Cameron renounces the 'control state'

News of the extraordinary state that Britain has got itself into has taken a long time to percolate to the outside world, but when people abroad begin to understand the extent to which the British have been robbed of their freedoms by the Labour government, they are astonished by the lack of reaction in parliament and from the people.

In New York, where I am now, there is only a vague understanding of the way in which the British state has moved into the personal sphere and is claiming, for itself, a near total access to people's personal data, but when it is explained Americans ask "how could this happen with a free press and a people famous for their truculent respect for liberty and privacy." The answer is complicated but essentially it is because we weren't paying attention and we have one of the most indolent parliaments in history.

But it is also the case that Labour has pursued this part of its agenda with great dispatch and subtlety while the opposition did not find a voice to resist what was an extensive programme of attack. That has now been corrected in a welcome speech from David Cameron. I will write more thoroughly about this next week but the important point is that he has confirmed that if elected, the Conservatives will roll back the attack on privacy and restore some of the rights we have lost.

After pleading with the Conservatives to do this for so long, I have to say I was more than pleased when I read passages like this.

The next Conservative government will revoke the unjustified and unreasonable powers that let people enter your home without your permission.

We will change the law that allows councils to snoop on people for trivial matters.

We will review the use of the Terrorism Act's section 44, and the stop and search powers contained within it.

We will change the Criminal Justice Act 2003 to strengthen the right to trial by jury.

And we will review the operation of the Extradition Act – and the US/UK extradition treaty – to make sure it is even-handed and works both ways.

But stopping the state from exerting too much power over us demands another big change. This government is running not just a control state, but a surveillance state. In 2007, Privacy International ranked Britain's privacy protections joint 43rd out of 47 countries surveyed – with the worst record in Europe, and only marginally better than Russia and China.

Many of those who have simply given up trusting politicians of any colour, will say that the Tories are taking advantage of an obvious weakness in Labour's record, and that we should treat this as a piece of campaign rhetoric. But Cameron's very caution on these matters in the past persuades me that he means what he says, and that some serious thinking has been done about the relationship between state and individual, which Tony Blair, whom, by the way, I talked to in New York this week, did so much to alter.

We should trust what the Conservatives, seek to extend their commitment to the cause of liberty and hold them to their word. This is a welcome speech which has been long awaited.

Source: The Guardian