[Sir John Butterfill in the Chair] — A Surveillance Society?

Part of the debate – in Westminster Hall at 2:55 pm on 19 March 2009.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Bruce George Bruce George Labour, Walsall South 2:55, 19 March 2009

I very much welcome the report, although some of the things that my right hon. Friend Keith Vaz said will lead me to reread some of it. It is easy to talk about balance but difficult to know where that balancing point is—and it can change in a day, depending on events. People's attitudes on what the limits of the state should be will change dramatically if security is breached and the surveillance created by the state or the private sector proves unequal to the threat and the action. People's views are not immutable, and they will demand more.

We are all here as democrats and all believe in human rights, transparency in Government, good governance, protection of society, individual liberties and freedom of the press. I start with the point, which not even every Member of the House would agree with, that, frankly, I trust the integrity of my colleagues in the major parties and their willingness to take into account all the factors that lead to key security decisions. I trust them to protect our interests against those within the bureaucracy who might wish—although I doubt it—to use that information inappropriately, and to ensure that a proper line is drawn whereby the citizen has access to the protection of the state to pursue their lives in as free a manner as is humanly, and in governmental terms, possible.

However, there are some nutters out there, and there are Governments composed of whole teams of nutters. Although I am absolutely certain that this is not the case in my constituency, there are those who, if they are not fantasists on the subject, are so dedicated to advocating human rights that they forget that one of the greatest human rights is the right of an individual to walk down to Tesco, or wherever, and come back in one piece.

Human rights can be preserved by actions that might not always fall within the aspirations of or documents produced by Liberty or the Home Affairs Committee. I do not want to be seen as hawkish—I certainly would not put myself in that category—or as demanding that the state do more and more until individual liberties are severely damaged or obliterated, but we must have a sense of reality in this country, and I think that our constituents often have a greater sense of reality than we do.