Richard Tyler | ukwatch.net

Security Services on trial

tim — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 18:05:30 +0000

A London court has ruled that the British government must disclose information that could support the claim that torture was used to extract confessions from Binyam Mohamed, a former British resident who has been held in Guantánamo Bay since September 2004.

The ruling by the Judicial Review—a special court that considers the lawfulness of a decision or action made by a public body—is a rebuff to Foreign Secretary David Miliband, who had initially argued that he was under no obligation to provide Mohamed’s lawyers with the information.

Binyam Mohamed has now been incarcerated for nearly six and half years. He was first detained in Pakistan, and then subjected to “extraordinary rendition”—Washington’s euphemism for its programme of organised kidnapping and torture—to Morocco. Here he was held for 18 months while his captors used torture—including slicing his genitals with a razor—to wring a “confession” out of him.

He currently faces trial by a US Military Tribunal, charged with conspiring to commit terrorism and providing material support for terrorism in an alleged “dirty-bomb” plot. He could face the death penalty if found guilty. The judges ruled that the information is “not only necessary but essential for his defence”.

Human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, Director of Reprieve, who has represented Mohamed since 2005, told the press, “This is a momentous decision. Compelling the British government to release information that can prove Mr. Mohamed’s innocence is one obvious step towards making up for the years of torture that he has suffered. The next step is for the British government to demand an end to the charade against him in Guantánamo Bay, and return him home to Britain.”

In their ruling, the judges state, “It is a long standing principle of the common law that confessions obtained by torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment cannot be used as evidence in any trial.”

The Judicial Review was held at the end of July over five days in both open and closed sessions, also hearing testimony in camera from British Security Service and Secret Service officers who had been involved in the questioning of Mohamed while he was detained in Pakistan and elsewhere. The court’s 75-page open judgement was finally published last week, while a secret “closed” judgement has also been made.

Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones found there were compelling grounds that the “exculpatory” information should be released in confidence to Mohamed’s legal representatives. No order for the provision of such information has been made until a further hearing considers the issues of “national security” raised by the Foreign Secretary as grounds for its non-disclosure.

At the Judicial Review, Dinah Rose QC, representing Mohamed, told the court that by cooperating with the US in its unlawful treatment of her client, the security and intelligence agencies were “mixed up in wrongdoing”. It was also alleged that the US “provided the UK with the fruits of his interrogation”.

Rose said that a British agent—identified only as “Witness B”—had made a “veiled threat” to Mohamed while he was being held in Pakistan, to encourage his “cooperation”, with the implication that “we won’t help you unless you confess”. She also asserted that MI5 had “repeatedly” provided the US authorities with detailed information about Mohamed’s life in the UK, information that was then used by his captors during interrogation.

In his summing up, Ben Jaffey, another of Mohamed’s legal team, highlighted the contradictions in MI5’s accounts; one MI5 officer had said that British security and intelligence agencies “did not know” Binyam Mohamed’s whereabouts after he was flown out of Pakistan in 2002, whereas an MI5 representative had explicitly told the House of Commons Intelligence and Security Committee that it believed he was in US custody.

Seeking to justify its refusal to hand over information that could uphold Mohamed’s claim that he was tortured, the government told the court that the UK was “hugely dependent in a number of areas on US intelligence”.

Moreover, it was a “fundamental principle” that information passed between the countries not be disclosed to a third party without the consent of the country which had provided it. “Any disclosure, however limited, would seriously undermine this principle to the point that future cooperation between the UK and its most valuable intelligence partner, the US, would be severely jeopardised”, posing a “very serious risk to UK national security”.

Judicial Review findings

Binyam Mohamed’s case makes a mockery of the Labour government’s pretensions to oppose the use of torture and uphold human rights.

While claiming to uphold the Geneva Conventions and international treaties outlawing the use of torture, British military personnel, as well as officers from the various intelligence agencies have been implicated in the mistreatment of detainees in Afghanistan and Iraq. In the case of Binyam Mohamed, they have been caught red-handed.

The judgement records that “it was accepted on behalf of the Foreign Secretary… that BM [Binyam Mohamed] had established an arguable case (i) that over the period April 2002 to May 2004 he was first held by the United States incommunicado and without access to a lawyer or a court or tribunal in Pakistan, and then detained there or elsewhere by the United States until his arrival in Guantánamo Bay in September 2004 (ii) that he was subject to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment by or on behalf of the United States during such detention and (iii) that he was subject to torture during such detention by or on behalf of the United States.”

Moreover, the legal hearing and court ruling establish conclusively that not only did the British government know about the mistreatment of Mohamed, British agents also facilitated this “wrongdoing”. The judges found that “The relationship between the United Kingdom Government and the United States authorities was far beyond that of a bystander or witness to the alleged wrongdoing”.

Even more damning, the court found “that on the basis that what was done was arguably wrongdoing, the SyS [Security Service] facilitated it in the manner and to the extent described.”

The court concluded that the “conduct of the Security Service facilitated interviews by or on behalf of the United States when BM was being detained by the United States incommunicado and without access to a lawyer in Pakistan in the period April 2002 until at least May 2002… The Court also concluded that the Security Service continued to facilitate the interviewing of BM by providing information and questions after 17 May 2002, in the knowledge of what was reported to them as to the circumstances of his detention and treatment in Pakistan.”

The Security Services then continued to provide further information and questions to their American counterparts, even when they knew that Mohamed had been moved from Afghanistan to a third country, where he faced serious mistreatment.

Mohamed’s lawyers have been pressing the government to release information and documents they held that might sustain his claim that the “evidence” against him had been extracted under torture. After an initial request for information was lodged by his legal representatives in April, government lawyers responded by saying the “UK is under no obligation under international law to assist foreign courts and tribunals in assuring that torture evidence is not admitted”.

Binyam Mohamed’s case was finally accepted for Judicial Review at the beginning of June. Recognising the urgency of his plight, Mr Justice Saunders agreed to an “expedited” hearing, saying, “If it is correct that in the course of an interrogation, in which material supplied by the Defendant [the British government] was employed, the Claimant [Binyam Mohamed] was tortured, then it is arguable that there is an obligation to disclose material which may assist Claimant in establishing before the American Military Court that he was tortured. Whether the Court should exercise its discretion not to order disclosure can only be determined at a full hearing.”

It was not until this application for a Judicial Review was accepted that the Foreign Secretary then grudgingly acknowledged government documents “could be considered exculpatory or might otherwise be relevant in the context of proceedings before the Military Commissions”.

Geneva Conventions

In its deliberations, the court considered whether the British government or its agents had contravened the Genva Conventions.

“The United Kingdom Armed Forces are trained in the laws of armed conflict set out in the Geneva Conventions. The Joint Services Intelligence Organisations’ training documentation states that the following techniques are expressly and explicitly forbidden: (a) physical punishment of any sort; (b) the use of stress positions; (c) intentional sleep deprivations; (d) withdrawal of food, water or medical treatment and three other specified techniques.”

