Lost liberty

Please read the harrowing contribution by Henry Porter in today's Observer, linked here, which was his evidence to the joint parliamentary committee on a Bill of Rights. It opens and ends as follows: Two things are striking as you read through the oral evidence presented to the Joint Committee on Human Rights. The first is the measured calm of the majority of your witnesses and, indeed, of the majority of the committee, in the face of the most serious attack on personal freedom and privacy ever mounted during peacetime in this country. British democracy is on the brink of being changed beyond recognition, yet nothing seems to disturb the equanimity of your proceedings. Even allowing for the well-mannered traditions of parliamentary committees, the lack of urgency and of a sense of crisis seems remarkable....................... Finally, I want to say something about the phrase 'rights and responsibilities' used by Jack Straw and Gordon Brown in respect of a new bill. This springs from the telling belief among ministers that rights are somehow in the gift of the government and that they are entitled to require people to sign up to a list of responsibilities in exchange. This is arrogant nonsense. The citizen's responsibilities are defined by common, civil and criminal law and ministers display a constitutional impertinence by suggesting otherwise.