BRITAIN:British prime minister Gordon Brown sought to regain the political initiative yesterday with a renewed promise of "a new British constitutional settlement" and a national consultation about a Bill of rights and duties pointing the UK towards a written constitution. Frank Millar, London Editor, reports.
In a major speech, Mr Brown said he wanted to explore how government and people could together "write a new chapter in our country's story of liberty" - and to do so in a world where, "as in each generation, traditional questions about the freedoms and responsibilities of the individual re-emerge, but also where new issues of terrorism and security, the internet and modern technology, are opening new frontiers in both our lives and our liberties".
As justice secretary Jack Straw confirmed plans to give MPs a limited say in decisions to send British forces to war, Mr Brown flagged a shake-up of Britain's secrecy and data laws, the possible extension of freedom of information provisions, new protections for investigative journalism and a review of the 30-year limit on the release of government papers.
Mr Brown said he believed that, by applying "enduring ideals to new challenges", his government could "start immediately" to make changes in the constitution and laws to safeguard and extend the liberties of citizens. These include:
respecting and extending freedom of assembly and new rights for the public expression of dissent;
respecting freedom to organise and petition, and new freedoms guaranteeing the independence of non-governmental organisations;
respecting the freedom of the press and removing barriers to investigative journalism;
respecting the public right to know, with new rights to access public information where it had previously been withheld;
respecting privacy in the home, with new rights against arbitrary intrusion;
in a world of new technology, new rights to protect private information and respecting the need for freedom from arbitrary treatment; and
renewing "for our time our commitment to freedom and contributing to a new British constitutional settlement for our generation".
Announcing that he had asked Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre to review the 30-year limit on the release of government papers, Mr Brown also stressed his view "that there is no case for statutory regulation of the press", adding that "it is for the publishers themselves to demonstrate by their decisions that they can sustain and bolster public confidence in the way information is gathered and used".
He said that "instead of invoking the unique nature of the threats" facing the UK today "as a reason for relinquishing our historical attachment to British liberty", they should "meet these tests not by abandoning principles of liberty but by giving them new life". At the same time, Mr Brown confirmed his view that in the future, 28 days "may not be enough" for police to question terrorist suspects.
"But weighing that case for an extension of days against legitimate concerns about arbitrary treatment, I know the importance of making sure that whatever changes are agreed for special, perhaps exceptional, circumstances that might arise, there will be, and must be, greater protections for the individual - both greater legal or judicial safeguards on executive decisions and more intensive scrutiny of them by parliament."