Citing a 2007 report by the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), established by the Intelligence Services Act 1994 to examine the policy, administration and expenditure of the Security Service (SyS), Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), and the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the court found that the SyS and SIS “must have appreciated that it [rendition] was contrary to the rule of law.”

The ruling also documents the fact that the government knew of the ongoing and persistent mistreatment of detainees being held by the American authorities, or those acting on their behalf.

From December 2001, British intelligence operatives were able to interview detainees in Afghanistan, if permission was given by the US authorities holding them. The first SyS officers arrived at Bagram airbase on January 9, 2002 to begin this interrogation.

A report from one such officer dated January 10, 2002 contained certain “observations” about the conditions under which the detainees were being held. As a consequence, on January 11, 2002, instructions were sent to all SIS and SyS officers in Afghanistan that all prisoners, “however they are described, are entitled to the same levels of protection.”

Despite claims that this merely represented an “isolated case”, the judgement records that there were reports of a “further isolated case” in March 2002, and in April 2002 an SIS officer was present at an interrogation of a detainee by the US military, who complained of being kept “in isolation”.

In June 2002, according to an ISC report cited by the court, the SyS had discussed with Foreign and Commonwealth officials a US report that referred to the “hooding, withholding of blankets and sleep deprivation of a detainee in Afghanistan”.

Again, in July 2002, a SyS officer reported to his senior management that whilst in Afghanistan, “a United States official had referred to ‘getting a detainee ready’, which appeared to involve sleep deprivation, hooding and the use of stress positions.”

The court ruling cited an official document that was sent to all Security Service and Secret Service officers in Afghanistan in January 2002: “With regard to the status of the prisoners, under the various Geneva Conventions and protocols, all prisoners, however they are described, are entitled to the same levels of protection. You have commented on their treatment. It appears from your description that they may not be being treated in accordance with the appropriate standards. Given that they are not within our custody or control, the law does not require you to intervene to prevent this. That said, HMG’s [Her Majesty’s Government] stated commitment to human rights makes it important that the Americans understand that we cannot be party to such ill treatment nor can we be seen to condone it.”

Such is the Labour government’s venal double-talk: not only has the British government tacitly accepted the use of torture by the US authorities from the beginning of the illegal wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (and benefited from the “intelligence” it produces), British agents have actively facilitated it. All that counts is that HMG must not be “seen” to condone it!

UK Government Accessing Telephone Records

Tim Holmes — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 14:52:29 +0000

At the beginning of October, the Labour government “activated” part three of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA) granting various branches of the state wide powers to access telephone records without recourse to a judge.

According to some reports, up to 800 state bodies and agencies can now seek access to telephone records, including all of Britain’s local authorities and even such quasi-non-governmental organisations as the Scottish Ambulance Service Board or the Food Standards Agency.

Security and Counter-terrorism Minister Tony McNulty told BBC Radio 4 that the data could provide three levels of information, with the simplest being about the phone’s owner. The second level of data is not merely about the subscriber, “but also the calls made by that phone.

“And the third level, which is purely for the security forces, police, etc., is not just the subscriber information and the calls made, but also the calls coming in and location data—where the calls are made from.”

Since telecom operators retain geographic data about the “cells” over which calls are routed, these provide sufficient information to locate a mobile phone. In urban areas, where the cell transmitters are very densely sited, this enables a phone’s position to be calculated to within a few feet.

Further powers include demanding encryption keys that may have been used to encrypt data and emails be handed over, with failure to comply attracting a possible prison sentence of from two to five years.

Under section 49 of RIPA, the police can serve a notice requiring encrypted data to be “put into an intelligible form”—i.e., decrypted. It can force people to hand over their encryption keys, which will then be held by the National Technical Assistance Centre (NTAC). According to the Home Office, this is a “twenty-four hour centre operated on behalf of all the law enforcement, security and intelligence agencies, providing a central facility for the complex processing needed to derive intelligible material from lawfully intercepted computer-to-computer communications and from lawfully seized computer data that are increasingly encrypted.”

The government has sought to justify this extension of state powers mainly by citing the “fight against terrorism,” but it has also admitted that the use of encryption has grown more rapidly than it had anticipated, and that this is also a reason why it has now “activated” the powers already contained in RIPA when it was placed on the statute books in 2000.

The new powers provide a quasi-judicial veneer for the fact that various state agencies were already seeking far wider access to private data, and this is set to expand even further. A commentary by the civil liberties organisation Statewatch in 2003 had already noted that “hundreds of thousands of requests for access to communication data are already being made by agencies even though there is no legal power to do so.”

According to a report this month by the civil and human rights group Liberty, there were “nearly 440,000 authorisations for communications data traffic between June 2005 and March 2006.”

This massive extension of the state’s powers to intrude into the life of the ordinary citizen was introduced without recourse to a debate in parliament but through the mechanism of a “parliamentary instrument” signed by the home secretary, Jacquie Smith, which one press report said was “quietly approved” in July.

The government claims to have held “full consultation” on the introduction of the new measures, but this is contested by those who follow civil liberties issues closely. Writing in the Observer newspaper, Henry Porter said, “Yeah, right. When? With whom? The Welsh Ambulance Service? The Postal Services Commission? Wychavon district council? All of them can now acquire your phone records. There was absolutely no debate about this, and it is nothing but a straight lie to claim otherwise.”

“We are not intruding into people’s private lives,” a Home Office spokesperson said, going on to claim that the exercise of the new powers was consistent with the European Convention on Human Rights and UK Human Rights Act, as long as the demand for decryption is “both necessary and proportionate.”

But who decides what is “necessary and proportionate”? And what public scrutiny is there to ensure that these powers are not being abused arbitrarily?

To require judicial approval for such a level of access requests would completely swamp the court system. So authorisation has been devolved to what Statewatch has called the office of the “toothless” Interception of Communications Commissioner, “which is hardly likely to engender public confidence.”

“The holders of this post, and the Tribunal to which members of the public can complain about surveillance, were created under the 1985 Interceptions of Communications Act (now replaced by RIPA 2000), have never in the eighteen years of their existence upheld a complaint,” according to Statewatch.

In a further Kafkaesque twist, those receiving a notice under section 49 of RIPA are legally prohibited from telling anyone apart from their lawyer about it.

Since 2004, telecom and Internet service providers have voluntarily provided data when requested; now, they will be required to retain such information for one year. However, since the provisions only apply to data within the UK, large corporations could easily avoid this by keeping their data and encryption keys offshore.

By 2009, the retention of data including Internet sites visited, emails sent and VOIP (Voice over IP or Internet telephony) will be mandatory.

This will put into UK law the highly contentious European Commission Directive on mandatory data retention, adopted in 2005, and will replace the current “voluntary” code introduced in the UK in 2003. This regulation does not just cover terrorism but all crime, however minor.

Not only in Britain but throughout Europe and internationally, the rights to free speech and personal privacy are being seriously eroded, with governments habitually citing the “fight against terrorism” to justify their mounting curtailment of long-standing democratic norms.

“Nothing to hide, nothing to fear” is the false mantra repeated by ministers of every political stripe.

