Protection of Freedoms Bill

Debate between John Redwood and Ronnie Campbell

Tuesday 11th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

I rise to support the Bill. I am very pleased that the Government wish to strengthen our civil liberties. It is the prime duty of this House to be the fount of our democracy and its principal defender, and part of our democracy is the right to a fair trial, the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty and the right to be treated with respect as a citizen of this country. Many of us feel that in recent years too many powers have been taken away from our citizens and that the presumption of guilt was visited upon those who had not stood a fair trial. Indeed, some people were detained with no trial ever in prospect, which I found profoundly shocking.

As someone who is well aware of the threat of terrorism, having been on terrorist death lists when we had a different kind of terrorism, I understand the need to tackle it, but I have never felt that we should tackle it at the expense of the civil liberties of the British people. Having watched this House give away all too many of its powers to do good to the Brussels bureaucracy, I find it an extraordinary paradox that that went alongside taking away more and more powers and rights from the British people, when we should have been the very origin of their liberties and the first line of defence of their freedoms.

I take issue with only one thing the Home Secretary said in her admirable speech: she said that liberties had not only been taken for granted, but been achieved without violence. Unfortunately they had to be fought for in this country, but it was so long ago that we no longer remember those who died in those conflicts. There was a civil war in this country in support of freedoms and rights, there were other battles, riots and rebellions, and over the years the British people expressed their democratic wish. At the heart of that democracy was not only this representative democracy here in Westminster, but the fundamental liberties of the British people: the right to a fair trial and the right not to be detained by the strength and might of the state without cause being given and without movement to trial on a speedy basis.

Of all the measures set out in the Bill, I am proudest of the Government’s decision to roll back the number of days of detention that is permitted without due cause being given, and I hope that the Government will always want to ensure that they arrest and detain people only when they have reasonable evidence and when they intend to move quickly to trial. If the Government are still, understandably, worried about terrorism, surely it is better that we put people under surveillance from a distance, do not arrest them until we are absolutely sure of their part in the potential terrorist cell or threat, and then make the arrest and bring the case. I am distrustful of arresting people on poor suspicion and then not being able to bring any case against them in a court of law. I thought that we were fighting for a democracy where such things did not happen, so I find it unacceptable that for a period of years they did happen in our country, whatever good or well intentioned reason lay behind it.

I am also pleased that the Bill has tackled other irritations and annoyances in our bureaucracy. The Home Secretary is quite right that 1,200 separate powers of entry into our households is unacceptable in a free society, so I am pleased that the Bill makes a modest start in trying to roll them back, but it gives the House an enabling power to get rid of some of those powers of entry by subsequent order. The list in the legislation is small, on the whole historical and will not have much impact, so I hope that my right hon. Friend and her dedicated team of enthusiastic Ministers will now go out and cull that list of 1,200 entry powers and not only agree with me that such activity should not take place in a free society, but be brave enough to come forward with a list of a few hundred such entry powers that we can do without.

An Englishman or Englishwoman should not have to fear the knock at the door. I used to read about that sort of thing in Russian novels, and I do not expect it in my own country, but too many decent, law-abiding, taxpaying and hard-working citizens do now fear the call of the bureaucrat, because they think that some of the legislation is too pernickety, not well intentioned and will be enforced perversely against them—[Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Blyth Valley (Mr Campbell) would like to intervene and share his dissent, I shall be very happy to give way, but I hope that he, like me, wishes to belong to a free society and feels that people should be innocent until proven guilty.

[Mr Ronnie Campbell (Blyth Valley) (Lab)]

It was not like that during the miners’ strike, was it? I remember them coming and knocking on my door several times.

[Mr Redwood]

I apply exactly the same rules and philosophy to miners as to anybody else. If things were done wrongly, it is quite wrong that they were so done, and the hon. Gentleman would need to show evidence and case, but I believe in the freedoms of the British people. There are too many inspectors who can come to call and too many rights of entry, so we do not just need this piece of legislation. We need to pursue it, coming forward with a sensible list of proposals under this law, so that we can reduce the incursions upon our freedom.

I am delighted that the Home Secretary has listened to the complaints about the way in which some car parks are administered. People are not serious criminals if they have broken parking rules, and sometimes the responses by private operators, whom the Bill addresses, have been way over the top. They can also be over the top from public sector operators, who are meant after all to help the public, not to stop them driving to the shops if they have heavy bags to take back or whatever they need to do. We need a sense of proportion in parking rules, regulations and enforcement, and the Bill makes a welcome contribution to dealing with the issue.

It is also important that the Government have listened to the many representations that we have all received over the months since Labour made proposals concerning the administration of Criminal Records Bureau checks. The thing that caused me most concern about the previous Government’s proposals was the lack of a passport—the lack of common sense. One could have a perfectly good peripatetic teacher, who was going to spend two weeks in one school, three weeks in another and all the rest of it, but they apparently had to go through the cost and palaver of being checked over each time for each assignment, when any sensible person would have issued them with a letter or certificate at the beginning, saying, “This is a peripatetic teacher, at this date they were all clear.”

Obviously, we might want to check up on such people at periodic intervals, but not every fortnight or every three weeks when they change school. The situation was completely crazy, so I am glad that we have a passport and that the Home Secretary has also found a way to reduce the number of such people from 11 million, given that many grandparents, uncles and aunts were tied up in the crazy process because they were trying to help not just the children of their own family, but their children’s friends, and fell foul of the regulations. We needed some common sense and proportionality in all that.

CCTV can play an important role, but I was pleased when the tactics of the police changed in response to the recent looting and rioting. They decided that it was probably easier to arrest people at the scene of the crime so that they were their own witnesses; if several police say that a person was involved and they arrest them on the spot, the court will believe them. That is better than trying to work out who the person was a week or two later from CCTV images that might not have caught the person’s face to best effect.