Whither the liberal Tories now?

Well, that was the Cameronian mood music that was. A Conservative government, announced shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve yesterday, would amend current legislation so that the police would no longer need to seek higher authorisation in order to do the following to any citizen they please:

  • Use covert video or listening devices in premises or vehicles.
  • Watch premises to identify or arrest suspects.
  • Conduct visual surveillance of public locations.
  • Patrol, in uniform or plain clothes.
  • Use thermal imaging and X-ray technology.
  • Conduct surveillance using visible CCTV cameras.

That’s quite some capability to be put in the hands of every Detective Chief Inspector and/or Chief Superintendant in the land (assuming authorisation needs to be even that high). As Chris Huhne puts it:

The Conservatives’ dalliance with liberalism is as dead as a dodo. This would turn into as much of a snoopers’ charter as local councils’ surveillance powers for dog mess. We need to roll back the surveillance state, not give it new powers.

Even the right-wing commentariat is taking note, with a particular sort of straight-faced reaction which may hide real dismay. There are, after all, plenty of borderline liberals in the Tory party and on its fringes. It’s hard to see how they can be happy with these noises from the central core of the Tory leadership.

Perhaps, in particular, Eric Pickles, shadow bod for Local Government and That Sort of Thing, who also made a announcement yesterday. He was talking about the widely denigrated “snooping powers”, powers intended to tackle terrorism which are invoked by many local councils to deal with minor matters. He mentioned the dangers of “mission creep”, and warned that:

Day by the day under Labour, the rights and liberties of law-abiding citizens are being undermined, with more and more state officials trying to enter and spy on people’s homes.

You can just picture the melting phones at CCHQ communications, can’t you. Could there be a more mixed message coming from Tory high command just now? A combination of the Cameroon shift (back) to the far-right and the absence of the restraining influence of David Davis (and it says something when the man who is a restraining influence believes in capital punishment) has left the self-styled liberal Tories at the top of the party high and dry.

The scenario Pickles is discussing, incidentally, is whether councils should be allowed to use surveillance powers against council taxpayers who claim a 25% discount on their bills because they live alone. As he puts it, this involves bringing state officials right into the private individual’s bedroom. No doubt, a Tory clinging desperately to their own self-identity as a liberal Conservative would protest that the two cases are quite different. Grieve’s scenario involves a change in legislation to tackle people who are suspected of a crime; Pickles’ involves a misuse of existing powers to tackle minor or civil offences.

Well, let’s put aside to one side for a moment the fact that a law change is just as insidious as a mis-use of an existing law when civil liberties are at stake (I am reminded of Jacqui Smith, discussing a crackdown on drug dealers on the Today programme some months back, being asked how on earth she would enable the seizing of personal property from people who hadn’t been charged with a crime when private possessions were a central cornerstone of British liberty, and blithely replying, “Oh, we’d just change the law.”)

Let’s instead consider the case of Ian Harvey, who pulled over on the A358 last week because he thought he could see an accident, a motorbike crashed in a ditch. On investigation, it proved to be a push bike with no-one on, underneath or otherwise encumbered by it, so Mr Harvey got back in his van and drove on. One small problem – all this occurred near Norton Manor Camp, a commando training unit at Norton Fitzwarren. So, obviously, next morning Mr Harvey was awoken at 2am by a herd of policeman charging into his bedroom, handcuffing him, and searching his house under – so they allegedly claimed – the Terrorism Act.

All hollow laughter aside, now. If there are any liberal Tories out there reeling from Dominic Grieve’s announcement and clinging to sanity by way of Mr Pickles and his ilk, consider this. This particular case is a mish-mash of everything that can go wrong when civil liberties are undermined, however honest the intent behind it. The state thought Ian Harvey might be guilty of some serious offences. It may have mis-used existing laws in dealing with him, if the subsequent attempted cover-up by the police as described in the article is true. And it came right into his bedroom.

This is exactly the kind of mess you get if you start trying to draw fine lines between what is an acceptable and what is an unacceptable way to limit civil liberties.

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28 Comments

  • its quite rereshing to read the comments on the telegraph link you gave, tories rallying against these sacrifices of liberty rather than having ago at the libdems for being pancy:)

  • Um – are we seriously saying that as Liberals we expect police officers to fill in a form to patrol the streets in uniform or detectives to carry out surveilance on a suspect – ie their job? I would think most people are shocked that the police are currently hamstrung by this bureaucracy.

