Interesting noises from the Conservatives on privacy and the database state. As you may have heard, Dominic Grieve, the shadow justice secretary, recently gave a major speech launching a policy document entitled 'Reversing the Rise of the Surveillance State'. The following remarks from early in the speech give a good flavour of its tone:

No-one is suggesting we should not harness IT or surveillance technology to strengthen public protection. I am not amongst those who nostalgically yearn for some luddite return to a pre-technological age. But, the Government's approach to databases and surveillance powers is the worst of all worlds. Intrusive. Ineffective. And enormously expensive.

With its emphasis on the ineffectiveness and high price-tag of the government's measures, this is not the language of a party committed on principle to limiting state encroachment into individuals' private lives - or at least, not that of one convinced that this is as safe a face to present as is one concerned with cost and competence.  But the proposals contained in the policy document are surprisingly strong: they include scrapping the National Identity Register, the ContactPoint database and the storage of innocent people's DNA; institutionalising a concern for privacy through a strengthened Information Commissioner and clauses in a British Bill of Rights; and a host of other measures limiting the gathering and sharing of personal information. This is sensible, practical, meaty stuff.

The Conservatives' decision to put their foot out on this issue may have something to do with a sense that in the present setting doing so is not such bad politics after all. A recent PoliticsHome poll run after Ed Balls announced plans to vet all adults in regular contact with children had a fifteen point majority opposed, and 79% of respondents saying that in general the state had "too much of a say in what people can and cannot do". The Conservatives may benefit from a narrative which has Labour as overly intrusive statists - a description which could encompass not only breaches of civil liberties and privacy but also big-spending nanny statism and the profusion of initiatives and targets. This is a particularly powerful narrative to use against a party that has been in power for twelve years. To fuel it, the Tories need only make a few of the right noises - something that should be of concern to anyone worried about their commitment to the line Grieve has taken, especially given the more authoritarian reputation of others in the shadow cabinet such as Chris Grayling.

From the Durham Times, an alarming expansion of police surveillance and a reminder of the power of police forces to introduce far-reaching policies - including those which pose serious civil liberty problems - by themselves and without reference to parliament:

People without criminal convictions could be subject to covert surveillance, under new police tactics revealed this week.

Durham Police has begun applying methods used to contain people found guilty of violent or sexual crimes to individuals not convicted of such offences

The Potentially Dangerous People (PDP) policy, which also involves the Northumbria and Cleveland forces, is a response to Government pressure to stop another case such as that of Ian Huntley.

[...]

People can be declared PDPs following a referral to the Public Protection Unit and a multi-agency meeting to discuss the case.

PDP could be watched or contacted by police about their behaviour.

Since the policy was introduced three months ago, eight people have been referred, with two declared PDP. 

Plans are afoot in several constituencies to delay election counts from the nights of votes being cast to the day after. This threat to the tradition of election night results has inspired a protest movement, complete with a 3,500-member Facebook group.

Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan has been causing his party headaches by attacking the NHS on American television. The position this has earned him as a darling of the American right is ironic, given that Barack Obama is not proposing a British-style system but instead one closer to the Singaporean model that Hannan himself favours. But let's take a look at his criticisms.

First and foremost amongst these is that the NHS offers a relatively basic standard of care, at least compared with the more lavish insurance packages in the States, with longer waiting times for elective surgery and lower survival rates for prostate cancer. Some of his examples are questionable - a recent Commonwealth Fund study found that Americans endured longer waits, and the US's high prostate cancer survival rates appears to be an artefact of its more aggressive screening catching more harmless cases of this disease and then scoring them as successes (after all, Britain and America have virtually identical numbers of deaths from prostate cancer per population as opposed to per diagnosed case).

But regardless, the fact is that Britain spends about 60 percent less per capita on health care than America. Given that figure, our statistics are something of a triumph for our system, and certainly do not discredit it. Yes, our low-cost approach means that some treatments are not covered and we have what Hannan calls "rationing by queue". But this is a strange objection for a free market, small state conservative to make: it amounts to complaining that the NHS is not a generous enough benefit. Shouldn't such a person be glad that the state provides only the basic level of care that most would buy for themselves, leaving the choice to purchase more with the individual? It is important to remember that, despite the implications of some American critics of NHS "rationing", one does always have this choice if one can afford it (though the NHS does sometimes withhold treatment from those who buy treatments and services it does not offer, a cruel and pointless practice that Hannan rightly criticises). In this respect, our situation is not so different from that in America, despite Hannan's claim that "if the decision [as to whether you get a particular treatment on the NHS] goes against you that's it".

In the passage from which I earlier quoted Hannan, he asks: "If supporters of the status quo were truly confident of their case, surely they would extend their logic. I mean, why shouldn’t the state allocate cars on the basis of need, with rationing by queue?" Yes, the NHS is explicitly redistributive, and whether you agree with this will depend on your ideology. But those who do can reasonably argue that health care is a better target for redistribution than transportation. It alleviates suffering rather than providing positive goods, and this leads to greater improvements in people's lives (including those of the disadvantaged) without interfering with incentive structures in the same way. And, as already mentioned, the level of care provided by the NHS is something almost everyone would buy if they could afford it, so taxing for it does not rob people of a choice they would in practice take advantage of.