upholds our values and traditions.

And I believe the British people would prefer we do that properly. They have had enough of bad decisions, made in the heat of the moment, by the New Labour soap opera. This Government makes its decision through open and careful debate.

While the full details of the review are still to be decided, there will be significant reform.

Both Coalition partners believe that, at 28 days, the period terror suspects can be detained without charge is too long and we should seek ways to reduce it.

Control Orders cannot continue in their current form. They must be replaced.

And we will introduce a system that is more proportionate, in line with our long-held commitment to due process and civil liberties; that seeks to disrupt and impede would-be terrorists from carrying out their heinous crimes; and that continues to focus on bringing terrorists to justice.

Information/Freedom of Speech

The third and final strand of our civil liberties agenda is about openness, about scrutiny.

Free citizens must be able to hold big institutions and powerful individuals to account.

And not only the Government. There are a whole range of organisations who, for example, benefit from public money and whose activities have a profound impact on the public good, yet who cannot be properly scrutinized.

Citizens must know what goes on in these institutions. And they must be at liberty to speak out about the things they discover.

It is a modern right to information combined with traditional freedom of expression.

Recent years have seen some progress on transparency. Most notably through the introduction of the Freedom of Information Act.

But that progress has stalled. The Freedom of Information Act was a good start, but it was only a start. Exceptions remain far too common. And the available information is too often placed behind tedious bureaucratic hurdles.

The previous Labour Government knew this but chose to respond to repeated calls for the extension of freedom of information by kicking the issue into the long grass.

We still live in a society where important information is hoarded by the few. And, as we know, information is knowledge, and knowledge is power.

And yet, where information is available, people use it in innovative and empowering ways.

They use it to keep tabs on Government. Last Summer the Treasury began publishing what’s called the COINS database, detailing public services expenditure.

The Open Knowledge Foundation has now converted that information into an easy-to-use website that makes it possible for people to see how much is spent, where, on what, and how that is changing over time.

There are extremely impressive examples of people using public information to help their businesses. Of people using information to scrutinize public services too; something which drives up standards.

And none of this should come as a surprise. Because we live in an information age. But what is surprising is the barriers that remain.

So the Government is going to transform the access citizens have to the information we believe is their right.

Francis Maude has been doing an excellent job on this. He has imposed stringent new transparency rules on Whitehall Departments, ensuring they publish, for example, much more data on the money they spend and the private companies awarded government contracts.

Working with Ed Davey, Francis is also developing plans for a new Public Data Corporation.
It will bring existing government bodies together into one organisation, responsible for disseminating a wealth of data.

Businesses, social enterprises and individuals will find it much easier to get hold of the information they need.

As well as opening up Government, we want to go further. We believe that if an organisation’s behaviour and decisions have clear consequences for the public good, people must be able to see right into the heart of them.

So I can also announce that we are extending the scope of the Freedom of Information Act to cover potentially hundreds more bodies; including UCAS, the Association of Chief Police Officers, the Financial Ombudsman Service and many more.

As part of that, we are ending the anomaly that exempts organisations owned by more than one public authority.

And, as we shake up FOI, we are also getting rid of the 30 year rule. Let’s not forget that the previous Government commissioned a review of this back in 2007 – the Dacre Review – but then characteristically dragged their feet. So we will finish the job.

Where sensitive Government records can currently be kept secret for 30 years, we will cut that back by a decade.

Surely it can only strengthen our democracy if we reduce the time people have to wait in order to find out the full truth about the governments they have lived under, and the events they have lived through.

We’ll continue to look at how freedom of information is being implemented to ensure the public interest is put first. And to guarantee this process is itself transparent, we will use post-legislative scrutiny, asking the Justice Select Committee to carry out the work.

Of course, governments do have a duty to protect some kinds of information, in everyone’s wider interests. It’s obvious that the benefits of transparency have to be balanced against important objectives, like national security and crime prevention. And that governments must be very respectful in handling personal information – that’s why we felt so strongly about getting rid of the National Database.

But our starting point is always maximising transparency in the public interest – moving from a closed society to an open society.

Beyond providing greater access to information, we also need to make sure that, where people discover injustice and bad practice, they can speak out against it too.

That is why the Government is changing the law to restore rights to non-violent protest. And we are taking other big steps to enhance freedom of expression.

In opposition my party made clear that we wanted to see English libel laws reformed.

Almost exactly a year ago I made that case in a speech to the Royal Society. I argued that English libel laws are having a chilling effect on scientific debate and investigative journalism.

Of course, individual citizens must be able to protect their reputations from false and damaging claims; and we can’t allow companies to be the victim of damaging, untrue and malicious statements.

But, equally, we want public-spirited academics and journalists to be fearless in publishing legitimate research. Not least when it relates to medical care or public safety.

The test of a free press is its capacity to unearth the truth, exposing charlatans and vested interests along the way.

It is simply not right when academics and journalists are effectively bullied into silence by the prospect of costly legal battles with wealthy individuals and big businesses.

Nor should foreign claimants be able to exploit these laws, bringing cases against foreign defendants here to our courts – even if the connection with England is tenuous.

It is a farce – and an international embarrassment – that the American Congress has felt it necessary to legislate to protect their citizens from our libel laws.

This Government wants to restore our international reputation for free speech.

We will be publishing a draft defamation bill in the Spring. We intend to provide a new statutory defence for those speaking out in the public interest, whether they be big broadcasters or the humble blogger. And we intend to clarify the law around the existing defences of fair comment, and justification.

We believe claimants should not be able to threaten claims on what are essentially trivial grounds. We are going to tackle libel tourism. And we’re going to look at how the law can be updated to better reflect the realities of the internet.

