The UK is witnessing a shift in relations between the state and citizens, manifested by intrusive surveillance, the necessity of which most Britons do not understand, believes Conservative Party MP Dominic Raab.
“When you look at the measures [adopted by the government] one by one, they eroded our freedom but did very little for our security,” insists Raab.
That may change with The Freedom Bill which is in the new ruling coalition agreement, coming out this year or early 2011. Raab hopes it will help reduce the level of “recharged tension” and strengthen jury trial in the UK.
“Protecting British liberty is a fantastic tradition we’ve got in this country but I think it is all very relevant to what we’ve got today,” Raab stated.
He insists that Britain must be extremely cautious in transferring the power of its law enforcement to EU structures and that it must “scrutinize every decision that comes up very carefully”.
“We used to instinctively react against the state’s incursions into our freedom, into our free space. And what the last government did was – very cunning and surreptitious – to bit by bit slice off our freedoms,” said the MP.
“Civil liberties have always been inherently vulnerable to that kind of slow burn abuse. What we’ve got to do is recognize it as a much bigger issue and protect that tradition of liberty that we have in our country. Otherwise our children are going to find themselves growing up in very different kind of society, with a very different kind of culture,” Dominic Raab concluded.