Anthony Barnett (London, OK): Just back from Washington DC and awake to the end of the Today programme with Geoffrey Robertson QC and Jack Straw on the Putney Debates. Geoffrey drives home their radicalism as the early but contemporary origins of modern liberty and trial by jury, Jack throws in the peasants revolt, Geoffrey just manages to squeeze in that we are debating principles and welcomes the Prime Minister and Straw for doing the same and the programme is quickly drawn to a close. Debating principles is for another day!
What's going on, are we to have a British Bill of Rights or not? I turn to the No 10 website where it says,
Holy smoke, that wasn't in Jon's report - and he was there! We discuss the discrepancy and the weird inadequacy of the Brown administration's ability to say what it means. Surely Brown has not said what I recently proposed. I turn to both Brown's speech and then one given on the same day by Straw in Cambridge, where he spared his audience the peasants revolt but tells them that
I think an innate understanding of rights is a part of our national psyche, it is the amniotic fluid in which we have grown, so too is an understanding of the obligations we have to each other. But we could make them better understood.
Er, a number of very bad jokes occur to me about testing amniotic fluids for their Britishness, which I put down to the after effects of Heathrow. What is the Lord Chancellor really saying?
The Prime Minister is much more interesting and makes some important promises which I'm going to get back to. For example on freedom of information which is a touchstone issue, it seems to me that what he said is very good indeed. But on that pesky promise of a written constitution? The 10 Downing Street web site may say that he has announced one. His words did not. According to the transcript the PM stated,
"Today, Jack Straw is signalling the start of a national consultation on the case for a new British Bill of Rights and Duties - or, as I said in July, for moving towards a written constitution. [my emphasis]
Sometimes, to work out what the government thinks it means, you can read the regular government press briefings which are also published on the No 10 website. Yesterday afternoon's includes this (It's a long section of Qs and As)
Asked where we were on the Bill of Rights, the PMS [Prime Minister's Spokesman] replied that it was not the intention of the speech to take this forward. Clearly there was a long-term debate and discussion that we would need to have, the Prime Minister initiated that in July and referred to this earlier today. The main focus today was the challenge of delivering on our values of liberty in a modern setting, with a number of very specific and concrete measures to take that forward.
Asked if this would be some years down the line, the PMS replied that clearly there were a number of big steps that would need to be taken before we got to that point, and this was a long term process.
Asked if there was any suggestion in the Prime Minister's remarks on ID cards and biometrics that there might be a reconsideration of the fundamental proposition, the PMS replied that this was not his interpretation.
Asked to contextualise the speech, the PMS replied that the purpose of the speech was that the British people rightly valued the concept of liberty. It was something that had been associated with this country for many years. But we faced new challenges. The question was how do we adapt to these new challenges whilst remaining true to the British value of liberty. The Prime Minister was looking at how we update and take forward issues such as freedom of information, freedom of expression and media reporting, the right to protest and parliamentary powers, in a 21st century setting.
Asked what the Government's policy was now on ID cards, the PMS replied that the Government's policy on ID cards was the policy that had been set out many times before and had not changed.
Put that the Prime Minister referred again today to the possibility of a written constitution, and asked if there would be a referendum on this, the PMS replied that we were a long way from that point. This was a question that needed to be addressed at some point in the future, but that was not really what the Prime Minister was focussing on today, it was very much an issue for the longer term.
Asked if it would be called a "Bill of Rights and Duties", and did the Prime Minister recognise that to incorporate duties into a Bill of Rights was fraught to say the least, the PMS replied that the Prime Minister had always been of the view that the rights agenda needed to be balanced by a responsibilities agenda. But exactly what a Bill of Rights would be called was not really an issue for today.
Asked if the Prime Minister recognised that there were problems with this, the PMS replied that the Prime Minister recognised that as a general principal, alongside rights came responsibilities.
Put that Jack Straw seemed to be improvising in the Chamber, and asked why all of this was coming out today in what seemed to be a bit of a hurry with Jack Straw racing to the Chamber to tell everybody before the Prime Minister said it all outside of Parliament, the PMS replied that following the Prime Minister's statement in July a whole series of processes were initiated, mostly taken forward by the Ministry of Justice. It seemed sensible 3 months or so down the line to give Parliament and others an update as to where we were. This was a multi track, quite diverse set of issues that Jack Straw brought together in a single statement. Those announcements were made to Parliament first. The Prime Minister's speech did not include anything of a substantive nature that had not been announced by Jack Straw in Parliament. He was addressing a wider philosophical issue about the nature of liberty in the 21st century. But this was something that had been on the Prime Minister's mind for some time.
What is on his mind? It seems to me that some good and important things were said on torture, on stopping unbridled entry into people's homes, on freedom of information, but as to principles...
And the problem isn't just with Gordon, trying to re-orient myself I learn from the cunning keyboard of Nick Robinson that David Cameron promised (or didn't) a referendum on the EU Treaty.
He promised to have a referendum after the next election "if we can". I suspect he meant if the treaty has not become law but that is not what he actually said and sceptics will surely point out that Britain can give the people their say whenever she likes.
What do you suspect Gordon Brown and Jack Straw mean?