Separately, we are also going to address the high costs of defamation proceedings. As part of that we have published a consultation paper on proposals by Lord Justice Jackson to reform civil litigation funding – and in particular no win no fee arrangements – to make costs more proportionate, more fair.

Our aim is to turn English libel laws from an international laughing stock to an international blueprint.

Conclusion

So, to sum up: the restoration of every day liberties; counterterrorism measures that uphold liberty while protecting security; free citizens able to see into, and speak out about, the organisations that affect their lives.

It is a liberal approach to freedom; a British approach to freedom.

It forms an important part of our programme to rebalance the relationship between the state and its citizens.

Our Labour predecessors will be remembered as the government who took your freedoms away.

We want to be remembered as the ones who gave them back.

Thank you.

Getting economic policy right may be at the heart of the government’s long-term fate, and crucial for the country, but even if everything goes right the benefits are long-term ones – so to keep the coalition working well over the next year will require a steady supply of other good news and much work on internal communications.

Ask Liberal Democrat activists why they are active in politics and why for the Liberal Democrats and the issues of political reform, civil liberties and the environment come up time and time again.

At any time reforming our political system, protecting our environment and restoring civil liberties should be priorities for Liberal Democrats, but after the tuition fees votes significant progress on this trio is also important for internal party reasons. For the coalition to have long-term support, tuition fees needs to be seen as the exception rather than the norm and hence the need for rapid evidence of core Liberal Democrat beliefs being delivered in other areas.

On political reform much rests on May’s referendum, but it is not the only significant news scheduled for 2011. Major progress on the plans for electing the House of Lords – and by proportional representation no less – is also due, with the opportunity for Liberal Democrats to show how their role in government is pushing aside the stream of excuses from many peers as to why democracy really is all a bit too new an idea for the Lords.

On civil liberties, the limits on detention without charge and control orders are both due for decision soon. For the former it is likely to be good news – a reduction back down to 14 days – and on control orders it looks as if they will be abolished with other arrangements similar to those applicable to suspected football hooligans (e.g. restrictions on travel) widened to include some terrorist suspects.

The environment is likely to bring less immediate political benefit to the Liberal Democrats for the policies that Chris Huhne has been laying out are ones that bring only few positive short-term headlines. That is in part the nature of the environmental policy for which he has responsibility and also reflects the limited resources in government. Relatively speaking his environmental areas did very well out of the spending review – but relative success against a grim backdrop is important and welcome – but also not the sort of success that really fires up people.

By contrast, the abolition of child detention for immigration purposes has been a good clear example of how persistent Liberal Democrat demands inside government have won out over resistance from some Conservatives and civil servants and delivered a result that is both important in terms of substance and important in terms of what motivates many Liberal Democrat activists.

However, to the outside world – especially the outside world of normal people with only passing interest in party politics – the contribution the Liberal Democrats are making to such decisions is often hard to spot. Hence tomorrow’s challenge is about messaging and communication.

Lib Dem MPs and Ministers (including up until now Vince Cable,) have a reputation for giving straight-forward honest answers to journalists questions without coming across as evasive or revisionist. However, with the tuition fee pledge to deny a promise was ever made and as such never broken is not a line we are going to be able to sell to anyone with half a brain.

Meanwhile Ed Balls has been busy admitting Labour’s mistakes on civil liberties in a clear attempt to begin wiping Labour’s slate clean. Now this is not a line that is easily sold to political anoraks or activists, however the public like to see politicians humbled, they like to see them admit their mistakes and apologise. Once that has happened the process of rebuilding trust can begin, not before.

With this in mind, isn’t it time Lib Dem ministers conceded that they broke a promise on Tuition Fees for the reasons Vince stated in his interview? IE: Rather than say ‘no we didn’t break any promises’, admit that we did make a promise that we couldn’t deliver because a) we are in a Coalition and b) the financial mess Labour left us with.

Once we acknowledge that we have broken a promise, perhaps then we should turn the discussion to the promises we have kept. Things like: restoring the link between pensions and earnings, raising the personal allowance on Income Tax, ending child detention in immigration centres, abolishing ID cards database, delivering a pupil premium for schools taking children from the poorest families and things we are committed to doing as part of the Coalition Agreement like electing the House of Lords
using Proportional Representation, having a referendum on the Alternative Vote for elections to the Commons.

When we add up electoral promises kept as part of the Coalition Government and promises broken, the kept promises far outweigh the broken, and not just in areas where we had consensus with the Conservatives.

Its time to change the narrative, to admit we have broken a promise, to explain why and to start emphasising the promises we have kept. Then we can begin to rebuild trust on the Tuition Fees issue.

David Parkes is a Liberal Democrat Member living in the Canary Islands, where he works as a web developer. He is an occasional blogger and primarily involves himself in the party by supporting Lib Dem online campaigns.

A somewhat younger looking Nick Clegg made this the subject of his party conference speech back in 2006 when he was shadow home secretary.

Returning to conference as Deputy Prime Minister in 2010, Clegg triumphantly declared that “In November, we will publish a Freedom Bill to roll back a generation of illiberal and intrusive legislation.”

The Liberal Democrat draft [pdf] addresses some of the most obvious anti-campaigning laws. For example it proposes to repeal the largely discredited SOCPA rules that restrict campaigning near to parliament. However some laws holding back campaigners are often more hidden.

Bond, the network of international development NGOs, recently asked our members for examples of when unjust laws have prevented them from campaigning. The stories we got back were shocking.

