Michael Foster is the newly-elected Chairman of the pre-legislative Committee for the forthcoming Constitutional Renewal Bill. He is also Labour MP for Hastings and Rye.
Writing in his local paper, Mr Foster stated that his constituents have a vested interest in the progress of the Bill and urged them all to get involved.
The Bill itself seems to have a rather chameleon-like quality, appearing markedly different depending on the context against which it is viewed. Opinion seems to currently fall into three broad categories:
- A decent attempt to reinvigorate democracy (see the Bill’s inclusion of a repeal of the parts of the 2005 Serious Crimes Act that effectively outlawed freedoms of speech and assembly around Parliament Square)
- A shameless PR ploy designed to give the impression that Labour might give a toss about the relationship between government and governed (see the inclusion throughout the draft Bill of get-out clauses and special exemptions, all of which undermine any progress otherwise proposed)
- A really rather sinister attempt disguised by some nicey-nice democratic fluff to reintroduce the essence of the discredited elements of the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act (see the inclusion of powers that allow ministers to amend, repeal or revoke any provision by or under an Act)
What the draft Bill is or isn’t, doesn’t concern me at the moment…time will tell. What does concern me is Mr Foster’s unintended display of the huge chasm between politicians and the people they represent.
Here we have Mr Foster exhorting us to take an interest in Government legislation on the same day that it was revealed that council officers across Sussex (the County in which Mr Foster’s constituency sits) last year made 112 requests under RIPA to use surveillance on local people.
I suspect that a significant minority of Mr Foster’s readers will be more than a little concerned that their local councils are using anti-terrorism legislation to snoop on them and will find it jarringly disconcerting to be simultaneously invited into the big democracy debate by a representative of the state that allows such intrusion.
Politicians are good at cutting and dicing, compartmentalising issues and dealing with them one by one. Human beings aren’t, especially when it comes to politics. Many will question what the point is of taking part in any national debate on democracy at a time when national government seems indifferent to apparent abuses of legislation on a local level.
Given Mr Foster’s prior career as an employment lawyer (and a member of the Society of Labour Lawyers), it is likely that his political consciousness is imbued with large dollops of integrity and principle (come on, a Labour employment lawyer…that can’t exactly have been a particularly popular career choice in Sussex during the 80s). So would it be too much to ask him to put two and two together and bridge the gap between legislative theory and peoples’ local lives by acknowledging that the Government has some responsibility for the behaviour of the local stasis? If he did, then his views on the new Bill might get a more positive response.
Tags: constitutional renewal bill, councils, michael foster, politics, ripa, uk
