Liberty and Lies: Trust in Government, Trust by Government

The Rt. Hon. Charles Kennedy MP, Leader of the Liberal Democrats has today given a key speech on trust at the National Liberal Club. Below is what he said:

INTRODUCTION

"I should like to reaffirm my strong personal commitment to the bond of trust between the British people and their Government. We are all here to serve and we must all serve honestly and in the interests of those who gave us our positions of trust."

These are the words of Tony Blair in his foreword to the Ministerial Code of Conduct.

Today I want to talk to you about two things. Trust of the people in Government - the contract that binds us as a democracy. And secondly - trust of the people by Government - individual freedom and civil liberties.

TRUST IN GOVERNMENT

In 1997, trust in the outgoing Conservative Government had been wrecked by sleaze, by the ERM debacle and by 18 years of chronically underfunded public services.

Tony Blair promised to rebuild that trust. He has failed. Few believe this Government has been 'open' with people about the Iraq war. Few believe that the limited intelligence on Iraq's WMD was presented by the Government in a balanced and straightforward manner. Few believe they have received an apology from the Prime Minister for taking military action on what we now know was a false prospectus.

Many remember that at the 2001 General Election, Labour was not open and honest about taxation. In our manifesto we argued that limited tax rises were necessary to reverse years of Conservative cuts in public services. At the time, Labour said it had no 'plans' to raise taxes - but, once re-elected, did so.

Many remember that Labour made a manifesto promise in 2001 that they would not introduce top-up fees and have now introduced them.

Add to that the hated Council Tax and the looming pensions crisis, both of which the Government won't tackle - until after the next election.

If a Government shows little enthusiasm for trusting the people, how in return can it expect trust?

In 1998, 58% of people felt that Tony Blair's Government was honest and trustworthy. By March this year, it was only 25%.

Yet trust in Government is the central plank of the contract which binds the people and their democratic Government.

When trust is breached, that contract is broken.

At the recent party conferences there was much mention of trust.

For Liberal Democrats, trust underpins the principles we set out and on which our policies are based - freedom and fairness.

Michael Howard talked about it too. He promised "a Government which is honest, a government you can trust. "

"We will only promise what we can deliver. " He said.

Well let's take Michael Howard on trust and hold him accountable. Let's look at his 'Timetable for Action'. At best it is ill thought out. At worst it is unworkable, and misleading.

A few examples.

On the first day of a Conservative Government, it would 'freeze civil service recruitment. ""This will help cut Government waste" Oliver Letwin says, "and give taxpayers better value for money. "

Actually it would be lunacy. It would achieve nothing but administrative chaos. We all agree that there are areas where Government is interfering too much and areas where Government should do less. But a recruitment freeze is not the answer. Civil Servants are not an ill in themselves. The actual number of civil servants should be organic, at a level that provides good, efficient government. But what this policy means is that if civil servants retire or leave for other jobs, they cannot be replaced. Far from achieving value for money for the tax-payers - an across the board recruitment freeze is likely to result in inefficient, overstretched areas of government. The Conservative approach mirrors the personnel polices of a bankrupt business in receivership. What a way to run the civil service!

Let's look at another Tory day one policy. "The Home Secretary will announce plans to prevent police officers having to fill in forms. "Note "announce plans". So the action for day one for the new Home Secretary is to make a speech announcing plans that the Conservatives have already announced, and I presume will have re-announced in their general election manifesto. And in the first week, what we get is the ending of Labour's early release from prison scheme. What would that achieve?

Prison Service figures for this month show there are over 3000 people currently on early release schemes. So these people would be hauled in and locked back up in Tory week one. But prisons are already full - only about 2000 places are free - and these are required for flexibility, transfers and the like. So presumably we will have over a thousand inmates sleeping on mattresses in prison sports halls. And it can only get worse until new prisons are built. Add to that all the new drug addicts that, according to their timetable for action, are to be sentenced to prison in the first month of a new Tory Government, and you have a recipe for disaster.

How long before such overcrowding results in serious unrest? So, as you see - a timetable not for action - but for chaos. The reality is Michael Howard's timetable isn't a plan for action it's a piece of spin. It's presentation not policy. This 'Timetable for Action' is an attempt to whip up the idea of activity to conceal the fact that the Conservative's lack credibility.

But there is one area where the Conservatives are noticeably coy about their timetable. That's Europe. However, we have plenty of clues, so perhaps I could do it for them.