Top of the list were the problems campaigners face when collecting petitions in quasi-public space. Under current law, land owners can choose what viewpoints are expressed on their property. This is particularly problematic when once-public streets become private shopping centres. Thus, even the most basic form of democratic engagement – talking to people in the street – has become criminalised in many places.

Next was the issue of police camera operators intimidating campaigners by taking photographs of them. We heard stories of police (sometimes not wearing numbers) taking photos of street stalls, of peaceful demonstrations, of static protests, and even of a vicar in a dog collar getting off a coach. The effect, whether intended or not, is that people are made to feel like they are doing something wrong when practising their democratic rights, and in some cases, living out their faith.

The Liberal Democrats in government can address these issues, but the bill will have to look slightly different from its previous form. Delivering people’s freedom will sometimes mean regulating the state and companies, if civil liberties are to be restored.

Tim Gee is Campaigns Communications Officer for Bond

I was one of the contributors to Great Liberal Speeches. Here is my introduction to the selected speech from George Tierney, followed by the speech itself. The issues are arguments are still very pertinent today.

George Tierney, who led the Whigs in the Commons between 1817 and 1821, was born in 1761 in Gibraltar to a wealthy merchant family. After growing up in Gibraltar and Paris, he went to Eton and Cambridge. He trained as a lawyer, but then went into politics rather than pursuing a legal career.

He rapidly became familiar with the corrupt and costly side of elections, first being (briefly) elected in Colchester. The election count ended in a tie but he was awarded the seat after an investigation into claims of corruption. He promptly lost it again in 1790. He went through several other seats during his career, including Southwark where he won, lost (to his niece’s husband), forced a re-run on grounds of corruption, lost again and was then awarded the seat – again on grounds of corruption.

Given this electoral background, and his time in Paris, it is not surprising that he both admired the first stages of the French Revolution and during his career regularly argued in favour of reform, particularly cleaning up the electoral system and giving more people the vote. From his early days in Parliament he clearly associated himself with the Whigs, especially the more radical ones, including the Association of the Friends of the People for which he was co-treasurer.

His enthusiasm for radical reform weakened in later years as he became disillusioned with the course of the French Revolution. It never though completely went away.

He made his mark as a Parliamentarian when he refused to back the more radical Fox during the boycott of Parliament carried out by him and his colleagues. Tierney continued attending and, with the more prominent and more skilled opposition debaters absent, had the perfect opportunity to establish himself.

His reputation was based on a firm grasp of facts, particularly detailed numbers. Although his speaking style did not compete with the heights reached by the highly talented contemporary triumvirate of Pitt, Burke and Fox, his expertise, clear expression and ability to wound with sneers and sarcasm made him an effective debater. His contemporary Charles Williams Wynn described him as “A most efficient man of business and the best speaker of detail in the House.”

Naturally cautious, yet often bold in action, his slightly erratic pragmatism led his critics to accuse him of indecision. As leader in the Commons in 1817-21, he had a mixed record. He had to deal with a very fragmented group of supporters, many of whom looked down on his social origins, and arguably failed to fatally wound or seriously damage the Government when good opportunities presented themselves.

During the early nineteenth century the two-party electoral system was only weakly defined for much of the time, with factions grouped around particular individuals or families being the real building blocks of the system.

There were, though, two ideological divides which helped demark a liberal tradition that continued through to the formation of the modern Liberal party. One was religion – non-conformity versus the established Church. The other was civil liberties, and in particular their protection against encroachment from Governments fearing revolution and therefore introducing repressive measures. If one substitutes “fear of crime” for “fear of revolution” many of the principled arguments made then fit easily within modern liberal thought in the UK.

The background to his speech reproduced below was a period of increasing unrest and protest, resulting most famously at a public protest near Manchester in August 1819. It was held on St. Peter’s Fields and when the local magistrates ordered troops to intervene, causing the death of eleven, it was christened “Peterloo” in mock honour of the battle of Waterloo. The Government claimed such protests required a curtailment of civil liberties and other measures in order to ensure that revolution did not occur.

In the speech, Tierney highlighted the tension at the heart of the Government’s argument, a tension that was repeated on many other occasions in the early nineteenth century. On the one hand, the Government argued that the danger of unrest was sufficiently great to justify repressive measures and the curtailment of liberty. But on the other hand the Government argued that overall people were happy and that there was no need for any significant reform beyond the repressive measures they were proposing.

With only one exception – the right of people to have their own guns – the basic principles Tierney supported in this speech are ones that would also sit happily in the speeches of liberals in succeeding decades and centuries.

Tierney and the opposition did not oppose all of the six bills introduced, but they were particularly fierce in their hostility to those that encroached most on traditional civil liberties, notably press freedom and the right to hold public meetings.

Although all the measures passed through Parliament, the defence of civil liberties espoused by Tierney ensured the maintenance of a tradition which became a major feature of the modern Liberal party when it was formed latter in the century.

Unity on such issues was, though, a long way in the future. There were, as there had been for many years previously, persistent tensions within Tierney’s party over the degree to which civil liberties and political reform should be supported. As a result he was unable to forge a united political force and his leadership ended in failure with his resignation in 1821. He died in 1830.

Further reading

Although his political career covered a period that has been thoroughly trawled by historians, Tierney has largely escaped the interests of biographers with the exception of KH Olphin’s George Tierney. Two of the standard histories covering his period are A Briggs,The age of improvement 1783-1867 and N Gash, Aristocracy and the People, 1815-1865. Much of the ideological climate was heavily influenced by the French Revolution, chronicled in F O’Gorman’s The Whig party and the French Revolution. A Mitchell’s The Whigs in opposition 1815-1830 covers the period of Tierney’s leadership.

