Stephen Robinson says, "Climate of Fear is Undermining Civil Liberties"

9.20.00pm UTC (GMT +0000) Mon 1st Nov 2004

The Government is deliberately creating a climate of fear over terrorism and crime to force through changes that threaten people's civil liberties," says Stephen Robinson, Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate for West Chelmsford. He was speaking to a group of local student and youth members in Chelmsford and attacked David Blunkett, Home Secretary, for using a post-9/11 fear among the public to push through measures which compromised our civil liberties.

Stephen Robinson. "Climate of Fear undermines Civil Liberties"

Mr Robinson said that in these extraordinary times threats like those posed by international terrorism may require us, in times of emergency and for limited periods, to find a different balance between our hard-won liberties and our security. But the correct response to such threats should not be, as the current Home Secretary appears to think, the abandonment of some of the liberties that generations of Britons have relied upon. Hard-won rights, once lost, may never be regained.

He told the students, "We all of us gain from the protection of civil liberties and when our society has trust in the Government that it will protect individual liberty. We need the Government to protect our rights and freedoms too. Above all we need a system of government that is genuinely accountable to an effective democratically elected Parliament."