But the latest extension of state powers in Britain through RIPA means historically determined democratic rights such as the presumption of innocence and against arbitrary state actions are being further abrogated. Such laws, enabling almost routine trawling operations through mountains of personal data by the state, weight the balance of power overwhelming in favour of “state rights” against those of the individual citizen.

The Attempt to Deport Chindamo

Tim Holmes — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 22:57:37 +0000

Learco Chindamo was 15 years old when he killed headmaster Philip Lawrence outside his London school in 1995. He was sentenced to be “detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure”—the formal judgment pronounced in the most serious juvenile cases as an alternative to handing down a life sentence to a child. He can be considered for parole after serving a tariff (minimum) of 12 years detention, which expires in January 2008 when Chindamo will be 27.

When he was six his mother brought Chindamo to Britain, where he has lived ever since. He has no family ties in Italy, his country of birth, and does not speak Italian.

The moves by the Labour government—supported by sections of the media and the Conservative Party—to seek Chindamo’s deportation to Italy once he has completed his prison sentence are an attempt once again to shift politics to the right and undermine basic democratic rights.

There is no basis in law to seek deportation. This was confirmed when the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal upheld an appeal by Chindamo against being deported to Italy at the conclusion of his prison term.

In its 33 page determination, the Tribunal sustained Chindamo’s appeal largely on the basis of European Union legislation—the 2004 Citizenship Directive—that only allows the deportation of an EU citizen where they have previously lived in a member state for at least 10 years and when there are “imperative grounds of public security.”

In a rebuff to the Home Office’s attempts to portray Chindamo as a hardened and unrepentant murderer who would continue to represent a serious danger to the public were he released, the Tribunal “concluded that there do not exist grounds of public policy in this case which justify exclusion.”

The Tribunal’s determination included several references to the progress Chindamo has made while in jail, both in furthering his own education, dealing with the behaviour that lead to his offence in the first place, and his expressions of remorse for the crime he committed while still a child.

“He has obtained [qualifications] GCSEs [General Certificate of Secondary Education] in maths, English and art and GBTSs in hospitality and catering and health and social care. Before he went to prison he could not read properly or spell his address or his mother’s second name,” the Tribunal noted.

The Tribunal found “particular significance” in what was said by Mr. Hughes, the Deputy Governor of Ford Prison, in his letter to Chindamo’s solicitors of 8 March 2007. The Tribunal noted: “He [Hughes] had been in the prison service for thirty years and had dealt with numerous offences. There were only a small minority who had demonstrated a change for the better and gone on to lead lawful and purposeful lives and he strongly believed that the appellant was a changed person who had realised the gravity of his index offence and if given a chance would prove himself worthy of trust. All the reports on him had been very positive and the Parole Board had been very impressed.”

The Tribunal also supported the appeal on the secondary grounds that to deport Chindamo would breach his rights under the 1998 Human Rights Act, which incorporated the European Convention on Human Rights into English law, since Chindamo and his family have lived in the UK almost his entire life.

The determination, signed by Senior Immigration Judge David Allen, found that his removal would be disproportionate, since “the family have been living lawfully in the United Kingdom for twenty-one years and are established here. In Italy the appellant has no home, family, language, connection or support. In the United Kingdom where he has spent all but three or four years of his life, the appellant has a home, a supportive family, supportive agencies and language skills. We conclude that the Secretary of State has not shown that the breach of the Article 8 [Human Rights Act] right to family life that would be occasioned by the appellant’s removal to Italy would be proportionate.”

It was this part of the Tribunal’s findings that incurred the wrath of sections of the rightwing press such as The Sun and Daily Mail.

“Scrap the Act” railed Rupert Murdoch’s pro-Labour Sun in its editorial following the announcement of the Tribunal’s verdict. The rag also directed its venom against Chindamo personally in editorials entitled, “Lowest of the low” and “Forever evil.” The Mail approvingly quoted Conservative Party leader David Cameron calling for the abolition of the Human Rights Act.

This diatribe against the minimal democratic protections offered by the Human Rights Act is of a piece with the long-running campaign by the gutter press calling for harsher measures against “foreign” criminals.

Labour is at one with such demands.

Home Office minister Tony McNulty told the press Chindamo had “forfeited any right to domicile in the UK.” Justice Secretary Jack Straw was quoted saying that the government would “vigorously appeal” against the decision and would seek to uphold its original deportation request. As Home Secretary in 2001, Straw had presided over the first attempt to gain a deportation order against Chindamo, which failed because it was initiated too soon after he was sentenced.

From its inception, the Labour government has championed the most reactionary social conceptions, seeking to position itself to the right of the Conservatives as the party of “law-and-order.” In 1993, following the murder of toddler Jamie Bulger by two ten-year-old boys, Labour’s then Home Affairs spokesman and future leader Tony Blair called for children to face a harsher legal environment.

In power, Labour has enacted measures that constitute a form of creeping authoritarianism. Long-standing legal and democratic rights, such as the right to a jury trial, the presumption of innocence, habeas corpus, the privacy of the individual and others, have been severely weakened or tacitly abolished.

The socially progressive notion of doli incapax, that a child cannot be held responsible for crimes they commit in the same way as an adult, has been constantly eroded and undermined. Measures such as ASBO’s, “anti-social behaviour orders,” are directed at criminalising children as young as nine.

Learco Chindamo was not only still legally a child when he committed his crime. He was functionally illiterate, with a difficult family background. He had problems integrating at school and became involved in a gang. It was in the course of a gang-related fight that he stabbed and killed Philip Lawrence.

Despite his efforts to overcome his lack of education and deal with the behaviour that led him to commit his crime, Chindamo has suffered both from constant vilification in the tabloid media and the regressive judicial policies of the government. While he was in Ford open prison he had wanted to go to college to receive training as a plumber and gain work experience. However, this came to nothing when he was transferred back to a closed prison as part of Labour’s crackdown on “foreign” prisoners.

The moves to have Chindamo deported once his prison term expires would in effect punish him twice for his crime. After serving the full sentence imposed at the time of his trial, and despite clearly having made significant progress towards his own rehabilitation, deporting him to Italy would be a form of legally-imposed exile, removing him from his family and forcing him to live in country with which he has no connection.

MPs' FoI Exemption

Tim Holmes — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 22:03:11 +0000

With tacit support from the Labour government and Conservative front bench, a bill has been tabled that would exempt Parliament and MPs from Freedom of Information (FoI) legislation.

Former Conservative whip David Maclean was recently able to reintroduce his private member’s bill removing parliament’s obligations under the Freedom of Information Act.

Maclean’s bill had failed to pass through the House of Commons on its first reading, as a coalition of Labour backbenchers and Liberal Democrats had talked it out before a formal vote could be tabled. This usually spells the end for most private member’s bills.

However, in January, Maclean was able to gain a second reading for his Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill, whose full title is: “A bill to amend the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to exempt from its provisions the House of Commons and House of Lords and correspondence between Members of Parliament and public authorities.”

