Greg Hands MP asks, “should the Conservative Party
become a civil liberties party?” and “what do we
mean by civil liberties in the first place?”...
David Davis’s resignation and subsequent victory in the Haltemprice & Howden by-election briefly put civil liberties centre stage in British political debate. Unfortunately, as the debate is one we urgently need to have, it was all too brief, as Labour failed to put up a candidate, and the news agenda quickly moved on to the Government’s own dreadful woes.
So, should the Conservative Party become a civil liberties party? Also, what do we mean by civil liberties in the first place? The answer to the first question should depend on the answer to the second, but for me at least, we need to tread with care. I talked about this at the time of David’s resignation with one of the LibDem “Orange Bookers”. His take on it was this: “It’s more obvious for us to be a civil libertarian party. After all, we are a 20% party, and you are a 40% party”, referring to opinion polling, although I don’t think the LibDems have hit 20% for some months now, and we have been consistently above 40%. Nevertheless, his point was this, and has been made by many in British politics in the last ten years or more: the public wouldn’t vote in swathes for a right of centre civil libertarian party. Such parties do exist. Indeed, one, the Swedish Moderaterna (whose conference I attended last year) is in Government, but in coalition, and rarely gets above 20% at the ballot box.
Nevertheless, the more important question for us needs to be this – is there a civil libertarian theme to be developed across such a broad range of issues that David described in June? I don’t normally consider myself to be a pragmatist, but looking at the issues David put together in his campaign, I believe we can have different answers to each of them.
To pick just two of the issues highlighted by David: CCTV and the national DNA database. I believe we can different responses to each of these issues.
Take CCTV, for example. It is quite true that Britain has more CCTV cameras than any other country on a per population basis. As has been pointed out, we have 1 CCTV camera now for every 14 citizens. Put in these crude terms, it can start to sound like the Staatsicherheit in the German Democratic Republic, where 90,000 staff plus more than 100,000 part-timers (the “Informelle Mitarbeiter) kept watch on a population of 17 million. In fact, it might even sound worse than the GDR. The Stasi had a ratio of 1:89 human cameras per member of the population, whereas we have 1:14 actual cameras. The comparison with a human surveillance system is a good one though, as it reminds us that any surveillance system is only as good as the humans trained to use it and as extensive as the availability of staff to watch the cameras. I think most people realise that not all of the cameras are being watched at any one time. It might just surprise many to know how few trained staff there are. Taking the example of Hammersmith & Fulham, which does have a relatively well-staffed CCTV control room, there are 170 cameras under local authority control, but only 3 to 5 members of staff on duty to watch them at any one time. Therefore, the chances of “being watched live on CCTV” are slim. However, the chance of a crime being recorded on camera, and replayed later, is rather larger. In my view, CCTV is best looked at as an extra set of witnesses. Nobody asks a witness to explain what they have been doing all day, every day, but for their view of a small time frame before, during and after a crime was committed. Any surveillance scheme is only as comprehensive as personnel allows. CCTV remains popular, and I am glad to see Councils like Hammersmith & Fulham committed to its upkeep and expansion.
The national DNA database received a lot of coverage over the summer, partly thanks to me and the disconcerting sequence of events that followed the murder of an uncle of mine in Walsall last year. The murder investigation is still ongoing. A few weeks after the murder, the West Midlands police came to interview me at the House of Commons. They explained that they were interviewing all the family members to eliminate them from the inquiry. This seemed logical enough, because, as they explained, 80% of murders are committed by family or close friends. They had the courtesy to inform me in advance that they intended to take a DNA sample and a complete set of fingerprints. I imagined that they must have DNA and fingerprints of the assailant(s), and a quick cross-check should swiftly eliminate me from the inquiry, or so I thought. So far, so good. The interview seemed to me to be unusual, however. The two officers made no attempt to seek any information as to whether I might be the guilty party. They never asked where I was in the days around the 21st February 2007, the likely date of the murder. The main purpose of coming to see me appeared to be to gain a DNA sample, and the prints of all ten fingers, which they duly did.
More than a year later, I am still trying to come off the DNA database. It seems to me that the Home Office doesn't want to announce that they intend to create a complete nationwide database by getting a DNA sample from all 60 million Britons, but that this is in fact their intention, which they will achieve by stealth. Now, I am not necessarily against a national DNA database, but if it is to be created it should be done democratically, and that means that Parliament must decide it, including the controls and parameters, and if so, either all citizens should be on from the start, or only those convicted of a crime. The worst choice is what we have at present, where the Home Office builds up the database by stealth using any excuse to gain a sample. More than million entirely innocent people are on the database, including hundreds of thousands of children, in what is the most extensive set of records of its kind anywhere in the world. Doubtless, there are cases amongst the other four million Britons on the database of people whose connections with crime are even more obscure or peripheral than mine.
To deal with a couple of other issues briefly. I am concerned at some of the concern over local authority surveillance, for example over checking whether a person is legitimately claiming single-occupancy discount on their Council Tax. The census implies that my constituency (along with Battersea, if I recall correctly) has the largest proportion of adults living alone anywhere in the country. Yet I have met a few when canvassing when it has become apparent that the person seemingly alone on the electoral roll has a co-tenant or two. Are we really suggesting that Councils not be empowered to investigate when they have reasonable suspicion? It may be that human observation is not the most efficient method, but we should be careful not to inveigh too heavily against local authority powers to prevent fraud.
It seems to me that we want to have a more pragmatic approach to civil liberties. I haven’t even considered here ID cards (which I am opposed to) and detention beyond 28 days (for which no reasonable case has yet been made). Talk of “sleepwalking into a surveillance society” is overblown, but equally we need to be careful of our liberties. Most of all, we need to realise that any surveillance system is by its very nature limited by human resources, which given our party’s natural and healthy aversion to expanding public sector bureaucracies should mean that our liberties are safe in our hands, without us needing to become a civil libertarian party.
Greg Hands is Member of Parliament for Hammersmith & Fulham