    If we are seriously to argue that we want to free public servants from unneccessary red tape – then the majority of these proposals from the Tories are sensible.

  • we should free them from paper work sure, as there is far to much but it doesnt mean we can simply get rid of any checks!there still needs to be measures of accountability in all levels and this will surely mean some beauracracy?

  • Grammar Police 13th Aug '08 - 10:09am

    @ Dan above – but there is a difference between reducing red tape and removing all authorisation required for covert – and sometimes intrusive – surveillance.

    I haven’t looked in a detailed way at RIPA 2000, but I would be extremely surprised if it was the legislation that required authorisation for patrolling in uniform – although that makes a fantastic headline to hide Grieve’s less liberal measures behind (for example, the long title to the Act says it regulates “the interception of communications, the acquisition and disclosure of data relating to communications, the carrying out of surveillance, the use of covert human intelligence sources and the acquisition of the means by which electronic data protected by encryption or passwords may be decrypted or accessed” – what were our MPs doing if they allowed rules on police uniform patrols in here?).

    By all means, red tape should and could be reduced, but Grieve seems to imagine we should live in some pseudo-Life on Mars scenario – where most police work is done on a “best if the Guv doesn’t know about this” basis.

  • Alix Mortimer 13th Aug '08 - 10:13am

    @Dan,

    I copied and pasted the list straight from the Grauny article, and I suspect the truth behind the “patrol” line has been somewhat mangled, but at time of writing ConHome don’t seem to have a press release of this story up so we can only go with the Grauny interpretation.

    FWIW I imagine it means a patrol outside the normal assigned beats with the specific goal of watching/following a particular person/group, but I am only surmising.

    As to bureaucracy versus civil liberties, I don’t accept that this is the nature of the choice. There must be checks and balances on police behaviour, on that I think we all agree, and yes I certainly want there to be a check on who they decide to mount surveillance on.

    If that basic requirement of civil liberty involves too much bureaucracy then we need to find a way to deal with the bureaucracy, not abandon the check altogether. The party take on this is to employ more backroom admin staff – which, without having looked at the funding provisions in any detail, makes sense to me.

  • Alix Mortimer 13th Aug '08 - 10:18am

    “For example, the Lib Dems fully support our membership of the EU, yet the EU has created the ’snooping directive’ that Chris Huhne was slagging off in the papers this morning.”

    LFAT, that is so unbelievably facile as to be… unbelievable. I am almost, but not quite, lost for words. The Liberal Democrats are also fully supportive of human beings. Doubtless in your moral universe this makes us responsible for all the Bad Naughty Things that they sometimes do.

    Seriously, how many times have we told you, on this very site, that support of the principle of the EU doesn’t mean we have to like everything it does? It’s a please-lead-me-great-master Tory attitude which makes you assume that. Some people think for themselves.

  • Alix – ‘If that basic requirement of civil liberty involves too much bureaucracy then we need to find a way to deal with the bureaucracy, not abandon the check altogether. The party take on this is to employ more backroom admin staff – which, without having looked at the funding provisions in any detail, makes sense to me.’

    I don’t agree – it’s the lack of accountability that is the problem and its bureaucracy that makes thing less accountable. I want a police service that is free to catch criminals and a justice system that gives everyone a fair trial – that can only be achieved by having democratic (not bureacratic) safeguards and streamlining the red tape that gets in the way.

    For example I read elsewhere that the Army employs 330,000 people – 200,000 civilian adminstrators and just 100,000 regular soldiers and 30,000 territorials. And we argue we can’t afford to fulfil our defence commitments. We can – but it requires a mass cull of bureaucrats as it does at every level of government.

  • Alix Mortimer 13th Aug '08 - 10:58am

    “I don’t agree – it’s the lack of accountability that is the problem and its bureaucracy that makes thing less accountable.”

    Are there ways of producing accountability that involve no bureaucracy? That’s a genuine question. (I’m assuming you’re not talking here about accountability which kicks in after the fact, which is really not good enough where “the fact” might consist of someone’s death.) What would a “democratic” safeguard look like, if it’s not to consist simply of a legislative limit on police powers rather than a bureaucratic limit?

    The army is an interesting analogy. Those 200,000 “civilian administrators” presumably include logisticians, engineers, intelligence officers, transport officers, quarter-masters, maintenance people, cooks and bottle-washers, and techie nerds, all of whom contribute to the battle-readiness of the “regular solider”. Just like wot the adverts say.

