Three cheers for change, but don’t uncork the bubbly
Henry Porter, writing in The Observer, reflects on recent statements by Jack Straw & Gordon Brown on constitutional change:
There is an elephant in the room: Straw and Brown were the senior members of a cabinet that inflicted great damage on the constitution, individual rights and what one might call British form, all of which ironically now makes the green paper refreshing and welcome. If they had rebelled halfway through the decade, many of the 40-odd articles on liberty and rights run in this space over the last 18 months would have been unnecessary. Even if we accept that at this altitude there is a requirement in politics to bide your time and submit to the collective needs of government, we should not forget what has been done. On the statute books lie some 20 acts which are prima-facie evidence of the government’s attack on ordinary liberty, of the expansion of the state into the life of the individual, of the formalised reduction of parliamentary scrutiny.
The announcement that the government plans to revise a measure in the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 banning demonstration within a kilometre of parliament without police permission is a symbolic acknowledgement of what has been done to liberty. But when at his first Question Time in the Commons, Gordon Brown said that the ID card was an important weapon in the fight against terrorism, I knew that there were some things he is never going to get about privacy and personal liberty.