Sacrificing The Constitution On The Altar Of Public Security – George Tierney On The Six Acts

House of Commons 29th November 1819

Mr. Tierney observed that the awful denunciation by the noble lord of many of the principles which he (Mr. Tierney) had been accustomed to hold most sacred must of course occasion him to rise under considerable embarrassment. But that embarrassment would be greater if he imagined that after the statement of the noble lord, the House would expect him on the sudden to be prepared to go into a general argument upon the question. Great variety of matter had been introduced the greater part of which, to him at least, was perfectly new. When he came down to the House he had not the most distant conception that the noble lord would advert to many of the points on which he had dwelt at large. He assured the House that he attended in his place – and he hoped the noble lord would believe him – with a very sincere inclination to listen calmly and dispassionately to all that was to be advanced. He felt not the slightest prejudice on any of the points (on some it was impossible that he should feel any, as he was totally ignorant of them); but after what he had heard, he was conscious that he should not discharge his duty, if he did not trouble the House with a few, and a very few, observations.

The noble lord had stated that members on the opposition side of the House, on the first day of the session, had in substance agreed with all parts of the address relating to the seditious spirit pervading the manufacturing districts. It was almost needless to remind the House that the noble lord had no authority for that statement; for his own part, he (Mr. Tierney) had expressly asserted his agreement with the allegations in the address, as far only as they should be established by evidence to be produced. It was really astonishing that the noble lord, who could be candid enough on the first day of the session, should now, for some purpose of his own, not only state that which went even beyond the address, but attempt to ratify that statement by a supposed confirmation derived from the other side of the House. He (Mr. Tierney) had said then, and he repeated it now, that the measures to be adopted must depend upon the necessity, and that necessity could only be ascertained by due inquiry. He did not say that a possible case might not arise where new laws might be required; that a House of Commons in the discharge of its duty might not entertain projects of this kind, but what he maintained was that they ought not to do so until the necessity had been clearly and unequivocally made out.

He denied that necessity at starting: no such case had been made out that justified such measures as had been proposed, even supposing, upon examination, it should turn out that the safety of the country required them. All the House had before it was the notoriety of certain proceedings; but the grounds of those proceedings, their motives, and extent, was only to be gathered from the papers communicated by the Prince Regent. Without meaning to anticipate the debate of tomorrow, to be introduced by his noble friend, he would say, that a more garbled, mutilated account was never presented to the House of Commons.

The noble lord had stated what undoubtedly was very consolatory, but for the comment with which it was, accompanied – that the main body of the nation was sound and loyal that in principle it was attached to the law and the constitution. Even in the disaffected districts, it had been admitted tonight, that the great mass of the population was untouched and untainted by disaffection, and that they were prepared to stand by the law and the constitution. Nay, the noble lord went, further; he had stated what would have astonished him, if any thing could astonish him from the present Ministry on the subject of finance – that the internal state of the country was perfectly prosperous; that in our foreign trade there was nothing to apprehend, but from the distress of America; that all our manufactures found their accustomed vent on the continent; and that it was the condition of America alone that restrained the commercial industry of the nation.

Certainly, if the representations of the noble lord were to be believed in opposition to the evidence of our own senses, the country ought to be in a very happy condition. But how was it then that, as if the nature of the people had changed, as if they had become blind, obstinate, and perverse, it turned out that the nation was to be called upon to sacrifice its constitution on the altar of public security? The subjects of the realm were now told, that the old laws of England were not sufficient to guarantee protection to property; that what they had been accustomed to venerate as their safeguard, were inadequate; that not only 10,000 additional soldiers were to be placed over them, but that those soldiers were to be backed by corps of yeomanry, and by statutes hitherto unknown; and after all this, they were to be assured that their condition was fortunate, and their finances flourishing!

… [Tierney criticises supporters of radical reform] …

A right honourable gentleman had said on a former night, that the Whigs had been for 50 years excluded from power. It was true, and here was the fruit of that exclusion. After the lapse of 50 years of rule, what had the opponents of the Whigs done for the nation? They had brought it to such a condition of discontent and disaffection, that in a period of profound peace, the tranquillity of the country could not be maintained without new laws, not consistent with the spirit of the constitution.

The noble lord had opened five bills to the House. The first was against Seditious and Tumultuous Assemblies – the second against Drilling – the third against the Possession of Arms – the fourth was against Traversing – the fifth branched out into two or three heads; and was aimed at the liberty of the press.

With respect to the right of traverse, he freely confessed that his mind was open to information. He did not profess to be acquainted with all the grounds on which that right had originally been conceded to the subject; inconveniences might have arisen from it, and the remedies of the noble lord might be applied without danger. Yet with fear and trembling he should undertake to change an established principle of the common law, founded upon almost immemorial usage; and though he did not undertake to pronounce peremptorily against it, he approached it with a degree of awe, and would not change it until the necessity should be sufficiently established.

A right to have arms for his own defence

If by the power of searching for arms the noble lord meant to go the length of saying that an Englishman was not to be allowed to have weapons for self-defence in his possession, a most grave case indeed must be made out before he could consent to the proposition. Going about in armed bodies from place to place was already illegal but between that and the established constitutional principle that a man had a right to have arms for his own defence he took a wide and material distinction.

