International Law

Conservative - Liberal Democrat coalition agreement - the Civil Liberties section looks promising

The BBC reports: Full Text: Conservative-Lib Dem deal, which looks promising:

Here is the full text of the coalition agreement reached by the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats:

This document sets out agreements reached between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats on a range of issues. These are the issues that needed to be resolved between us in order for us to work together as a strong and stable government. It will be followed in due course by a final Coalition Agreement, covering the full range of policy and including foreign, defence and domestic policy issues not covered in this document.

[...]

10. Civil liberties

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 will include:

• A Freedom or Great Repeal Bill.

• The scrapping of ID card scheme, the National Identity register, the next generation of biometric passports and the Contact Point Database.

• Outlawing the finger-printing of children at school without parental permission.

• The extension of the scope of the Freedom of Information Act to provide greater transparency.

• Adopting the protections of the Scottish model for the DNA database.

• The protection of historic freedoms through the defence of trial by jury.

• The restoration of rights to non-violent protest.

• The review of libel laws to protect freedom of speech.

• Safeguards against the misuse of anti-terrorism legislation.

• Further regulation of CCTV.

• Ending of storage of internet and email records without good reason.

• A new mechanism to prevent the proliferation of unnecessary new criminal offences.
  

If Parliament had done its job of proper of detailed legislative scrutiny and the previous Labour politicians and their apparatchiki had not been so Orwellian in thought, yet so incompetent with anything to do with technology, none of this section on Civil Liberties would be needed.

Obviously Spy Blog will analyse the specific details and the actual implementation of these plans, when they emerge, but this section of the coalition agreement, seems to be very good news for the normal, innocent, law abiding people of the United Kingdom.

To ensure that the political pressure is kept up on these Conservative and Liberal Democrat politicians, for whom coalition is a new concept and is one which may not last until 2015, we urge readers of Spy Blog to continue to support cross party campaigns and organisations such as

• NO2ID Campaign

• Privacy International

• Open Rights Group

• Liberty Human Rights
  

• Action on Rights for Children

• GeneWatch UK

• Big Brother Watch

with your voluntary time and with financial donations.

All of these organisations and campaigns are still needed, given the technological developments and political challenges of the 21st Century.

Full post as published by Spy Blog on May 12, 2010 (boomark / email).