News - In the Press
Written by Observer Comment   
Monday, 03 April 2006
New Labour presented itself as a modernising force in 1997. Modernising? Well, that's a moot point when peerages are being sold to Labour party donors out of a hatch at the back of Number 10. Nearly nine years on, what we can say - quite categorically - is that Labour's programme of legislation challenges the British constitution like no other administration before it. In a thousand tiny - and not so tiny - cuts Labour threatens our rights and freedoms, the rule of law and the sovereignty of Parliament.

This is a serious charge and I know that people always begin to feel uncomfortable when you talk about threats to the British constitution because they don't know what it says or where to find it. There is also a vague superstition that to dust it off and hold it up to the light might damage our democracy forever.

But the time has come to recognise that this mystical obscurity is incapable of protecting us from a determined authoritarian government like this one. We need a written code which entrenches rights and the rule of law, for now and future generations, a code which may never be altered or distorted by ambitious men in the pursuit of power rather than the good of the people; that this is the urgent concern of all democrats, no matter what party they support.

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The Prime of Hazel Blears
News - Opinion/Editorial
Written by Unity   
Wednesday, 29 March 2006

It may sounds terribly geeky to admit this, but I’m quite looking forward to the publication (today, hopefully) of the transcript of yesterday’s proceedings of Commons standing committee D, which will cover the last two of eight sessions examining the Police and Justice bill.

If you’ve been following the action at Liberty Central, you’ll already know that I have a particular interest in sections 33-37 of the bill, which deal with amendments to the Computer Misuse Act 1990 – unfortunately I was on my way home from work at the time the committee was scheduled to debate this part of the bill and so missed that part of the debate.

But what I was able to listen to was the debate on opposition amendments to schedule 12 of the bill, which make a number of amendments to the Extradition Act 2003, specifically two amendments introduced by Conservative members in relation to the workings of the 2003 US-UK extradition treaty.

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