He begged of the House to pause before it sanctioned a measure which directly violated that privilege, in which twenty years ago men would have shuddered had it been even hinted that an alteration was intended. As a temporary measure it might under some circumstances be necessary; such as that large bodies of men were arming themselves in a way dangerous to the community. What was the fact? The papers upon the table merely proved, that certain persons had been making a limited number of pikes, that certain other persons had obtained some pistols and that a few more were in search of other firearms, if they could obtain them at a cheap rate. It was only pretended that Lancashire, Cheshire, a small part of Scotland, though thickly populated, and some districts of Yorkshire, were in a disturbed state. Yet upon no better testimony than this the whole people of England were to be deprived of arms.

Lord Castlereagh said, across the table, that the Arms bill was only to be local.

What then were the districts to which the law was to apply?

Lord Castlereagh replied: those included in the Watch and Ward act.

As he (Mr. Tierney) had not that measure precisely in his memory, he would not waste time by observations upon it. As to the law against drilling, he had heard with great astonishment, that such practices were not already against law; that no punishment could now be inflicted upon men who drilled and trained at night, and formed themselves into military array. If this were not so, he was, ready to submit to a new law on this subject. If it could be worded so as to meet the exigencies of the case, he honestly admitted that he had no objection to it; guarding himself with this observation, that it must be drawn so as not to go a single step beyond the necessity of the case, and that it was established that the men were drilling themselves evidently for the purpose of military operations.

He next came to what in his mind was the great question of all – the new regulations against seditious and tumultuous meetings. Upon this subject the noble lord had asserted, that all the learned gentlemen on the other side of the House had very carefully abstained from giving any opinion whether assemblies of a particular description were or were not illegal. If he had understood his learned friends, their difficulty was this – that the question must depend upon particular circumstances; and until the facts of a case were laid before them, it was impossible to give an opinion upon it. No doubt a case might be shown in which it would be highly improper for the magistracy not to exert themselves by preventing a projected meeting, to preserve the public peace, a breach of which might threaten the safety of the country.

Here the only question was, whether the particular circumstances under which the Manchester meeting was held were of such a description as that nothing but a military force could have put an end to its proceedings? To this he answered, that a meeting as large, or nearly as large, had taken place in Yorkshire; bodies of men had marched to Hunsletmoor of the same description as those that had attended at Manchester, with flags flying, and what had been termed an appearance of military array. What had become of it? The mayor of Leeds had felt no disposition to interfere; he had taken the proper precautions for the security of the peace, in the event of danger, though he did not think it right to make an ostentatious display of those precautions until a justifiable cause (which he did not apprehend) should be afforded for resorting to them. Such a cause did not occur.

The persons assembled dispersed quietly; and from first to last, in Yorkshire, there had been no symptom of confusion. In Scotland, also, the magistrates had exercised a sound discretion; they had let the feeling of animosity waste itself; it did waste itself; and no such proceedings as those of Manchester had occurred there. And now the noble lord came forward, and assumed it as indisputable, that meetings must be confined within some other limitations, than those which at present existed, either numerical or local!

The noble lord’s plan appeared to be this – that no meeting should be allowed in any county, unless convened by the sheriff, the lord lieutenant, or by five magistrates: in certain towns, it must be called by the mayor; or if called by individuals, that no man could discuss and deliberate upon any public question out of his own parish.

The safety valve of the constitution

If such were the plan, there was at once an end of all the old wholesome spirit of the law upon this important subject. It would really seem from the cheers, as the noble lord was restoring that old wholesome spirit, and that he (Mr. Tierney) was resisting it. Yet under that old wholesome spirit this country had flourished more than it would under the sage administration of the noble lord if he were to live for a century. Whether in former times any meetings as numerically great as those of which the noble lord complained had been held, he did not know but every page and every corner of every page of our history showed that assemblies had been convened, where men were allowed to harangue in any times of alarm.

Mr. Burke had well called them the safety valve of the constitution, by which all the foul air was permitted to escape. This safety valve with all his fears, the noble lord would destroy, and while he exclaimed that his only purpose was to preserve the constitution, no man could fail to see that he was preventing the exercise of an accustomed constitutional right. This attempt was to be viewed with the utmost jealousy; it was to introduce an entirely new system, and that not merely temporarily, but permanently.

When the bills came before the House, many opportunities would be afforded for objections in detail, and he was much mistaken if they would not be found in every corner of every measure. He was now objecting only to the principle, and it ought not to he forgotten, that these acts were not to be local; they were to extend to England, Scotland, and Ireland. When the noble lord mentioned that he should open a whole system, he had flattered himself that a part of that system would be conciliation. It was now seen, however, that nothing but rigour and coercion were to be resorted to; a blow was struck at the very vitals of fair and free discussion, and did the House really believe that in following the steps of the noble lord it would not be treading upon very dangerous ground? Did it believe that the danger arising from the state of the country was as great as it was represented, or that the refusal of what the noble lord demanded, and a reliance upon the venerable laws of the kingdom, would not be the least hazardous experiment? Would not the new bills rather exasperate than repress? If there were these large bodies of men in a state of dangerous effervescence, which he much doubted, would not the peril be doubled, when they were told that they must expect nothing but coercion – that new laws should be invented to put them down, and that none of their grievances, whether real or imaginary, should receive a moment’s attention?

If Parliamentary reform were mentioned in any shape, the immediate answer was – “Now you are going to innovate.” Yet Ministers were to make what innovations they pleased; they were to invade the most dear and settled rights of the people; to infringe upon privileges that the practice of many centuries had confirmed; and if a charge of innovation were made against them, they met it with a look of astonishment and a cheer of surprise. What must be the event? Would not those who were now agitated be worked to a state of madness or desperation, instead of being quelled and subdued?

