And another thing…

TODAY was the second occasion on which I have presented a Ten Minute Rule Bill (TMRB) to the Commons.

In fact I kind of inherited this one from Ann McKechin, my colleague who represents Glasgow North and who is now a Scotland Office minister. She asked me to take it up when we found ourselves swapping our respective positions in government and on the back benches.

Here’s a trade secret: there is no Bill. Unlike a government Bill, which is fully drafted before its first reading, TMRBs are essentially a short and a long title. You make your speech and choose a date for it to return to the Commons for its next reading. But the Bill, in any form that could be drafted into law, doesn’t exist.

The vast majority of TMRBs never see the light of day as independent pieces of legislation. The last one I presented, on increasing penalties for computer hackers, was adopted by the government and incorporated into a Home Office Bill, which was a great result for me, because as a stand alone piece of legislation it stood no chance of becoming law.

With the prorogation of parliament just a few weeks away, and the State Opening to follow, today’s Bill will get lost beneath an avalanche of measures for which the government will want to secure parliamentary time. But the point of today was to draw the Home Office’s attention to the measures in my Bill and hope it can be persuaded to enact some or all of it in government time at some point in the future.

Yup, a glamorous job, this MP lark…

A COMMITTEE of Lords (aka, the Great and the Good) has decided our civil liberties are threatened by CCTV cameras.

Yawn.

I don’t know of any CCTV partnerships where footage taken by these cameras is retained for any longer than a month. Only where a crime has been captured on camera is the film retained until after the court case. So the only people whose civil liberties are compromised are those who have been caught on camera committing a crime. I hope many more such people have their civil liberties compromised in future.

How you view this issue depends on what kind of area you live in. If you’re lucky enough to live in a wealthy, rural idyll, you’re more likely to sympathise with those who bang on about “loss of privacy”. Unfortunately, I, and many other MPs – particularly Labour – represent communities where residents genuinely feel their security would be enhanced by the presence of more CCTV cameras.

But what do they know, eh? I mean, for Shami’s sake, if they’re willing to send society down the road of an Orwellian nightmare, then they don’t deserve to feel secure in their own homes or their own streets, do they?

I can visualise the comments already: “But CCTV cameras are being used to spy on fly-tippers and people who let their dogs foul the pavement!” Is that right? Good! CCTV was never intended as a weapon against terrorism, it was intended as a way of discouraging anti-social and violent behaviour. Don’t want to get caught leaving your old mattress near someone else’s home because you’re too lazy and stupid to dispose of it yourself? Well, don’t do it, then.

AN ODD thing arrived today at the office: an Amazon package containing a brand new copy of Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell.  It’s not the book itself that is odd – I read it for the first time nearly 30 years ago and it’s a rollicking good yarn, with a great plot and a very dramatic ending.

What was peculiar was that I didn’t order it from Amazon – apparently it was a gift from an anonymous benefactor. The following text was written on the packing slip:

Young man, This is a reminder that this book, contrary to what your leader might think, is NOT an instruction manual, but a warning. REMEMBER – WE are YOUR masters.

Hmm. Where to start, where to start…?

Well, first of all, how about the arrogance of anyone referring to anyone else as anyone’s “masters”?

Secondly, there seem to be an awful lot of people out there – perhaps dozens of them – who seem to get strangely exercised at the prospect of a “police state”. Except that what they define as a “police state” is a million light years from what Orwell himself described. CCTV cameras in the street? That’s just like Nineteen Eighty-Four, when families were monitored in their own homes, 24 hours a day! Can’t use racist terms to vilify people any more? Well, surely that’s thought crime, just like Orwell predicted!

What rubbish. As I’ve written here before, this is all paranoid fantasy, and why so many people get off on it, I’ll never know. I recently had the latest in a series of requests from constituents regarding CCTV. Requests to have the cameras removed? No, no, no… Requests for more cameras.

(Incidentally, despite a previous appeal, I still haven’t been contacted by any Tory MP or candidate who has volunteered to wield the axe on any of their own local schemes. Funny, that.)

I well remember the miners’ strike of 1984-85 and the claims by some on the Trotsyite left at the time that Thatcher had inaugurated a police state in her attempts to control violent picketing. And again I say: rubbish.

We live in a democracy, and just because those  – including my anonymous benefactor – who get excited about such things are unhappy that Labour is in power, that does not make us anything other than a democracy. And democratically-elected governments govern with the consent of the people. Yes, even this one!

While the strange person who sent me my book and others like him might claim that everyone in the UK is utterly consumed with fury over a perceived decline in civil liberties in this country, the facts are that we still enjoy a level of freedom that maintains our position as one of the great democracies of the world.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to duck now…

UPDATE at 3.07 pm: It seems my objection to the term “masters” is causing some annoyance. For the avoidance of doubt, I regard my constituents as “employers” rather than “masters”, fellow citizens to whom I am accountable. But “masters” is so 18th century, don’t you think?

FOLLOWING the hoo-ha provoked by my earlier post on the threat – or lack of it – posed by CCTV cameras to our civil liberties, I’ve had an idea. Those cyber-Tories who are convinced that a future Tory government will herald a CCTV-less age now have the chance to prove it by asking their own Tory candidate or MP which CCTV scheme in his or her constituency will be axed after ‘Dave’ becomes prime minister. Post the information on this site – preferably with a supporting quote from the relevant MP or candidate.

I look forward to publishing the full list well in advance of polling day.

UPDATE at 11.15 pm: Still haven’t received offers of CCTV schemes that might be dismantled should a Tory government be inflicted upon us. Strange, that. Are we sure the Tories are opposed to CCTV?

WHEN cyber-Tories aren’t moaning about not having a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, they like to bang on about the so-called “intrusive state”. Iain Dale yesterday carried a letter published in Der Spiegel:

Sir, At the end of August I’m leaving London because I don’t wish my child to be forced into the kind of conformity where not only are school uniforms obligatory but even haircuts are regulated. That’s to say nothing of the ever present CCTV in schools or of the fact that even primary school kids have to give fingerprints.

Hmm. Aren’t Tories the ones who are most likely to complain about lack of uniforms in schools? And since when was the government responsible for regulating haircuts (good idea, though; must mention it to the manifesto group…)?

As for CCTV, I know of no MPs whose constituents have approached them asking for fewer CCTV cameras in their constituencies. The only people in Glasgow who I’m aware are against them are drug dealers who would rather not be filmed going about their business.

That CCTV cameras are some kind of threat to civil liberties seems to have become one of these accepted “facts” that barely qualifies as an opinion, so scarce is the evidence in its favour.

The regular accusation that we are living in what is close to, or is in reality, a “police state” is not only ridiculous – it’s offensive to the millions of people across the world who do live in such states and who regard the UK, rightly, as a beacon of freedom and democracy. So there.