Home Secretary attacks human rights

The Home Secretary called for a mature debate on security and terrorism and said we all may have to modify our own freedoms to prevent their misuse.

In a speech to Demos on Wednesday, Dr John Reid criticised commentators for giving prominence to Islamist terrorists, politicians for opposing legislations and European judges for the Chahal judgement. He also said that traditional civil liberty arguments were out of date.

Dr Reid said that following the end of the cold war, which kept down ethnic tensions and religious extremism while making borders inviolable, the world confronts a torrent of challenges including porous borders, failed states, civil wars and ethnic tensions.

He continued: “We are probably in the most sustained period of severe threat since the end of World War II. While I am confident that the security services and police will deliver 100 per cent effort and dedication, they can never guarantee 100 per cent success.”

He warned that the security forces could not defeat terrorism alone and that it would take a common effort from all sections of society.

“Sometimes we may have to modify some of our own freedoms in the short term in order to prevent their misuse by those who oppose our fundamental values and would destroy all of our freedoms.”

Dr Reid also turned his attack on the European Convention for Human Rights saying they too were designed for situations before the threat of global terror.

His words come a week after the Court of Appeal said control orders used to restrain the movements of six terror suspects broke human rights laws.

“The European Convention, drawn up by British lawyers in the aftermath of the Second World War, was shaped inevitably by that war and by what was happening across the Iron Curtain.

“Protections from unlawful detention, from forced labour, from torture, from punishment without trial came centre stage. And rightly so given what had gone before. Over time, those rights became a reality for more and more of the 300 million or so living within its borders. Indeed, they became an essential pre-requisite for a country to be considered a member of the European family.

“But now we are faced by a new challenge – perhaps greater than any faced in the last fifty years, to this new consensus around the core values of a free society. And the challenge is this: what happens when the threat to our nation and hence to all of us as individuals, comes not from a fascist state but from what might be called fascist individuals?

“Individuals who are unconstrained by any of the international conventions, laws agreements or standards, and have therefore, unconstrained intent.

“Individuals who can network courtesy of new technology and access modern chemical, biological and other means of mass destruction, and who have therefore unconstrained capability.”

Dr Reid said the Court of Appeal judgement would be appealed and said: “It is up to each and all of us to ask the questions: what price security? At what cost preservation of freedom? What values are at stake? And what is the cost of making the wrong choices?”