A dead silence in the country

He warned the House how it consented to steps that might be attended with the most baleful consequence, and neglected the voice of the people; not merely of those who were enthusiastic on parliamentary reform, but of sober thinking men, whose experience gave them this unanswerable demonstration – that something was wrong here, and that something must be altered. Ministers might fancy that they could control the distressed by overawing them with 10,000 men; but they would find it impossible. A dead silence in the country might for a season be produced by soldiers and penal laws, but nothing could reconcile the people to the loss of their rights, or compel them to submit quietly to that grievous deprivation. The number of armed men might, in time, be rendered greater than the unarmed, and then, instead of venting their feelings by becoming spouters at public meetings, the discontented would be converted from empty boasters in public places, into real conspirators in dark corners.

These matters well merited the attention of the House, and especially of that portion of it who thought of nothing (and he did not blame them for it) but of the preservation of property. Property never could be exposed to greater danger ultimately than for a popular representation, as this House called itself, to pass nothing but acts of rigour, and omit all attempts at kindness and conciliation.

Encroaching on the liberty of all

The right of meeting was not only to be taken away, but what the noble lord had called the broad liberty of the press was to be invaded. As to the cheap publications as they were called, no one viewed with greater disgust than he did their effusions, as well on the subject of religion as in vilification of the best characters in the country; and his chief astonishment had arisen from observing, that for three or four years together no attempt has been made to put a stop to them. The noble lord had observed that complaints had been made against the number of ex-officio informations, and it was true: they had been objected to as arbitrary and needless; but could any man read but the tenth part of the cheap publications, and not be persuaded that grand juries would have found true bills, and petty juries verdicts of guilty against their authors? Did Ministers by this abstemiousness of prosecution mean to bring the matter to a crisis like the present? Did they contemplate a time when the vast accumulation of the evil would warrant them in this new infringement? If the libels had been brought before juries, Ministers seemed to apprehend that the existing law would have been found sufficient, and they would thus have been deprived of one main ground on which their measure rested.

As to the question of the liberty of the press, if he were to enter into it, a wide field indeed would be opened to him; but though he might lament the excess to which that liberty had in some instances been carried, he was persuaded that the old and recognized laws were adequate to restrain it. Upon this point the case was as defective as upon others; and as nothing was more valuable than the preservation of the liberty hitherto enjoyed, he hoped the nation would feel it, and that before the noble lord’s bill passed into a law, depriving the people of their ancient privileges, they would assemble without fear, and pour in upon the House, a tide of remonstrances which even the noble lord would not be able to resist.

It was unnecessary for him on the present occasion to say more. The liberty of the press was as yet in safe hands – in the hands of the press itself: which would no doubt speedily throw light enough on the subject to show what the real causes were of the licentiousness of the few, that was to be made the ground for encroaching on the liberty of all.

Were we to live in new times?

He had come down to the House with a sincere inclination to listen impartially to what the noble lord might suggest, and disposed to concur in the measures proposed, rather to oppose them; but he had then no notion of the extent to which the demand would be made. He might have been willing to concede something if a necessity had been shown, but nothing would satisfy the noble lord but an attack upon the very vital principles of the British constitution. Were we to live in entirely new times? Were we now to hold up to the world, that the constitution which we had hitherto venerated for its antiquity, and loved for the blessings it has conferred, was of no value? Formerly, when foreigners asked in what way we became possessed of such and such institutions that attracted their admiration, we could reply, that we were indebted for them to the right which the people of England enjoyed of thinking and speaking freely. But now another lesson was taught by the noble lord, who would convince us, that what had been the salvation of our liberties was the destruction of our happiness – that what we and our forefathers had believed, was false and foolish; and that to preserve freedom and property, the constitution must undergo a change which, in his conscience he (Mr. Tierney) believed it could not survive.

He said fairly and openly that suspecting as he did the administration from which these measures emanated, he considered them as only the advanced guard of the array of bills which they were to direct against the constitution. He saw on the part of the government an evident determination to resort to nothing but force; they thought of nothing else; they dreamt of nothing else; they would try no means of conciliation, they would make no attempt to pacify and reconcile; force – force – force, and nothing but force! That was their cry, and it had been the same for years: one measure of coercion had been, and would be, followed up by another, and the result would justify what he asserted, that 10,000 men would not answer their purpose; one measure of violence must succeed another, and what they gained by force they must retain by the same detestable means.

The people would never rest until they were allowed to live under laws equally administered; until their honest industry could procure them the means of maintaining their families, and until they should again enjoy the blessings of that constitution which their ancestors intended they should partake. If not, discontent would increase to disaffection, and distress would produce discontent, notwithstanding the bold assertions of the noble lord, that the nation was prosperous, and had no wants but those which arose out of the present condition of America.

If the noble lord had confined himself to the grant of 10,000 men, he should have deemed it a strong measure in a time of profound peace. Was any evidence offered that a body of military had been overpowered, or even that it had not always been sufficient to the dispersion of any meeting? But if the country gave him more troops to put down new meetings, surely it was somewhat hard that he should also ask it for new laws, that were to prevent the possibility of new meetings. If the noble lord thought that the new laws would be effectual, where was the occasion for the 10,000 men? It was clear that the noble lord felt that his new laws were more likely to exasperate than to conciliate, and the best comment upon all the noble lord had advanced in favour of his new projects, was his declaration, “I want 10,000 men into the bargain.” His sincere belief was, that the noble lord would want many more than 10,000 men, and what a melancholy prospect did that hold out to the country!

It might be said that he used violent language. He admitted it; and all he could say in answer was, that he did not utter a single syllable that he did not on his honour, believe. He was an alarmist, he felt alarm, because he was compelled to trust to men who would rely on nothing against the people but brute force. He was alarmed because an attempt was to be made, under false pretences, to destroy all that was valuable in the constitution, unless it were defended by the free spirit of a yet free nation. Therefore it was, that he indulged a hope, that while the right of meeting remained, the people would meet and express their opinions with such effect that the threats and measures of coercion might be abandoned.

