Civil Liberties are in our DNA (Brentwood & Ongar Liberal Democrats)

Brentwood & Ongar Liberal Democrats <info@brentwood-ongarlibdems.org.uk>

Civil Liberties are in our DNA

September 20, 2009 10:40 PM

Cllr David Kendall in Bournemouth today, the venue for the Lib Dem conference

Speaking from the Liberal Democrat Conference in Bournemouth, Parliamentary Spokesman Cllr David Kendall has welcomed the Civil Liberty Policy Paper passed by Lib Dem members today.

The "Standing up for Civil Liberties" paper calls, amongst other things, for:

The maximum period of pre-charge detention to be reduced back to 14 days.
ID cards to be scrapped, including for foreign nationals.
All innocent people to be removed from the DNA database immediately.
The immediate restoration of the right to protest in Parliament Square.
Defendants aged under 18 to be able to choose jury trial if charged with any offence that can lead to a custodial sentence.

Particularly impressive was an amendment to the original motion, moved by Liberal Youth, which asked for the banning of all 'Mosquito Devices' following the advice of the Children's Commissioner for England.

Cllr Kendall said:

"Chris Huhne MP summed it up in his summation when he said that Civil Liberties are in our DNA and this paper surely demonstrates this.

"It is difficult to comprehend the amount of surveillance we are under in the UK with estimates that you are picked up by about 300 CCTV cameras if you go in to London and that there is one camera for every fourteen people in the UK. This paper seeks to re-balance the erosion of civil liberty."