Clegg: Freedom is back in fashion
Thursday, 1 July 2010 5:01 PM
By politics.co.uk staff
Nick Clegg has proclaimed a new age of freedom in Britain as he called on the public to send on suggestions for laws the coalition government should scrap.
In the next stage of the deputy prime minister's bonfire of draconian legislation, Mr Clegg spoke to voters directly on YouTube today, calling on the public to write in suggesting ways freedom could be expanded.
In a speech launching the Your Freedom initiative, Mr Clegg said: "For too long new laws and regulations have taken away people's freedoms, interfered in everyday life, and made it difficult for businesses to get by.
"The state has crept further and further into people's homes, the places they work, their private lives. That intrusion is wrong; it's illiberal; it's disempowering and it's going to change.
"Our ambition is to create a society where no law-abiding individual ever feels intimidated by the state, just for going about their day-to-day business. Where people aren't cast under suspicion simply because of who they are, or where they're from."
Voters can visit the Your Freedom website to contribute their views.
Mr Clegg has been effectively handed the reins of the government's civil liberties and constitutional reform programme, and has already secured the death of ID cards for British nationals, the ending of child fingerprinting and reforms to DNA storage.
"Finally, after years in the wilderness, freedom is back in fashion," Mr Ckegg wrote in the Telegraph today.
"This is our chance to redraw the boundaries between citizen and state. It's your chance to have your say."
Lib Dem figures released when the party was in opposition showed that New Labour passed a new criminal offence for every day it was in power, including one law making it illlegal to set off a nuclear weapon.
Deputy director of Unlock Democracy Alexandra Runswick said: "We welcome any serious exercise to restore civil liberties and wish this initiative every success.
"But governments of all shades have done much to discredit the idea of consultation and it is crucial this does not turn into yet another cherry picking exercise."
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