Week one and a new Foreign Secretary storms Brussels demanding wholesale renegotiation. An end to the Common Fisheries policy and the Social Chapter. A laissez-faire EU, based on little more than the Common Market. If the member states say no - What then? What is the new timetable?

Actually, John Redwood let it slip last week. In an email on the 9th of October, he said:"If they refuse, we will amend the 1972 European Communities Act to take them back unilaterally. Easy isn't it. "Well - not quite.

The European Union treaties are a balance of rights and responsibilities. The rights of membership such as access to the free market, balanced by the responsibilities of membership, such as the collective management of fish stocks. The other EU member states are unlikely to stand by and watch the treaties wrecked unilaterally by the Conservatives.

As Tory MEP Roger Helmer has pointed out "We, as a country, will be in breach of the treaties…. . the question of our continued membership will inevitably arise. "So the Tory 'Timetable for Action' on Europe is an ill-disguised timetable for withdrawal. If leaving the European Union were not enough - the Conservatives have designs on other areas of international cooperation.

They have already pledged to pull out of the Geneva Convention on Refugees. They are threatening to resile from parts of the European Convention on Human Rights. The ECHR was originally drawn up by Conservative lawyers on the approval of Winston Churchill and it is now accepted by every European democracy. Are the Conservatives really saying that Britain can no longer live up to the standard it sets?

So the timetable is impossible and the pledges are unacceptable. Not the easiest way to get the country to trust you.

As for accountability, which party - in the run up to war, week after week - asked the difficult questions of the Prime Minister? It was the Liberal Democrats.

On the other hand, which party was for university tuition fees, then against them, then for them, then against them again? The Conservatives.

Which is the party that is now offering tax cuts - but can't say when they will cut taxes, what taxes they will cut and by how much, and what spending they will cut to provide them? The Conservatives.

Which is the party that claimed that the Council Tax was "as fair a tax as you can get" but is now against it, but can't say what system should replace it? The Conservatives.

No wonder twice as many people - in a recent poll - said that the Liberal Democrats are the effective opposition to this government rather than the Conservatives.

And if the Conservatives can't fulfill their responsibilities to hold the Government to account in opposition - how can they hope to be accountable in Government?

TRUST BY GOVERNMENT - CIVIL LIBERTY

And it is the very system of Government that Labour - and the Conservatives before them - have constructed, that is undermining trust.

The over-centralised, micro-managing of our public services and weakening of local government means that people increasingly see government as distant and unresponsive, eroding public participation in our democracy. Liberal Democrats have long been committed to the principle that the power to take decisions should always be exercised closest to the people affected by them. Of course there are minimum standards which must be preserved and protected. A person's fundamental rights should not depend on where in the country they live or work.

But Government in Britain must learn to let go. Micro-management from Whitehall is not in the best interests of all of us who use public services locally, and who require local services that are adaptable to local circumstances.

But equally, we must apply our natural Liberal Democrat caution about an overmighty state when it threatens to undermine individual freedoms. We must be sure that Government, at whatever level, will not abuse its powers and ride roughshod over people's rights as it addresses the new challenges that face our society.

In this post 9-11 world, a climate of fear is being created which is being used to threaten our civil liberties. Extraordinary threats - like those posed by international terrorism - may require us, in times of emergency and for limited periods, to find a different balance between our hard won liberties and our security. But the correct response to such threats should not be, as the current Home Secretary appears to think, the abandonment of some of the liberties that generations of Britons have relied upon. Nor is the correct response, when faced - for example - with problems arising from the implementation of human rights legislation, to use that to call into question the consensus which has developed as part of the welfare state and the struggle for equality in the last century. That, certainly, is what the Conservatives appear to be doing in the guise of a populist war on political correctness. We should be wary of a party which is suggesting that it would seek to repeal the Human Rights Act, stating that, "once we had inherited civil liberties; now we have incorporated European rights".

Our response should be to remind the Conservatives that this country is alone in Europe and almost alone in the common law world in lacking a written constitution. The Human Rights Act is a shield against the tyranny of majorities and the abuse of public powers. It enables British courts to provide effective remedies for the abuse of power by public authorities. In framing our response to new threats, such decisions should be carefully argued and pursued with widespread support; they should not be implemented in a rush. For hard won rights once lost, may never be regained.

We should always be vigilant that powers granted to government and its agencies through our law making process are limited to the problem they are designed to address. The raft of legislation currently either facing, or being implemented by, our parliament, which can have a serious impact on civil liberties, is being introduced in response to three things.

