There is an opinion piece in The Telegraph today, entitled Labour isn’t wicked – but it’s doing just what the Nazis did.
Here are some select quotes from the piece:
Tyranny is sidling in. It is entering with face averted, under cover of a host of laws whose ostensible purpose is the reverse of their actual effect….
…..The same inverted logic applies to the ID card scheme. The Home Office minister Andy Burnham, in a letter to the Observer yesterday, asserted that the cards are there "as a protection", to stop "identity theft".
Never mind that the system will use cheap chip-and-pin technology, which has already shown itself vulnerable to fraud. Ministers evidently believe our identities can be protected only if they are owned by ministers themselves….
….And then there is the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill, which is presented as a means of repealing red tape and therefore restricting the reach of the state.
But the Bill, quite simply, gives any minister of the Crown the power to "make provision amending, repealing or replacing any legislation", meaning "any public general Act", or indeed "any rule of law"…..
….The Regulatory Reform Bill is an Enabling Act, identical in spirit to the one the Nazis passed in 1933. On that occasion, Hitler promised that "the government will make use of these powers only insofar as they are essential for carrying out vitally necessary measures…
The number of cases in which an internal necessity exists for having recourse to such a law is a limited one." Our Government says much the same about the legislation it is passing today.
But our concern should not be with today or tomorrow, but with the day after tomorrow, when different, nastier politicians might be in power, and the habits of decency and common sense have been even further eroded.
Ultimately, this is why so many of us are worried about the bill. The legislative and regulatory reform bill could well be our enabling act, maybe not the day after it’s passed, but at some point down the line. It’s not inconceivable that after some tragedy the government would use these powers to their full extent ‘for the duration’….
An enabling act? If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck….?
3 Comments
Quite so, as you can see – I have already written to my MP (Michael Gove) and got back the tory line:
http://www.murky.org/blg/michael-gove-replies-legislative-and-regulatory-reform-bill/
( I saw almost identical phrasing here: http://deludedsheep.livejournal.com/90397.html )
There’s a limited amount I can do really, living in a safe tory seat – the people in the marginal labour seats have a lot more clout!
I would strongly encourage people living in the seat of one of the ‘usual suspects’ to get writing!
http://www.murky.org/blg/are-you-the-constituent-of-one-of-these-mps/
I wonder, do you have the date for the third reading?
There’s a worrying trend with this government, ID cards, LRRB, habeus corpus, removal of jury trials – one just can’t help wondering ‘what next’?
There is no better time than now for concerned citizens to write to their Member of Parliament, protesting about this Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill. Even Labour MPs are becoming worried about the Bill and the TUC have voiced their concerns. The business organisations are also pressing for changes.
What the Conservatives are putting forward is that the Bill should only allow for de-regulation – removing outdated and burdensome regulations – and should prohibit the fast-track Order-making power from being used for controversial or important changes. Since 1994 we have had a law which allows the Government to use a fast-track Order-making procedure for deregulation – to scrap outdated and burdensome red tape. We do need technical improvements to the existing law. But what the Government has come up with goes way beyond what is needed. The Government say they have “wider ambitions”. We wonder what they are.
At last, we may be making progress. According to a newspaper report, Government Chief Whip in the House of Lords, Lord Grocott is pressing the Prime Minister for the sort of changes we are demanding. Labour MPs have spoken out in Parliament and in the past week, Minister Jim Murphy has been calling in the Opposition Parties to discuss an Amendment to the Bill. The idea seems to be for a veto for Select Committees to stop the fast-track Order-making procedure being used for controversial measures. But this does not go far enough. Select Committees do a valuable job, but they always have the majority from the Government Party.
We are trying to make major changes to this Bill, so that we do have an effective tool for de-regulation, but ONLY for de-regulation. If the Government does not meet our demands, the Bill must not pass. As currently drafted, the Bill is a danger to democracy and unless the Government meets our demands, Conservatives will vote against it after Easter.
Oliver Heald MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs and Shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster
There is no date as yet for the Third Reading of the Bill. In fact the Bill has not gone through Report stage yet. However it is expected that both Report stage and the Third Reading will happen after the Easter Recess.
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Oliver Heald Urges Voters to Take Action
Oliver Heald MP who has voiced his opposition to the LRRB has commented on a post over at Murky.org calling for voters to write to their MPs and express their opposition.