Reading Liberal Democrats

Reading West Lib Dems Parliamentary Spokesman, Patrick Murray, has criticised Martin Salter after his appearance on Newsnight defending the arrest of Damian Green.

“It is inconceivable that anyone can justify the actions of the Police in arresting a member of the Shadow Cabinet for holding ministers to account.

We can see the ugly underbelly of this increasing authoritarian Government, elected with only a quarter of the adult population’s support.

Salter has enthusiastically supported 42 days detention without trial which is an affront to the founding principles of the British state.

He has enthusiastically supported the expensive, intrusive and ineffective ID card scheme which will do nothing to stop terrorism as the Madrid bombings showed.

Now he is acting as the cheerleader for the arrest of political opponants.

His defence of, and enthusiasm for, an increasingly authoritarian government would be laughable if it weren’t so serious.”

Editor’s Notes:

Damian Green (an ex Reading School pupil) was arrested by the Metropolitan Police at his constituency home on 27 November 2008 for “aiding and abetting misconduct in public office”, in relation to an investigation into unauthorised disclosure of confidential material from within the Home Office.

Chris Huhne also says “Receiving information from Government departments in the public interest and publicising it is a key part of any MP’s role. This is the most worrying development for many years, with the potential to shift power even more conclusively from Parliament to the Government. It is also extraordinary considering Gordon Brown himself as Shadow Chancellor received and publicised many leaked official documents. It seems that either the law needs to be changed, or the police have overstepped the mark.”

The Government’s data disaster over child benefit records shows why plans for Identity Cards must be scrapped, say Reading West Liberal Democrats.

Following the revelation that the personal details of 25 million parents and children have been lost by the Government’s Revenue and Customs department (HMRC), and may have fallen into the hands of identity fraudsters, Reading West Liberal Democrat parliamentary spokesperson Patrick Murray has written to Martin Salter MP urging him to withdraw their support for the ID cards scheme and a National Identity Register in which the Government want to store the personal information of everyone in the country.

“The fiasco at HMRC has shown the dangers of the Government holding huge amounts of information about each one of us whilst being slipshod in the way that same information is kept,” said Patrick Murray.

“This whole saga of incompetence has been shocking and families in Reading are now rightly asking whether their personal details are safe.

“The National Identity Register, which the Government are setting up as part of the Identity Card scheme, will hold vastly more information on each and every one of us than Customs and Revenue managed to lose.

“The possibilities for the loss of that information, either accidentally or through illegitimate means must make the Government stop and think again very seriously about their plan to store all the data they can on us on a central register.

“This is a clear illustration of the real dangers of a big brother centralised state. State control of personal identity details is a real threat to our civil liberties. The Government should respond to the anger and now abandon its ID card scheme. It is clear that the Government cannot be trusted to manage effectively mass databases of personal information.

”Martin Salter voted for Identity Cards when the scheme went through Parliament despite some Labour MPs taking a principled stand and joining the Liberal Democrats in voting against the Government’s big brother plans.

“But a debacle on this scale must surely give Mr Salter cause to think again. I have written to him calling on him to press the Government to end the Identity Card scheme for good and to ensure that we do not risk a personal data disaster on an even more catastrophic scale.

Editor’s Note: For more information call Patrick Murray on 07891 330778