First, the terrorist threat. Secondly, the fight against crime. And thirdly, new technological advances in mobile communications and the internet, and scientific advances such as DNA profiling and biometrics. The terrorist threat to the United Kingdom has been brought into sharp focus by the events in New York in 2001 and more recently in Madrid.

Much of what Labour has done, for instance in equipping the police to respond to the terrorist threat, has been supported by the Liberal Democrats.

But at the same time we say that any curtailment of our civil liberties should also only be justified in exceptional circumstances and then subject to strict review and limited timescales. This is common sense. And it is not sufficient for the Government to respond by suggesting that we are not taking the threats seriously. We must never be seduced into setting aside our critical faculties by superficially attractive and populist measures which fail to solve the problem that they seek to address, while infringing individual rights in other areas.

International terrorism presents us with precisely these dilemmas.

As I speak, the law Lords are considering whether the Government acted lawfully in suspending basic human rights in order to lock up suspects indefinitely and without charge or trial in Belmarsh high security prison. In the meantime, I hope the Government will heed the wise and pragmatic advice given by two independent Committees - the Committee of Privy Councillors and the Joint Committee of Human Rights on how to secure a fair and effective system for combating international terrorism without derogating from the European Convention on Human Rights.

Similar concerns exist about the use of stop and search under anti-terrorism powers. There is widespread evidence that the stop and search powers brought in under the Terrorism Act - subject to rolling authorisation and limited to times of heightened risk - have been misused by the police.

Section 44 of this Act has also led to a 300% increase in the number of Asian people being stopped. According to the Home Office, the standard police powers of stop and search result in a 13% arrest rate. The fact that the rate under Section 44 is around only 1% - and only 0. 08% for those arrested on suspicion of activities related to terrorism - suggests that not only are these powers not being used on the basis of firm intelligence, they aren't even based on reasonable suspicion.

This is a classic example of the problem we are facing. Unless Section 44 is more carefully applied, we run the risk that interference with individual liberty outweighs the benefits in terms of crime detection. We should not underestimate the dismay which the Belmarsh detentions and Section 44 have caused in our Muslim communities. They are on the receiving end of this legislation, and feel justly aggrieved that due process is being set aside.

Preventing a possible terrorist attack, clearly requires good intelligence from our security services and vigilance by both police and public. It is just plain daft to alienate communities that can be of particular help in identifying and exposing terrorists, by the injudicious application of police powers.

As this Labour Government has demonstrated, it can be a huge temptation to use the terrorist threat to justify measures that go far beyond the necessary requirements of safety and security. One example is the Government's flirtation with lowering the burden of proof in certain criminal cases.

But the classic example is Identity Cards. Just as the reasons we went to war in Iraq seem to change day by day, so have the justifications for the introduction of Identity Cards.

Fraud, access to public services, illegal immigrants, terrorism, general law and order. Each argument deployed at a different time depending on what is in the headlines. It suggests that the Government itself is not quite sure what it's trying to achieve.

Without a clear definition of objectives, we have little chance of applying the proportionality test. Will an identity card system provide such benefits that the threat to civil liberty is worth risking?

Let's not forget that we have been here before. In 1939, ID cards were introduced with three stated purposes: for conscription, for national security and for rationing. The war ended but the cards remained. By 1950 the government had added thirty-six new functions to the scheme. Without a clear definition of objectives, it is also impossible to say whether the new scheme will be cost-effective. Given this Government's record on Information Technology projects, who can trust the current costings from the Home Office which estimates a cost of up to £3bn over 10 years on this project?

CONCLUSION

All of us in Britain have at some point - on some issue - found ourselves to be part of a minority. But it is also the case that history shows the minority view, often shouted down, often derided, can prove itself over time to have been correct.

The health risks associated with smoking, widely disputed, now accepted.

Climate change, now recognised as scientific fact.

Societies progress not by suppressing, but by allowing a market-place for ideas.

We all of us gain from the protection of civil liberties.

And we all of us gain when our society has trust in the Government that it will protect individual liberty and Government trusts the people to use their freedoms with responsibility.

Everyone has the right to be secure in their homes and in their streets and to be effectively protected against criminal violence of other wrongdoing.

Everyone has the right to be protected against unfair discrimination on whatever ground.

We need protection against the barbarism of international terrorism.

But we need Government to protect our rights and freedoms too.

We need a system of government that is genuinely accountable to an effective democratically elected Parliament.

We need a civil service and system of public appointments protected against undue political interference.

We need a change in culture from a secretive to an open system of government.

These are the values for which we shall continue to strive.