    The police obviously don’t need that degree of support, but if they can delegate non-essential functions to civilian support, why shouldn’t they?

  • Thomas Hemsley 13th Aug '08 - 11:09am

    No doubt David Davis will be pleased. 😉

  • Well said Alix. We also are in favour of parliament and democracy…doesn’t always mean we agree with all the laws parliament passes nor all the goevernments that have ever been elected.

    LFAT- you post was petty at best and idiotic at worst- stop trying so hard- not everything in the world is the Lib Dems fault, and the Tories do not walk on water.

  • Grammar Police 13th Aug '08 - 12:43pm

    @ LFAT

    “which “principle of the EU” allows them to attack freedom of speech with legislation that would ban some UK bloggers, or which principle allows them to attack civil liberties by banning protests at the European Parliament, or which principle allows them to spy on the phonecalls and emails of every single European citizen?”

    The same principles that the current Labour Government operates by and the Tory-wannabees, like Mr Grieve, want to implement?

  • Alix – getting the thread back on track from its Euro-bore sidetrack…

    I would be quite happy for local policing policy to be decided by local people – through elected police boards for example. What I don’t want to see is government imposed dictat require acres of paper work and people chasing the paper work to enforce these centrally imposed standards. That I’m afraid is the Labour central command and control model which is wasteful, stifles local activity and is costing tax payers billions.

  • Speaking as a lawyer, it’s never a great idea to ditch all the paperwork, as when these things get to court us lawyers challenge the legitimacy of decisions and so the police require evidence to justify action. There just needs to be a better balance and as Mr paddick said at the mayoral elections – employ administrators to do a lot of it!

  • LFAT:

    We believe that the EU is an institution that can be used to help tackle issues that simply cannot be dealt with by an individual country, for instance free and fair trade, universal human rights and environmental protection.

    It would be pointless for the UK to drop tariffs on European goods if the same didn’t happen the other way around, and it would be redundant to reduce carbon emissions if other countries pollution was still drifting to our shores. These questions need a pan- national approach and the EU is the best place to do this.

    However, just because we see that the EU can be a force for great good does not mean we agree with every single piece of legislation that it creates- indeed, just as in Westminster we often vote against stupid, anti-democratic proposals. It is worth of course pointing out that the biggest voting group in the European Parliament is the EPP- ED which your party belongs to- so don’t suggest that it is somehow the Lib Dems who are culpable for dumb legislation being passed.

    Indeed, the fact is that it is the Lib Dems who are vocal in their support for making the EU a more democratic institution, for instance using the Lisbon Treaty to give more power to the Parliament- whoa re directly elected, and cutting the number of commissioners.

    The same goes for a reform of the EP- have a look at http://www.ep-reform.eu – the vast majority of Lib Dem MEPs have signed up the cause of Parliamentary transparency, compared to barely half of the Tory party.

    You want anti-democratic- check your own backyard first.

  • why are tories so obsessed with Europe??? Does anyone really care about it to be frank

  • Julian H:

    Fair point. But surely it is even more beneficial to have a totally liberalised area? Otherwise while the internal economy can expand, the opportunities for exporters are far less prevalent, meaning you could end up with everyone trying to compete in the internal market and over saturate it?

    I’m not too brilliant an economist so it s a genuine question!

    Also, I doubt that unilateral liberalisation would play too well with the electorate as would be seen as giving something for nothing.

  • David Heigham 13th Aug '08 - 5:41pm

    Going back to nearer where this thread started, a policeman seems to have said to Ian Harvey that in future he should not go to the aid of someone possibly hurt, but ring the police instead. I understand that we have a legal as well as a moral duty ot offer aid and assistance to those we encounter who need it, and a corresponding duty to investigate if we see reason to think that help may be needed. Has some piece of the mass of badly-drafted New Labour legislation removed this duty? Or was the policeman plain wrong?

  • Excellent – the tories revert to type and propose sweeping right-wing changes to their law and order agenda.

    That’ll worry the moderates in their ranks at the same time as scaring more of us liberals into choosing the only real alternative to this Labour government.

    It’s just a shame that they had to out themselves during the summer holidays.

    But it’s shaping up to be an exciting conference season from our point of view – Labour is divided over its leadership, while the Conservatives are divided over their policies. It appears that we are the only party united and able to address all the problems facing the country!

  • There is no such thing as a Liberal Tory, so there is no need for them to go anywhere.

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