Guardian parliamentary correspondent David Hencke described how, “On the day Westminster was convulsed by the revelations surrounding the dawn arrest of Ruth Turner, the senior Downing Street aide, in the cash-for-honours investigation, MPs approved on the nod the second reading of a bill to exclude parliament from the Freedom of Information Act.”

Maclean was quoted saying, “I am showing some of the younger hands how you can get a bill through Parliament after long experience as a whip in both getting and blocking bills through Parliament.”

This meant the bill could proceed through the parliamentary system and be put to a formal vote, which then happened on Friday, May 18.

While in opposition, the Labour Party had promised it would introduce Freedom of Information legislation once it took office. After winning the 1997 election, it then took Tony Blair’s government five years before what one expert described as a “much watered-down version finally reached the statute book.”

A plethora of exemptions were included in the FoI Act, offering ministers and civil servants opportunities to block requests for information on such grounds as “commercial privilege” and “international relations.” Moreover, ministers retain a blanket veto over the disclosure of any information where this might “prejudice the effective conduct of public affairs.”

The result has been to severely limit the number of successful applications for information to be released under the FoI Act.

In a recent article for the Index on Censorship, founded in 1972 to defend the right of free expression, Guardian investigations editor David Leigh noted that of nearly 63,000 applications for information from central government under the FoI Act, only 36,558 had been granted, with seven departments, including the Justice Ministry, refusing over half the requests.

Not content with its wide existing powers to keep information from public scrutiny, the government has been seeking ways to further emasculate and restrict the scope of the FoI legislation.

While officially describing its position on Maclean’s bill as “neutral,” behind the scenes the government had been pushing for Labour MPs to support the legislation. An email to all backbench Labour MPs from the Parliamentary Labour Party’s Parliamentary Committee said the bill was “worthy of support.” Those signing the email also included Socialist Campaign Group member Ann Cryer and former Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament chair Joan Ruddock.

When it came to the vote on the bill, which passed by 96 votes to 25, a total of 26 government ministers could be found in the “Yes” lobby, including some of the closest allies of the prime minister in waiting, Gordon Brown.

Conservative leader David Cameron abstained from the vote, and there was no order to Tory backbenchers to oppose the bill. Only a handful of Labour MPs and the Liberal Democrats voted against.

Maclean and those supporting his bill argue that it is necessary to preserve the confidentiality of MPs’ correspondence, particularly when it involves their constituents. However, there are already protections in place to protect the privacy of letters concerning individual constituents. Moreover, in the two-and-a-half years since the FoI Act has been in force, there has not been a single complaint to the Information Commissioner from an MP or a constituent about the improper disclosure of such correspondence.

The press criticism that accompanied the passage of Maclean’s bill stretched across the official political spectrum. The pro-Labour Guardian called it “an insult to open government and democracy”; the Independent led by calling it “cynical and slippery behaviour” and the pro-Conservative Telegraph opined that “the Lords must throw out this hypocritical bill.”

Much of the press comment pointed to the fact that if enacted, the bill would prevent access to information about the expenses and allowances paid to MPs for their official duties. These can dwarf their already substantial £60,000 annual salaries; for example, Maclean himself was paid nearly £130,000 in expenses last year.

Public responses on news web sites were almost universally hostile, with many scathing comments being directed at MPs for seeking to exempt themselves from legislation that applies to all other public bodies.

The bill has now passed to the House of Lords, where it is thought unlikely to pass through intact. Liberal Democrat peers will oppose it and the right-wing Daily Mail wrote that Tory leader Cameron had performed a “u-turn” and was now seeking to block the legislation in the Upper House. Chancellor Gordon Brown was also said to favour the bill being rewritten to make explicit the publication of MPs’ expenses and allowances.

Maclean has sought to head off this widespread criticism by tabling an amendment to include a statutory requirement for details of MPs’ expenses to be published annually.

What has also gone largely unreported in the press is the fact that a major result of the bill would be to keep secret the lobbying of public authorities that MPs undertake. An article on the Index on Censorship web site by the Guardian’s David Leigh notes that as well as enabling MPs to keep “less salubrious interests” secret, “The real effect of the bill would be to enable politicians not only to misspend the taxpayers’ money but also to lobby under cover.”

Whatever the fate of Maclean’s bill in the Lords, the government is seeking to further curtail access to information under the guise of limiting costs and cutting down on so-called “serial requesters”—mainly news and media outlets that engage in investigative journalism.

Last summer, the Lord Chancellor, whose justice ministry has overall responsibility for FoI issues, circulated a private paper to his cabinet colleagues that proposed relatively minor changes in the fine print of the legislation that could then be used to limit the number of requests from a single organisation, such as a broadcaster like the BBC, to just four a year per government department.

A further ruse to ensure that an already prohibitive £600 maximum cost per request was reached and then exceeded is the proposal to include a charge not just for extracting but for “perusing” the material that has been requested, with the cost of a minister’s time being billed at £300 an hour!

In a letter dated May 8 to the Lord Chancellor, Trade Secretary Alistair Darling has called for even more restrictions, writing that “we are increasingly concerned that in a number of respects the demands of the Freedom of Information Act are placing good government at risk.”

Darling calls for a speedy review of FoI regulations covering the correspondence between MPs and ministers, the policy advice given to ministers by civil servants and for closer coordination between different government departments that receive requests for similar information.

The trade secretary concludes by saying consideration should be given in future to changes to the legislation “needed to redress an apparent imbalance between the ‘right to know’ and the protection of private space where necessary for good governance.”

A government that has flagrantly lied to the public in order to justify launching an illegal war of conquest in Iraq has much need of a “private space” where it can continue to hatch up further dirty deeds.

UK is CCTV Capital

jeppe — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 22:40:48 +0000

It is estimated that there are some 4.2 million Closed Circuit TV (CCTV) cameras in Britain, one for every 14 people. An individual might be captured by more than 300 separate cameras on an average day.

Such all-pervasive video surveillance, combined with the ability to exploit the information contained in numerous government and private databases, enables the almost seamless monitoring of the population.

The list of places monitored by CCTV is endless. Most of Britains urban centres are under surveillance, as are motorways, hospitals, schools, banks, museums, shopping malls, sports facilities and travel hubs such as railway stations and airports.

CCTV cameras are operated by the police, the security services, various national and local government agencies and a myriad of institutions and private companies.

Their insidious spread has seriously eroded long-standing democratic rights. The routine recording of video footage in both public and private spaces represents a massive intrusion into individual privacy.

CCTV is increasingly being used to monitor so-called antisocial behaviour, including minor offences such as littering, urinating in a public place and drunkenness.

All demonstrations are now routinely recorded by specialist police video units on the ground, and from helicopters. Even if no crime or public order offence has been committed, the footage is kept by the police, providing evidence of an individuals political stance on issues such as the war in Iraq, nuclear energy, pensioners rights, hunting, etc.

