The Exchange

Question: How can MPs pass bills that erode our liberties? [And surely their own too!]

This very question was raised by a French journalist at the press conference launching the Programme’s Abolition of Freedom Act 2009 research. Fortunately the French pronunciation lent elegance to her candour: “What’s wrong with you [British MPs]?”

Was she serious? Did she really not know? Her incredulity almost inspired an article similar to this one, which, as it turns out, was instead inspired by my incredulity at hers. Of course some would be preoccupied with the xenophobic appearance of this outburst, but more vivid than mere unsavoury cosmetics is surely the fact that a non-Brit was stirred to an impassioned eruption by the shortcomings of British parliamentarians, when all the Brits in the room and it seems the entire nation were either unstirred or unaware.

As the only MP on the panel David Davis plumped up to deal with the question. His answer was sensible and concise and seemed well directed at the question: Firstly, sometimes bills are drafted in innocuously broader terms than appear in the final legislation. Secondly, sometimes there is not enough time to go through each and every section and subsection of a proposal. And then of course there are the whip-cracking, disciplinarian, vote-influencing, parliamentary monsters… err, sorry, whips.

Appearance, again, was not the order of the day. Although everything mentioned by the Right Honourable Mr. Davis correctly highlights serious flaws in our political system, it, in my opinion, missed the force of the question. No such excuses are available for the extension of detention without trial from 14 to 28 days - even longer than the US! Nor are such excuses relevant to the ban on protesting within 1km of parliament, biometric databases, stop and search without reasonable suspicion, nor any other high profile legislative proposals.

The crux of the matter is that our MPs know exactly what they are doing in numerous serious cases. So why do they do it? My immediate thought at the time went something along the line’s of: “they do it for their political careers; for themselves, duh!”.

I’m still swallowing that “duh!” as I write.

For how can I just accept that that is the case? The answer was so obvious, but what was not so obvious to me was the simpler point that this self-interested behaviour of public servants was clearly not acceptable.

Yes some will recount the reasons of national security and public disorder as the causes of this legislative turmoil and as justifications for this erosion of our freedom. Such persons sadly can only be those who have forgotten exactly what it is that we need to protect: freedom! Yes we will all be wonderfully safe inside steel cages, but what is the point in fighting for a life in shackles? This is elementary philosophy (and our highly educated House certainly are aware of this – or at least they were when representing their university debating teams)!

The best guard against political amnesia and self-interest is us.

The Convention on Modern Liberty could not be a more timely wake-up call. In times of great prosperity we have grown content with life. We have let the parliamentary voyager slip from our orbit. It’s now 1km out of range! And as they say, out of sight out of mind. We have simply forgotten that parliament only exists for our benefit; only because representatives are necessary to ensure that we all get a say in the governance of our society without all of us having to cram into the House of Commons like Chelsea fans away at Kidderminster Harriers in the F.A. Cup.

The threat to our lives is simply not as the government would have us believe. Even if it were, we believe that our values as a civilised community are paramount. We shall not be brought down to the same level. As David Davis MP also pointed out, there will always be criminals. I agree. And I would add that there will always be criminals who we label terrorists. Such discord cannot be dealt with by quick-fix legislative overdoses. Poverty, lack of opportunity and poor education (and perhaps even our foreign policy), need our long-term attention. And by “our attention” I mean yours and mine as well as those we entrust with our equally legitimate right to co-govern the nation.

Yes we may not think it right to talk on the tube, but as our French ally reminded us, this is nothing to be British about. It’s time we got up from in front of our 42-inch plasma televisions and forced our public servants to be Great.