Protection of Freedoms Bill

In some respects, this is a Christmas tree of a Bill, but given that each bauble on the tree represents one of our cherished and fundamental freedoms, we can forgive the Home Office for that. Given the extent and range of its measures, it goes a long way towards restoring many of our most fundamental freedoms. Pre-charge detention is reduced to 14 days and the indiscriminate and in many ways ineffective use of stop and search is ended. The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) said that he did not like the concept of balancing civil liberties and security because he felt that they were intertwined. I agree; the DNA measures ensure that we intertwine civil liberties and people's safety. Clearly that is an issue on which the Government and the Opposition will continue to disagree. Liberal Democrats understand victims' concerns, but there is little evidence that the Opposition have any real appreciation of civil liberties and civil liberty concerns. On far too many occasions, Opposition spokesmen have in effect written the headlines for some of our tabloid newspapers, which I find somewhat distasteful. On CCTV, the Government propose regulation, not obstruction. The Opposition have sought to make the point that the Government actively seek to oppose CCTV, but that is clearly not the Government's intention. Rather, it is their intention, as reflected in the Bill, to ensure that CCTV is deployed in a way that secures public support. Clearly, there is a huge amount of public support for it, but Members will be aware of at least one occasion on which that public support was not there because there was some subterfuge around the reasons for the deployment of CCTV. As the Home Secretary has said, subjecting 11 million people to a vetting and barring scheme would be deemed by most people in most countries to have a real impact on people's civil liberties, and operating a system that captured the details of many hundreds of thousands of people who would not present any threat would have real practical implications. The Government have reminded organisations of the need to maintain vigilance—that they should actively consider scenarios and the circumstances in which people work and accept that they have a responsibility to ensure that appropriate safeguards and monitoring of staff are in place. I am sure that every hon. Member has had cases of wheel-clamping raised with them. I had a particularly disturbing case involving a woman whose vehicle was clamped on her own estate when she accidentally failed to display the appropriate permit. She ended up recovering her vehicle from a site about 15 miles away, which she had to go to with her young child. She managed to secure the vehicle, but only after handing over a large sum of money to men with large Doberman dogs. I am sure that other hon. Members have had similar experiences reported to them.