My Lords, I shall make a couple of topical points in support of the noble Lord, Lord Deben. This is very complex. In the old days, in a less complex world, we knew how to finesse these things in a common-law society. Now we are moving towards statute law. The French know how to disobey the law sensibly in view of local circumstances. They know that you cannot slavishly obey every rule. We have not learnt that yet, so we should be very careful about how we set the rules in case they are slavishly obeyed. Somehow blurring the boundaries is much more sensible. I am not sure that having this whole thing of national security quite works. We have seen photographers being stopped for photographing perfectly innocent targets in the name of national security. I am very worried about the way that certain people will use these rules to stop normal activities. We regard ourselves as a free country but, if we are not careful, we might cease to be free. We have to worry about how other people, less sensible than us, may interpret rules in a very strict way in the future.
Justice and Security Bill [HL]
Proceeding contribution from
Earl of Erroll
(Crossbench)
in the House of Lords on Tuesday, 17 July 2012.
It occurred during Committee of the Whole House (HL)
and
Debate on bills on Justice and Security Bill [HL].
About this proceeding contribution
Reference
739 c123 Session
2012-13Chamber / Committee
House of Lords chamberLibrarians' tools
Timestamp
2023-11-28 15:24:55 +0000
URI
http://hansard.intranet.data.parliament.uk/Lords/2012-07-17/12071775000143
In Indexing
http://indexing.parliament.uk/Content/Edit/1?uri=http://hansard.intranet.data.parliament.uk/Lords/2012-07-17/12071775000143
In Solr
https://search.parliament.uk/claw/solr/?id=http://hansard.intranet.data.parliament.uk/Lords/2012-07-17/12071775000143