| News from Parliament |
 |
|
Since the bombings on 7th July the Liberal Democrat Home Affairs team in
government chose to abandon the early cross-party consensus in favour of a number of badly thought-out measures which would, if they became law, serve to alienate the Muslim community. So far we have been able to win some important concessions through careful negotiations with the government. As you will have seen, we were also instrumental in bringing about the first Commons defeat for the government since 1997 on the issue of detaining terror suspects for 90 days without charge. Willie Goodhart and Martin Thomas are now working to improve the Bill in the House of Lords. At the same time, we are dealing with four other controversial Home Office Bills, and I thought it would be helpful to provide a quick overview of them: * ID cards The Bill narrowly scraped through the Commons with a majority of just 25. It is expected to be rejected by the Lords. With strong opposition from both us and the Conservatives, the government will almost certainly be forced to use the Parliament Act to get it through. You can support our campaign at http://www.libdems.org.uk/noidcards * Immigration, Asylum and Nationality This is the fourth asylum and immigration Bill since Labour came to power. It removes rights of appeal for people seeking to work or study in the UK who are refused permission to enter the country or extend their stay - despite high rates of successful appeals for these cases at present. Yet again, the government is removing safeguards which apply to everyone instead of weeding out the minority of individuals who abuse the system. Several terrorism-related clauses have been added to the Bill, including an extension of the Home Secretary's powers to strip people of British citizenship and deport them. We are strongly opposed. * Racial and Religious Hatred The proposal to outlaw 'incitement to religious hatred' is dangerous not only because it could see individuals prosecuted for legitimate criticism of religions and cults, but because it will have a 'chilling' effect on free speech, with writers and commentators censoring their own work to avoid police action. The Liberal Democrat peers, led by Anthony Lester, have effectively re-written the Bill in the Lords, creating locks and safeguards which would protect our freedom of expression. We hope the government will accept the Bill as amended. * Violent Crime Reduction This is in many ways an important Bill which introduces new measures to deal with two of the major causes of crime - alcohol, and the availability of weapons. We support many of the proposals on weapons and have been pushing for an increase in the maximum sentence for carrying a knife in public, which currently stands at two years. Proposals to create Alcohol Disorder Zones are more problematic and risk penalising well-run pubs which happen to be situated near rowdy premises. In addition to these and other less controversial Bills, we are running campaigns and developing new policies in a number of areas. These include: * Police force mergers The government is forging ahead with a plan to scrap the existing structure of 43 local police forces in England and Wales, instead creating as few as 12 regional forces. We fear this would cut the links between local communities and the police, and hand even more central control to Whitehall. We will shortly be publishing a policy paper setting out our reasons for opposing restructuring and some alternative proposals for improving efficiency and accountability. * Civil liberties The big theme of this Parliament looks set to be security vs. liberty. The Liberal Democrats are ideally placed to lead this debate. We believe that our tradition of justice and freedom is the best weapon we have against terrorism, because terrorism is as much a battle for hearts and minds as it is a challenge for law enforcement. The new ban on spontaneous demonstrations around Parliament is one of the worst examples of this government's willingness to trample over our fundamental rights, and we are pressing for it to be repealed. * The respect agenda Charles Clarke has vowed to eliminate disrespect from society by the time of the next election. Quite how this is going to be achieved is not clear. Blair has floated yet another a list of new and largely unnecessary laws which will fail to get to the root of the problem of anti-social behaviour. We have set up our own Respect Taskforce, chaired jointly by Ed Davey and myself, to draw up new measures to tackle the causes of crime and anti-social behaviour by bringing communities together. We will be contacting Liberal Democrat-controlled local authorities in the New Year to look at the possibility of piloting some of these ideas. Finally, we realise that the issues we deal with in Home Affairs are often contentious. Please make full use of the briefings on the party's public website, http://www.libdems.org.ukand elsewhere, and let us know if they don't provide the answers you need. With best wishes, Mark Oaten MP P.S. You can help our campaigning on issues like these crucial civil liberties ones by donating now at https://www.libdems.org.uk/support/donate.html?ref=moem
|
