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http://conservativehome.blogs.com/platf ... urvei.htmlNick Pickles: Today's letter from May and Clarke offers no details or justification for new surveillance and closed-court powers2012-03-05 at 18.35.35
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Four days after the Sunday Times broke news of Government plans to increase the surveillance directed at every person in the country, and following a scathing report from a Parliamentary Committee on their plans for extending closed-door court processes, the Home Secretary and Justice Secretary have written to MPs to address their concerns. Let me be clear – I absolutely support the Prime Minister in his belief that the primary role of Government is to protect its citizens. I also share his belief in ensuring proper legal safeguards on powers given to the state.
The reason I have opposed both the Communications Capability Programme and the Justice and Security Green paper is that I believe they will not make the public safer, yet will trample over legal rights enshrined in law since the days of Magna Carta. It is not for innocent people to justify why the state should not spy on them. It’s worth noting that most of the PR-disaster on both these policies has been self-inflicted. The reason there has been so much press uncertainty is that so little detail has been offered by the Home Office on the communications scheme. MPs in Parliament have been stonewalled for months with a line of ‘we will legislate as soon as parliamentary time allows’, and this continues to be the line given. Ministers haven’t even been able to say if a bill will be in the Queen’s speech, nor offered any attempt to define the ‘communications data’ they are seeking to log.
It took nearly 48 hours for any Minister to appear to defend the policy, and in doing so offered no substantive detail on what is being proposed. Equally, the Joint Committee on Human Rights noted in its report on Ken Clarke’s Justice and Security Green paper that the only people they could find in support of the policy were ministers. The former Director of Public Prosecutions, Lord Macdonald, was among many legal and terrorism experts questioning the plans.
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