Robert Buckland Weblog

It is a calm and balmy Sunday morning in Tenby; all our plans for the weekend had to be changed by a visit to Pembrokeshire to see Sian’s mother at Withybush Hospital in Haverfordwest and to help her father at home.  As we were going into the hospital, I bumped into Capt Bill Phillips, who had helped me so much when I was the Parliamentary Candidate for Preseli Pembrokeshire in 1997.  He is very elderly now, but I think that he was delighted to meet George!

On Thursday, I was a guest of the Oxford Branch of NO2ID at a meeting entitled “Nothing to hide, nothing to fear”, at Trinity College.  It was a sultry 26 degrees, giving rise to the sort of torpor that one of my fellow guests, the journalist Peter Hitchens, described to me as typical Oxford summer weather.  The other speakers included Peter Tatchell, who is now Green Party candidate for Oxford East and Glyn Wintle, of the Open Rights Group.  Glyn and his colleagues are extremely knowledgeable about IT and have much to contribute about the dangers of massive Government projects.  Although the discussion centred upon ID cards, a wider range of issues about data and about the increasing encroachment of the state into our lives were raised.

All of us were agreed upon the dangers of the national ID database, but each of us approached it from a particular perspective.  Peter Hitchens, with his usual aplomb, talked about his love of the English idea of liberty, as opposed to statist control.  Just before the meeting began, we had been discussing the decision of the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge, to allow a trial to be conducted in England and Wales without a jury, invoking Section 44 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003.  I was casting about for a word to describe the decision: was it reactionary?  Peter described it as a “statist” decision, and I agree with him.  On issues such as this, the division is not left or right, reactionary versus radical, but is all about the liberty of the individual versus the power of the state.  Peter is a self-avowed reactionary, and made the point that the concept of human rights, defined as they are by legislators and judges, represents a curtailment of liberty, not its enhancement.  He also warned about what he regarded as the vitally important EU dimension, which he sees as responsible for this statist, bureaucratic approach.

Peter Tatchell, in an impressive contribution, warned the audience about the dangers of inaccurate data being entered into a database, and the dire potential consequences of this.  Having to prove your existence to the authorities represents a fundamental reversal of the relationship between citizens and the government, he said.  He expressed strong concern for the potential misuse of data by government agencies, in ways that would be fundamentally illiberal.

Glyn Wintle was able to give us some examples of ways in which data held on Government databases could be horribly misused.  He reminded us that powerful vested interests had been at work persuading Ministers of the merits of their particular projects, with an eye on the large profits to be made if a contract is secured. One scenario that Glyn offered made a deep impact on those listening. What if a disgruntled NHS IT employee was offered a large sum of money by an insurance company to leak the medical records of patients?  The consequences for indiviudals seeking medical insurance would be enormous.  At a stroke, the entire medical insurance market would be fundamentally altered, in a way favourable to that insurance company.

In my speech, I explained that the constant struggle between the liberty of the indivdual and the power of the state was my daily bread and butter.  I warned about the “presumption of accuracy” that is contained within the legislation setting up the National Identity Register, making it even more difficult for people to challenge its contents.  I said that it was ironic that this Government, which introduced the 1998 Human Rights Act incorporating the ECHR into English and Welsh law, has presided over the greatest contraction of liberties since the Commonwealth.   The dangers of creating legally defined human rights meant that they were only as strong as the judge who interprets them, I said.  The concept of liberty in this country had been defined by its boundaries – in other words, every piece of legislation that sought to prohibit something was scrutinised by Parliament and passed if there was a genuine public interest.  The avalanche of criminal legislation since 1997 has changed all that.

I will post more later after I get to my judicial training course in Coventry.