Home What's New Speeches & Articles Newsletter - Apr 2008 Biography Diary Contact Information Photo Album Parliamentary Highlights Publications Links MEPs' Transparency   Conservative Party Latest News from Conservatives.com Conservative Party Website
		Big Brother Blunkett is watching you Lincolnshire Echo - August 2 2002 Home Secretary David Blunkett seems to be a fundamentally decent sort of chap, but he is a man of deeply illiberal instincts. He wants police and security services to have access to your telephone accounts, so the government knows whom you called, and when. He is starting a consultation process on identity cards. In theory, these will be "optional". But in all probability you will be asked for them when you cash a cheque. Or use your credit card, or enter a public building, so that in effect they will be compulsory. Many people believe that identity cards would be a fair price to pay to oppose social security fraud and illegal immigration, and they have a point. But others fear that the cards will become an irritating obligation for honest people, while criminals and illegal immigrants will use forged cards. The government is proposing that all cars should have electronic tagging that would allow satellites, and a government computer, to know exactly where every car is at every moment. This is an appalling breach of privacy. It is Big Brother on a scale never even imagined by George Orwell in his novel 1984. Blunkett's anti-terrorist legislation after September 11th would have allowed him to hold foreign nationals indefinitely, but to his great embarrassment, the courts have now ruled that this contravenes European Human Rights legislation, and it seems the government will now have to change the law. We all support human rights, but Blunkett's little difficulty shows the problem with loosely-drafted conventions, like the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) or the newer "Charter of Fundamental Rights". They are a lawyer's paradise. They lead to decisions which fly in the face of common sense, and which the drafters of the conventions never intended. They transfer power from elected, accountable parliamentarians to unelected and unaccountable judges. They promote judicial activism and undermine democracy. Several of Blunkett's initiatives have fallen foul of the ECHR, and he must be having second thoughts about Labour's decision to adopt the Convention. It's a curious irony that this Labour government, with its illiberal, Big Brother Home Secretary, has created a Data Protection Act that is supposed to protect our privacy. Now if that stops credit card companies selling on our names to junk mail outfits, few of us would worry. But it applies to everyone who uses a computer for business. If your local doctor or country solicitor keeps his Christmas card list on his lap-top, he is supposed to register with the Data Protection Agency. As an MEP, I have just received a letter from a Mr. Nigel Revill, an Assistant Investigator with the Information Commissioner in Cheshire. He tells me that it is a criminal offence to fail to notify him if I am a "data controller" or if I "process information regarding living individuals". Frankly I have no idea whether I am a data controller according to his definition, and I don't very much care. I have replied to him in no uncertain terms that I regard communications between myself, as an elected parliamentarian, and my constituents, as privileged and confidential information, and I see no reason why I should report on it to some Jobsworth in Wilmslow. We seem to be living in a fantasy world where a government which proposes all kinds of intrusive surveillance of its citizens, even to checking telephone records and tagging private cars, can also require parliamentarians to register their Christmas card lists in the name of data protection.