In the 1990s, the Home Office spent 78 percent of its crime prevention budget on installing CCTV systems, and £500 million has been spent on CCTV infrastructure over the last decade. However, there is no conclusive evidence that crime has been significantly reducedthe main justification for its introduction. One Home Office study found that CCTV schemes had little overall effect on crime levels. Academic research has pointed to the displacement effecta reduction in crime in an area monitored by CCTV is accompanied by a rise in crime in neighbouring unmonitored areas.

Richard Thomas, Britains Information Commissionernominally charged with enforcing and overseeing the Data Protection Act 1998 and the Freedom of Information Act 2000recently published a 140-page Report on the Surveillance Society.

The document, prepared by the Surveillance Studies Network, an academic group, warns that peoples lives will be monitored even more in the next decade by the government, the public sector, employers and big business.

Advances in computer technology have also been applied to video surveillance. The digitisation of CCTV means that a new generation of smart cameras, or cameras linked to sophisticated computer systems, can now be used to recognise an individual person through face recognition software, or to read a vehicles number plate.

The deployment of this last application makes Britain the first country in the world to record the movements of all vehicles. In 1996, Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) recorded just over 300,000 instances of vehicles exceeding speed limits. By 2004, the system was used more than 2 million times.

Thousands of existing CCTV cameras are now being converted to read number plates automatically night and day, providing 24-hour coverage of all motorways and main roads, as well as towns, cities, ports and garage forecourts.

This network of cameras automatically reads every passing number plate, storing the data for several years. No longer used merely to enforce speed restrictions, a central ANPR database has been set up alongside the Police National Computer in Hendon, north London. This can record details of up to 35 million number-plate reads per day, including time, date and precise location. This huge database of vehicle movements enables the police or security services to analyse any journey a driver has made.

There are plans to extend the database, increasing the storage period to five years and linking it to thousands of additional cameras. In this way, details of up to 100 million number plates could be fed into the central database each day.

National DNA Database

Not only is Britain the world leader in spying on its citizens, the National DNA Database, projected to have 3.7 million profiles by April 2007, is the worlds biggest DNA database.

Some 2 million people are arrested each year in England and Wales. Since the Criminal Justice Act 2003 became law, the police are empowered to record not only the fingerprints of all those arrested, but also to take and keep their DNA samples, regardless of eventual guilt or innocence. Once again, this data is accessible via the Police National Computer.

The National DNA Database was set up in 1995. By 2005, it contained some 3.45 million individual records, or roughly 5.2 percent of the population. If a comparable system existed in America with a similar level of recording, it would contain the DNA of some 15 million individuals.

Professor Alec Jeffreys from the University of Leicester, who pioneered DNA fingerprinting in the 1980s, recently told the BBC that the National DNA Database now contained samples from hundreds of thousands of innocent people, and was skewed socio-economically and ethnically.

My view is that it is discriminatory, Jeffreys stated.

The records contained in the database display a marked racial bias against those from ethnic minorities, with nearly 40 percent of black males and 13 percent of Asian males now being profiled.

The National DNA Database contains information on some 135,000 black males aged 15-34, estimated to be more than three quarters of Britains young black population. By contrast, only just over one fifth of young white males DNA are recorded on file.

Prompted by widespread concerns at the potential for misuse of such information, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics is presently conducting a study entitled Forensic use of bioinformationethical issues.

DNA identification is not infallible: As the Report on the Surveillance Society notes, whilst a negative DNA test seems to be a near perfect tool for acquitting the innocent, false negatives being very rare, false positives are surprisingly likely.

Misidentification is a commonplace in other surveillance systems. Recently, the Criminal Records Bureau, routinely called upon to provide information about those seeking to work with children or vulnerable adults, revealed that 2,700 people had been wrongly identified as having criminal records, possibly costing them their jobs.

Moreover, the Police Inspectorate has noted that 22 percent of records entered into the Police National Computer at force level contained at least one error, even when they had been checked by a supervisor.

The Labour government is pressing ahead with its plans to introduce ID cards, linked to a National Identify Database that can identify every citizen with a unique reference number across multiple data sourcespublic and private.

The term dataveillance has been coined to describe the surveillance of a persons activities through electronic data. Cross-referenced by an ID number, linked to a massive CCTV network employing face-recognition software and automatic vehicle registration, and by accessing numerous government and private databases, the British state is developing the means to monitor the movement and whereabouts of any individual at any time, virtually at the press of a button.

Prime Minister Tony Blair has defended this Orwellian state of affairs. Writing in the Telegraph at the beginning of November, he insisted, We need ID cards to secure our borders and ease modern life.

He continued, I know this will outrage some people but, in a world in which we daily provide information to a whole host of companies and organisations and willingly carry a variety of cards to identify us, I dont think the civil liberties argument [against ID cards] carries much weight.

Such disregard for long-standing legal principles, such as the right to privacy and the presumption of innocence, is no surprise coming from a prime minister whose government has enacted a plethora of anti-democratic legislation under the guise of the fight against terror.

The arguments employed by Blair have been regurgitated by Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee, who derided those who oppose such massive state surveillance for indulging in middle class hysteria. Disingenuously claiming that there is really nothing to worry about in the surveillance society, Toynbee described opposition to the destruction of civil liberties as paranoid speculation about imaginary abuses.

Denouncing those for whom she claimed liberty is taking priority over equality, she insinuated that those opposing the erosion of democratic rights were seeking to divert from more pressing issues.

Why arent people as angry about the galloping inequality in living standards? she asked.

Toynbee is a long-standing defender of the Blair government, whose big business policies are directly responsible for the increase in social inequality.

Her argument not only gives carte blanche to the government for its attack on civil liberties. It also seeks to conceal the fact that this offensive is intimately bound up with galloping inequality.

Under conditions in which the mass of the population live in economic insecurity, and in which all the last vestiges of welfare reforms are being dismantled, the British state is resorting to the most repressive measures to deal with the resulting class tensions.

Bypassing Parliament

Alex Doherty — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 13:31:15 +0000

Under the guise of reducing unnecessary red tape and removing the regulatory burden on business, the Labour government is seeking to grab powers formerly associated with the rule of an absolute monarch.

The innocuous-sounding Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill concerns what have become known as Henry VIII powers, after the 1539 Statute of Proclamations, under which the Tudor Kings proclamations shall be obeyed, observed, and kept as though they were made by act of parliament. In the present bill, a similar power is to be granted to ministers, who may reform, repeal and introduce legislation by order, i.e., without Parliament debating it in the House of Commons. By ministerial fiat, new criminal offences could be created, punishable by up to two years imprisonment. The Bill could also be used to reform itself, for example, removing such an upper limit on a prison term enacted under its provisions.

With the sweep of a ministers pen, fundamental democratic and legal rights could be struck down.

In seeking to abrogate the powers of Parliament, the Labour government is playing fast and loose with constitutional issues that are at the heart of Britains centuries-old bourgeois political and legal mechanisms.

Somewhat ironically, one of the few voices of caution came from Britains second chamber, where appointed life peers, hereditary aristocrats and church bishops still hold sway. Lord Holme, chairman of the Constitution Committee in the House of Lords, felt compelled to write to the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs expressing the serious disquiet his committee had about the nature of the powers contained in the proposed Bill.