He had hoped that a more moderate course would have been pursued, because, with the exception of the disturbed districts, as they were called, there was no part of Great Britain where assemblies might not be held, even by the admission of ministers, without the slightest danger to the public peace.

He trusted that the country would thoroughly understand the nature of these novel laws, that the real objects of government would be evident, and that those objects by the public voice would be forever defeated. If the country abstained from that course, and if the House, without any evidence to warrant those innovations, should consent to follow the noble lord in his desperate and adventurous course, all he could say was that he should witness it with the deepest and most sincere regret. He should then have lived long enough, and could no longer be of use to his country in that House.

….

He hoped that all members would give the subject their most deliberate attention. The new laws were not such as the public exigency required; the extent, or even the existence of disaffection was not proved; and until it should be so, it was the duty of every honest man to pause. At least, attention ought to be paid to this point – whether some course of conciliation might not be adopted; whether steps ought not to be taken to satisfy the people, and to prove that, while the House was willing to repress sedition, it had a fixed determination to listen to their grievances, and, as far as possible, to apply a remedy.

The Home Secretary has announced today that a rapid review of key counter-terrorism and security powers is underway. The review will look at what counter-terrorism powers and measures could be rolled back in order to restore the balance of civil liberties and counter-terrorism powers…

The review will look at six areas:

• the use of control orders;

• stop and search powers in section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 and the use of terrorism legislation in relation to photography;

• the detention of terrorist suspects before charge;

• extending the use of deportations with assurances to remove foreign nationals from the UK who pose a threat to national security;

• measures to deal with organisations that promote hatred or violence; and

• the use of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA) by local authorities, and access to communications data more generally.

Lord Ken Macdonald QC will provide independent oversight of the review. He will ensure it is properly conducted, that all the relevant options have been considered and that the recommendations are balanced.

The Home Secretary will report back on the findings of the review in the autumn.

The six areas up for review were heavily trailed by the coalition agreement and so are welcome, but unsurprising, news. The bonus is the role of Ken Macdonald, recently appointed a Liberal Democrat peer, and a consistent voice of sanity from the coalface of fighting terrorism during his time as Director of Public Prosecutions.

Tom Brake, Co-Chair of the Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Committee for Home Affairs, has reacted saying,

Under the Labour Government, hard won rights and liberties that have been a fundamental part of British life for centuries were eroded or simply cast aside.

The Liberal Democrats have campaigned for years to give citizens back their freedoms, including scrapping control orders and reducing detention without charge. This review will be a big step towards realising these aims and making Britain a fairer country.

The Government’s first duty is to protect its citizens. I have no doubt this review will ensure public safety is balanced with the rights of the British people.

The struggle isn’t yet over. The Home Office has contingency plans in place for its identity scheme, and there are entrenched authoritarians that will decry innocent people being removed from the DNA database or giving up powers for random stops and searches. With plans for biometric passports, and a civil service ethos of data-sharing there will be future challenges. Already threats loom on new horizons, for instance The Political Parties and Elections Act allows for the creation of another national population database, and from 2011 onwards, and the Electoral Commission will, “report annually to Parliament on the progress of the voluntary collection of personal identifiers – National Insurance number, signature and date of birth – from electors, to make sure that the conditions are appropriate before any move to compulsory provision of identifiers”.

Supporters of ID cards such as Epstein have already pounced on administrative problems with implementing an ‘antiquated Victorian’ voting system (that has successfully worked for many year with minimal electoral fraud) to extol the virtues of an electronic voting system with compulsory biometric fingerprinting and individual registration.

As much as the new coalition will have to be on its guard for such pitfalls that lie ahead, it can now bring onside the pressure groups, academics and campaigners that came together in events such as the convention on modern liberty to offer guidance and advice. Whatever the dangers, things looks promising for Liberty. Of course we will remain vigilant, eternal vigilance is the price we pay for liberty yet with talk that a ‘Freedom Bill’ or a ‘Great Repeal Bill’ will form part of the program of government, the greatest prize of freedom and liberty seems in reach.

“The parties agree to implement a full programme of measures to reverse the substantial erosion of civil liberties under the Labour government and roll back state intrusion.” This sentence, published in the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition agreement, is one that civil libertarians have been waiting a long time for, and to hear David Cameron and Nick Clegg talk about their government handing back privacy and curbing the powers of the state was certainly a moment worth savouring…

Although the Conservative manifesto touched on freedom, there can be no doubt that the list of substantive measures came from the Lib Dems and their freedom bill, which they published for the Convention on Modern Liberty last year.

You can read the full piece here.

By far the best undertakings on liberty come in the Liberal Democrat manifesto, which is hardly surprising, given that it has been stalwart in its defence of liberty under all three of its leaders since the last election. Nick Clegg’s attack on Labour’s authoritarian streak is especially welcome and will be significant if there is a hung parliament on May 7, which – astonishingly – is what 32% of voters desire.

The party will introduce a freedom bill, regulate CCTV, reduce local council surveillance, restore the right to protest, protect free speech, offer guarantees to investigative journalism, scrap ID cards, end plans to spy on email and internet connections, scrap ContactPoint, reduce pre-charge detention to 14 days and scrap secret evidence. The Lib Dems go much further than the Tories on the DNA database and offer wholehearted support for the HRA.

