Ben Duncan - Terror law review needed

25 March 2010

Ben Duncan is the Green Party's Home Affairs spokesperson. He is a local councillor in Brighton and Hove, and the PPC for Brighton Kemptown. In this comment piece, he looks at how a cross-party group of peers and MPs has called for an urgent review into all terror laws enacted in the UK since the September 11th attack on the World Trade Centre:

This move is not before time.

Since September 2001, we have seen a steady erosion of our civil liberties and human rights.

- We have embarked on two illegal - and vastly costly, in lives and financially - wars.

- We've discovered that UK secret service agents have been complicit in torture on foreign soil.

- We've seen holiday-makers arrested for taking snaps of landmarks.

- We've had an increase to 42 days the length of time suspects can be held in police cells without being charged - and massive increases in the numbers of intrusive checks on people going about their daily businesses, innocent people being stopped and searched by police - and a massive increase in the number of armed police patrolling our airports, railway stations and streets.

This government has enacted more new laws - that is, made more things illegal - than any other in the nation's history. There are now 83,000 people in prison. We are the most watched nation on earth. We have about one per cent of the world's population, but about a fifth of all its CCTV cameras.

But has any of this made us safer? Well, no.

True, crime is falling - and we haven't seen a repeat of the terrible 7/7 terrorist attack on London.

But fear of crime is rising - and fast. I speak to older residents and children almost every day who are terrified. They think ordinary shopping areas are just too dangerous - and that they'd rather stay at home. That's appalling.

To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin: those who would give up their liberty in exchange for security deserve neither.

We need an urgent review of all anti-terror laws passed since September 2001 - and a proper audit of whether they comply with the Government's duties to protect our human rights and civil liberties.

In short, we need a more neighbourhood-based approach to policing and security, based around more Bobbies on the beat and fewer guns at Gatwick.

Above all, we need to put human rights at the centre of law-making.