We are concerned by the potential of the Bills proposals, if enacted, markedly to alter the respective and long-established roles of Ministers and Parliament in the legislative process. This is because Part 1 of the Bill seeks to confer unprecedentedly wide powers on Ministers to make Orders to amend, repeal and replace any legislation (and to grant powers in respect of rules of the common law in relation to Law Commission recommendations), with only a very restricted role for Parliament in the process.

In conclusion, Lord Holme cautioned, The reforms thus have the potential to be so far reaching that special consideration will need to be given by the Committee to the risk of inadvertent and ill considered constitutional change.

Writing on the letters page of the Times, six professors from Cambridge University Law Faculty, amongst them several senior barristers, noted with alarm that if the bill is passed, the government could rewrite almost any Act and, in some cases, enact new laws that at present only Parliament can make.

Condemning the limitations within the bill on this power as few and weak, they highlight the potential for the government to use the bills delegated powers to: create a new offence of incitement to religious hatred, punishable with two years imprisonment; curtail or abolish jury trial; permit the Home Secretary to place citizens under house arrest; allow the Prime Minister to sack judges; rewrite the law on nationality and immigration; reform Magna Carta (or what remains of it).

They conclude that the bill creates a major shift of power within the state, which in other countries would require an amendment to the constitution; and one in which the winner would be the executive, and the loser Parliament.

The new bill is set to replace the Regulatory Reform Act 2001 and considerably extends the powers of ministers compared with Parliament. However, Cabinet Office Minister Jim Murphy, responsible for introducing the bill, said the legislation would not be used to do anything that is highly controversial. The government has also reiterated its commitment not to use Order powers to deliver highly political measures, such as amendments to terrorism law.

At the same time, the government has indicated that what might be considered controversial at one time is not necessarily controversial at another, pledging to assess the degree of controversy associated with any particular proposal on a case-by-case basis.

Moreover, the bill itself contains no limitations on only implementing measures that are uncontroversial, leaving the assessment of such criteria to the subjective discretion of ministers and the government.

A research paper published by the House of Commons Library notes that parliamentary sovereignty means that bills cannot be struck down by the courts. The concept of ultra vires [action outside the agreed powers of a particular body] does not apply to Acts of Parliament nor to parliamentary proceedings by virtue of Article 9 of the Bill of Rights 1688. The paper concludes that there would thus be no mechanism by which the courts could review the use of the powers extended to ministers under Clause 1 of the bill.

Liberal Democrat MP David Howarth, who is also Reader in Law at Cambridge University, wrote, At its most extreme, in a manoeuvre akin to a legislative Indian rope trick, ministers could use it to transfer all legislative power permanently to themselves.

There is a precedent for such an action. On March 23, 1933, the German parliament passed the Nazis Enabling Act (Ermächtigungsgesetz), allowing Hitler to pass laws without the need to seek parliamentary approval.

The Blair government is not the same as Hitlers regime. However, since Labour came to power in 1997, and especially since the 9/11 attacks and the launch of the war on terror, there has been a continual erosion of civil liberties and the overturning of long-standing legal norms. The powers of the state have been significantly increased by a raft of legislation that establishes the quasi-legal basis for dictatorial forms of rule.

The Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill was introduced before an almost deserted Chamber of Commons on February 16, receiving little notice in most of the media. The wide-scale indifference to the far reaching democratic, juridical and constitutional implications of the bill within most of official politics and the media underscores the absence within the political elite of any serious constituency for the defence of fundamental democratic rights.

Control Orders Issued

Alex Doherty — Tue, 22 Mar 2005 13:51:47 +0000

Within hours of the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005 (PTA) being signed into law on March 11, Britains home secretary, Charles Clarke, personally authorised the first control orders.

The PTA is a fundamental attack on democratic rights and overturns long-standing legal protections. It enables a wide range of restrictions to be imposed on those subjected to a control order. These can range from house arrest to electronic tagging, prohibitions from meeting certain individuals, restrictions on travel and bans on using telephones or the Internet.

The legislation contains no definitive list of what measures can be imposed under a control order. The potential scope of provisions goes far beyond the notorious banning orders imposed on opponents of the apartheid regime in South Africa.

The bill was passed backwards and forwards between the House of Commons and the House of Lords during 30 hours of debate. Although enjoying a majority in the Commons, the Labour government required the support of both Conservative and Liberal Democrat peers in the Lords.

Opposition in the House of Lords had a largely token character. The opposition parties had previously signalled their readiness to support the legislation provided the granting of control orders was supervised by the judiciary and the law included a so-called sunset clause, under which the legislation automatically lapses unless renewed.

In the end, the government for the most part got what it wanted. The protests of the Lords evaporated when the Labour government made some minor changes giving judges the power to decide upon a control order, but also allowing the home secretary to impose such orders in an emergency. No sooner had the law been passed, when the home secretary imposed control orders under the cloak of an emergency.

A promise from Prime Minister Tony Blair that the legislation would be subject to a future review combined with a threat to call a snap election, on the grounds that the opposition was soft on terrorism, ensured the swift compliance of the bills opponents.

That those such as Baroness Margaret Thatcher felt compelled to offer some opposition to Labours plans for control orders was hardly an expression of fidelity to democratic principles. The Tories inflicted their own attacks on democratic rights while they were in powerparticularly in Northern Ireland and in the Thatcher governments union-busting attack on the 1984-1985 miners strike. Moreover, the Conservatives have signed off on every previous anti-democratic measure enacted by Blairs government.

The PTA is only the latest in a series of laws that constitute a frontal assault on basic legal and human rights. These include ending the right to silence, allowing double jeopardy, and weakening the right to jury trials.

Sections of the political establishment might regard Labours reckless tinkering with Britains constitutional setup as potentially dangerous, but they too are driven to support measures to curb democratic freedoms because such measures are required to suppress opposition to predatory wars such as that waged against Iraq and stifle resistance to domestic policies that have produced bitter social divisions.

The legislation provides for governmental powers traditionally associated with a dictatorship. Writing in the press, Gareth Peirce, the solicitor representing several of those now subject to control orders, described the legislation as the ultimate demand of any totalitarian regime: the executive is the accuser; the moment of accusation is also the moment of imposition of the penalty. Wherever in the process a judge comes to be involved, the executive has already pre-determined that the individual will be stigmatised and punished on the basis of suspicion.

A control order can be imposed where there is a reasonable suspicion that an individual is engaged in terrorist-related activity. Not only is the burden of proof far lower than in cases where a custodial sentence is involved, the range of activities that can lead to a control order is very widely defined. Furthermore, the suspect and his legal representatives can be prohibited from seeing the evidence upon which an order is based on the grounds that this might compromise the intelligence services.

The readiness of the Lords to accept such measures highlights the absence of any significant constituency within ruling circles committed to the preservation of democratic rights. If this is the position of the Lords, which through the Law Lords functions as Britains highest court, it is clear that no section of the judiciary will offer serious safeguards against arbitrary action by the government, should they be called on to do so.