On civil liberties, the Lib Dems win hands down. But one important question remains: what on earth prevented the Tories from making similar commitments? Fear or lack of conviction?

You can read the full piece here.

A change to Section 106 of the Postal Services Act 2000 might not at first sound that important, but the change means that in future postal operators (such as the Royal Mail) can decide to detain any item of post and send it on to Customs and Excise for inspection.

Previously this could be done, but only if you were first told that your post was being intercepted and (if you are in the UK) given a chance to be present. Both those safeguards against abuse of power and unnecessary intrusions into privacy have been removed. Instead all the interceptions can happen in secrecy – and secrecy means lack of accountability for how well or badly the power is used.

And it gets worse. The Government claims the clause is just about tackling tobacco smuggling. Yet you know what’s missing from the new rules? Any mention of them only applying to tobacco. Or only applying to smuggling.

And it gets even worse. Because how did this get through the House of Commons? It got through with barely a debate and with no vote.

It was left to the Liberal Democrats (again) to raise the issues that should be debated – well done Evan Harris – but no Labour or Conservative MPs joined him and – courtesy of the Labour/Conservative deal on how to handle the bil- l there was no vote.

As Ben Williams puts it:

Because it was Clause 59 of the Finance Bill, and there were only three hours for debate, it didn’t get reached for discussion. In fact, by the time MPs got on to the bit where they consider the bill in detail, line-by-line, there were only 28 minutes left to look at the whole bill.

Think about that for a moment.

28 minutes for a line-by-line examination of the bill that would usually – for the Finance Bill – take months in Committee.

This change to the law was made without a single second of proper scrutiny – and without a single vote. Worse, it was made without even the opportunity for a vote.

And that is what the Conservative Party and Labour Party wanted.

Dee Doocey, the Liberal Democrat London Assembly policing spokesperson and member of the MPA, has today called for the Met to address its poor record of meeting requests by innocent people for the deletion of their DNA records held on a national database.

At present only 24% of the requests from innocent people to have their DNA removed are granted by the Met.

After questioning the Met Commissioner at today’s full meeting of the MPA Dee Doocey said:

“The current situation is totally unsatisfactory. The Met Commissioner has the power to delete the records of innocent people from the National DNA Database, but he is not willing to do so unless instructed by the Government.

“Clear legal guidance on this issue is desperately needed and the starting point must be that it is unacceptable for the state to store the DNA records of innocent people.

“However, until there is legislation in place the Met should at least learn from many other police forces which have a far better record of deleting the DNA records of innocent people.”

Notes to editors:

Recent figures show that within the Met area 773,342 men and 165,719 women are on the DNA national database. 28,239 of the males and 10,108 females on the database are under 18 years of age.

Police forces which meet more requests by innocent people for the removal of their DNA records include Cleveland (70.6%), Cumbria (79%), Hertfordshire (54.2%), Durham (55.6%), South Yorkshire (82.7%) and Wiltshire (80%).

Nationally 5.6 million people are on the National DNA Database with a million people having never been convicted of a crime.

Opposition to ID cards has grown since 2006 when only 33% opposed the idea.

You can read more about the Liberal Democrat opposition to ID cards over on the Freedom Bill website.

The results are from the State of the Nation Survey 2010, a new poll of 2,288  people aged 18+ conducted by ICM for the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust 20 January – 7 February.

I’m pleased to say that after the fall of the Berlin Wall, I was personally able to help a number of my old contacts with the small amounts of capital needed to start up their own businesses and keep up contact with many of them even now. Sad to say some of my Yugoslav friends disappeared into the tragedy of the Civil War, though I still keep in touch with Slovenes who escaped the worst of it.

In those dark days in the 1980s conversations often turned to politics. Once we had carefully sounded each other out, it was a topic that could not be easily avoided. It was obvious that the system had failed, though no one I ever spoke to thought it would go and certainly not in the manner it did. I felt it had 10 years; they were generally far less sanguine.

Amusingly, one ambitious though politically very cynical Czech colleague, a cadre in a state trade organisation, believing it was the only way to get the promotion he desired, worked assiduously to get his party membership card – finally receiving it two weeks before Havel and Dubcek stood on the balcony in Wenceslaus Square!

What did we talk about? They talked about Democracy. They felt that it was the right to vote in free and fair elections that would bring about the society they craved and give their children the opportunities they felt they had been denied.

I talked about the rule of law. I tried to explain that democracy had serious flaws (a current example then being Mrs Thatcher), and that voting once every five years was not the most important part of freedom. It was, I explained, the Rule of Law. That laws applied as much to the state as they did to me. The state could not arbitrarily incarcerate me. It could not seek to conduct show trials or try me again and again for offences it could not prove. That law was not about worthless documents, but about rights as much as obligations and vigorously protected by an independent judiciary. I found myself singing the praises of the Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights, Habeas Corpus…

They were enchanted, if sometimes a little amused by my passion. Two went on to serve in their post-liberation parliaments.

But then 1997 and ‘New’ Labour came along.

Today, I fear, it would be me sitting in a dingy apartment talking about people being tried again and again. The possible abolition of trial by jury. Increasingly unlimited detention without trial. CCTV giving the state power to observe our very move. Powers the Stasi could only dream of. Rendition. ID cards with the frightening database being compiled by government behind them. And let’s not talk about the fraudulent electoral system. At least the old Communist governments pretended to get 98% of the vote. New Labour are happy to govern with no respect for dissent and opposition with the votes of a little over 20% of the people.

Now all we need is a failing economic system and I’d be right back in 1980s Eastern Europe!

* Martin Land is a Cambridgeshire Lib Dem activist and campaigner and blogs at New Model Army.