Home Secretary Clarke issued his first control orders before the ink was dry on the new law. Ten men who had already, under previous legislation, been held in detention for some three years as terror suspectswithout any charges being laid against them, without evidence of any crime being produced and without a public trialfound themselves subject to house arrest on the word of Clarke.

The breaching of a control order is now a criminal offence that carries a penalty of up to five years imprisonment.

The introduction of control orders is a wedge that will be used to launch further attacks on democratic rights both in Britain and throughout Europe. A recent report by the civil liberties organisation Statewatch notes: Behind the scenes in G8, the Council of the European Union and the Council of Europe, far-reaching changes are being planned.

These include broadening the definition of terrorist offences to include preparatory and associated actsi.e., circumstances in which no actual terrorist attack has been carried out or even planned. Those accused of condoning or sympathising with terrorism could then be seized by the state.

House Arrest Proposals

Alex Doherty — Sat, 19 Feb 2005 12:09:34 +0000

Every citizen, or at least every citizen important enough to be worth watching, could be kept for twenty-four hours a day under the eyes of the police and in the sound of official propaganda, with all other channels of communication closed1984, by George Orwell

In Orwells chilling vision of totalitarianism, a state of perpetual war is used to justify the abolition of civil liberties and the surveillance of every citizen. Some two decades from the notional setting of 1984, the same justification can be heardjust substitute the war on terrorism for Orwells fictional war between Oceania and Eurasia/Eastasia.

At the end of January, Home Secretary Charles Clarke announced plans to introduce control orders enabling the detention of alleged terror suspects under curfew at home, the electronic tagging of suspects, bans on the use of phones and the Internet and strict prohibitions on the meeting between such a suspect and other individuals. Clarke justified this abrogation of civil liberties by saying, We are in a state of emergency.

The control orders would be implemented on the word of the home secretary, a politician, and be subject to only cursory judicial scrutiny. The proposed measures share much in common with the banning orders that were infamous under the apartheid regime in South Africa as a means of isolating those who were opposed to the racist system.

That the government is minded to extend the use of control orders to a wider range of potential suspects was revealed by Clarkes adviser, Stephen McCabe. The Labour MP told the Scotsman, We can envisage this applying to animal rights extremists and the far-right, for example.

New Labours proposals have met with widespread criticism.

Law Society President Edward Nally said it was an abuse of power to place people under house arrest without evidence of criminal activity.

The government has said that prosecuting suspects is their preferred option. It should be the only option when individuals face losing their liberty, Nally added.

The human rights group Liberty said suspects should be put on trial, rather than face control orders that required a very low standard of proof. There are serious human rights concerns about the new measures and their extension to every British national, a Liberty representative said.

Leading barrister Ian Macdonald, QC said, At the end of the day if youre going to keep people in some sort of house arrest or in prison, you really have to take account of what I think is a fundamental principle, that people are presumed innocent.

Amnesty Internationals UK director, Kate Allen, said the government was sidestepping the law courts, still detaining people on secret evidence; only people will now be detained in their homes rather than at Belmarsh prison.

However he puts it, Allen added, the home secretary is giving himself the power to place anyone in the UK under house arrest, without charge or trial, based on secret evidenceUK citizens included.

Criticism of the control orders has also come from some Labour MPs, as well as the opposition Conservative Party and Liberal Democrats. Tory leader Michael Howard has said the Conservatives would oppose government plans to hold alleged terror suspects under indefinite house arrest. Instead, Howard has called for changes to the law so that so-called intercept evidenceobtained through phone-taps, bugs and other covert meanswould be admissible in court. Britain is one of the few western countries where such evidence cannot presently be used in court.

The new Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Britains most senior police officer, Sir Ian Blair has also supported calls for the admissibility of phone-tap evidence, telling the press this would make policing much easier.

Clarke has so far opposed changing the law to permit the use of phone-tap evidence, arguing, it provides only part of the intelligence against individuals, and sometimes a small part. Moreover, the government is concerned that accepting such evidence in court may expose the covert means by which the state spies on its citizens.

Prime Minister Tony Blair has agreed to meet Howard, to discuss how a consensus may be reached, ahead of plans by the opposition parties to introduce an amendment to the Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill this week to permit the use of intercept evidence.

The atmosphere of panic that surrounded announcement of the plans for control measures was exacerbated last week, with the unconditional release of another alleged foreign terrorist previously held under the 2001 Anti-terrorism Crime and Security Act (ATCSA).

In December 2004, the Law Lords ruled that the indefinite detention of such foreign terror suspects without trial was unlawful. Some 14 individuals were originally detained under ATCSA, most being held in Belmarsh prison, dubbed Britains Guantánamo. The men were held on the basis of secret evidence and denied the ability to defend themselves in open court.

Ian Macdonald, QC, who resigned last year from the legal panel representing the detainees held in Belmarsh prison, said the release of the prisoner, known as C, raised serious concerns. One minute people are dangerous and the next week they are not, he told BBC radio.

Three other men currently being held under the 2001 legislation have refused to accept their release under onerous bail conditions that are tantamount to house arrest. They would also have been banned from using the phone and receiving visits from friends.

On Monday, February 7, the government suffered a further setback when its legal effort to return a foreign terror suspect to jail was defeated.

A secret court sitting in London rejected the home secretarys argument that G, a 35-year-old Algerian man released from Belmarsh under conditions of house arrest in April on the advice of psychiatrists, had broken the terms of his release by receiving two unauthorised visitors at his London apartment.

In court, Gs solicitor Gareth Peirce accused ministers of mental torture in their treatment of her client. The Special Immigration Appeal Commission ruled that Home Secretary Clarke had not proven his case and that it would take no action towards the revocation of bail.

In 2001, a technical state of emergency was declared to justify Britains derogation from sections of the European Unions Convention on Human Rights, so that foreign terror suspects could be detained indefinitely without recourse to the courts.

Like Oceania, it would appear that Britain is now in a perpetual state of emergency.

Labour and Tories Target Immigrants in run-up to election

Alex Doherty — Thu, 03 Feb 2005 22:24:22 +0000

In an attempt to bolster flagging support for his party, Tory leader Michael Howard last week announced that a future Conservative government would place a cap on immigration and asylum. A full-page advert in the January 23 Sunday Telegraph called for an annual limit on immigration and a quota for asylum seekers, with Howard also promising 24-hour security at ports to prevent illegal immigration.

According to Howard, Conservative proposals for an Australian-style points system for work permits will ensure that priority is given to people with the skills Britain needs.

With the Tories languishing in the opinion polls, and having suffered losses to the anti-European Union UK Independence Party (UKIP) in last years EU elections, Howard hopes that by playing the immigration card he can win back former UKIP voters and gain ground on New Labour.

Howards citation of a government report on the 2001 Bradford riots to justify his own reactionary proposals testified to how far New Labour itself has moved to the right. Inward immigration does create tensions…. [C]ommunities will perceive that newcomers are in competition for scarce resources and public services, he quoted.

Howards answer: Firm immigration controls are essential for good community relations. They are vital for the management of public services. And they are critical for the maintenance of national security.

But it is the Labour government and its Tory predecessor (in which Howard was Home Secretary) that are to blame for the scarce resources and public services! It was not immigrants who were responsible for the 2001 civil unrest, but years of unrelenting cuts in social spending, the privatisation of vast swathes of the public sector and the gutting of more progressive education and welfare policies. The British National Party and National Front have fanned the resulting social tensions.

Adopting the arguments of the far right, the so-called mainstream parties are scapegoating immigrants for the problems created by their own policies.

The Tories Sunday Telegraph advert was followed the next day by a policy speech at Conservative Central Office redolent of the infamous 1978 remarks made by former Conservative leader Margaret Thatcher, when she warned that Britain faced being swamped by immigrants.

In lurid terms, Howard claimed there were millions of people in other countries who want to come and live here and that nearly 160,000 people now settle in Britain each yearthat is a city the size of Peterborough.

Even if one accepts such grossly inflated figures, this represents barely one quarter of 1 percent of the entire population of the UK. Moreover, according to official figures, the largest numbers of migrants now come from other European Union countries. With freedom of movement and settlement guaranteed to all EU citizens, Howards proposals to place an arbitrary limit on such migration would put Britain in breech of its EU treaty obligations.

Predictably, the response by Tony Blairs Labour government was to try to outflank the Tories from the right. In the Scotsman newspaper, political editor Fraser Nelson wrote, Mr. Blair has ordered his ministers not to criticise the Tories for being too harsh, and instead compete with Mr. Howard.

Education Secretary Ruth Kelly claimed that Howard was addressing realistic concerns about controlled immigration, whilst Labour MP Roger Godsiff told Radio 4s Westminster Hour that all foreign workers should be banned entry to the UK.

Godsiff told the programme, I dont believe economic migration is any longer necessary, and I also dont think its going to be good for the future of race relations in this country. Any skills shortages should be dealt with by encouraging workers to retire later, he told the Independent newspaper.

More recently, the Sunday Times revealed that Home Secretary Charles Clarke plans to steal part of the Tories immigration policy by announcing a new Australian-style points system for economic migrants.

With both Tories and Labour looking to Australia for its policy direction, the future for both immigrants and refugees does not bode well. The Australian government presides over one of the worlds most repressive refugee and asylum-seeker systems and has been repeatedly censured by the United Nations and human rights organisations.

The Tories attack on immigrants follows the recent appointment of Lynton Crosby as the partys campaign director. Crosby is the former federal director of the Australian Liberal Party and played an important role in coordinating the Australian governments scapegoating of refugees, particularly during the 2001 election campaign, when the government falsely claimed that refugees had thrown their children into the Indian Ocean.

Lies, damned lies and immigration statistics

Like the war against Iraq, immigration and asylum constitute an issue on which the positions of both main parties rest on spin, media manipulation and downright falsehood.

For example, when Howard appeared on BBC Radio 4s Today programme to promote his policy announcement, he claimed that only two out of every ten asylum seekers were genuine. However, the Information Centre about Asylum and Refugees in the UK (ICAR), an independent body based at Kings College London, noted, What the Conservative leader does not mention is that another two in ten applicants are granted permission to stay (leave to remain or humanitarian protection).

ICAR also explained that more than 10 percent of the 2002 asylum applications upon which Howard had based his claim were undecided: Asylum statistics are often quoted out of context and sometimes it is only the refusal rates for initial applications that are highlighted, whilst the number of successful appeals is disregarded.

In an analysis of Howards speech, the ICAR web site points to academic research showing the effects of such anti-asylum rhetoric: Politicians are not merely responding to the attitudes of a xenophobic public but that they are actively encouraging the negative attitudes that result in poor community cohesion.

ICARs research has shown that unbalanced and inaccurate media images of asylum seekers are frequent and powerful, with the potential to increase community tension.

Official figures show a decline in applications for asylum, and immigration into the UK is relatively modest. The choice of this issue as the opening salvo in the upcoming general election heralds a campaign in which Labour tries to trump each reactionary policy announcement by the Tories, and vice versa.

House Arrest of Terror Suspects

Alex Doherty — Fri, 28 Jan 2005 14:55:04 +0000

Speaking in the House of Commons, Home Secretary Charles Clarke announced a series of control orders, under which anyone suspected of terrorism could face house arrest, curfews or electronic tagging. Other prohibitions might include bans on meeting with other people, using telephones or the Internet.

The new laws would confer the powers upon the Home Secretary, a politician, and not the courts. It will mean that the Home Secretary can order the house arrest of an individual based on alleged intelligence provided by the security services. Clarke told parliament that the orders would be used against those who cannot be prosecuted or deported. Judges would provide independent scrutiny of the orders, but hearings could be held in secret.

Clarke said the measures would only be used in serious cases, claiming, There remains a public emergency threatening the life of the nation.

Clive Stafford-Smith, the lawyer representing two of the British detainees recently released from the US prison camp in Guantánamo Bay, denounced the measures as a further abuse of human rights in Britain.

The announcement by Clarke had an air of panic about it. In December, the Law Lords ruled that the indefinite detention of supposed foreign terror suspects without trial was discriminatory. The case involved some 11 foreign men detained in Belmarsh under the 2001 anti-terrorism act based on secret evidence. Those detained in this way were denied access to the courts to defend themselves against the allegations against them. Indeed, even the specific allegations were a secret.

The detentions have been heavily criticised by human rights groups and legal experts. Law Society president Edward Nally called indefinite detention without charge or trial totally unacceptable. His colleague, Law Society chief executive Janet Paraskeva said, Its not a question of guilt or innocence, its a question of due process.

However, Clarke said that these detainees being held in Belmarsh, dubbed Britains Guantánamo, would not to be released until new the measures were in place.

In order to avoid future charges of discrimination, the new powers will cover both British citizens and foreigners. They could then be used to impose house arrest upon those such as the four British subjects recently released from Guantánamo and returned to the UK. The four menMoazzam Begg, Martin Mubanga, Feroz Abbasi and Richard Belmarhad been arrested immediately upon their return to the UK under anti-terrorism laws but were released without charge after 26 hours.

Moreover, from the governments standpoint, the existing anti-terrorism laws have proved ineffective: of 544 people arrested between 2001 and 2004 under this legislation, only 98 eventually faced charges, with just six being convicted.

With the new measures proposed by Home Secretary Clarke, the British state will enjoy draconian powers to detain its subjects without recourse to due process. Such wide-ranging and oppressive measures have not existed in Britain since World War II.

The governments so-called anti-terrorism legislation, rushed through in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, is thoroughly undemocratic and discriminatory. Its rejection by the Law Lords unleashed a constitutional crisis that the government is now seeking to redress by resorting to measures that are even more repressive.

The governments latest proposals underscore the old maxim of the workers movement that an injury to one is an injury to all. The abuse and denial of basic democratic rights to foreigners and immigrants now heralds the extension of these attacks to all citizens.