Time to reverse the rise of the ‘surveillance state’, says Malcolm Moss MP
Labour’s state snooping is expensive, ineffective and intrusive

A future Conservative Government will drastically scale back the intrusive and ineffective ‘Big Brother’ state, local MP Malcolm Moss said this week. New policies by the Conservatives are pledging to offer an alternative to Whitehall ’s curtailment of civil liberties and stop taxpayers’ money being wasted on expensive and ineffective IT databases.

This comes amid growing concern about the Government’s new Independent Safeguarding Authority. This scheme could force 11 million adults to be vetted and monitored – even if they just give lifts to children as part of a school run or local football club.

The Conservative Party’s proposals include:

·          Scrapping the National Identity Register, which will contain personal details of every citizen, and abolishing the Identity Cards that will accompany the database.

·          Ditching the ContactPoint database – which holds the names, dates of birth, schools and home addresses of all 11 million children in England until the age of 18, but is entirely separate from the children at risk registers.

·          Ending the permanent retention of innocent people’s DNA on the National DNA database.

Malcolm Moss MP said:

“The Labour Government’s approach to our personal privacy represents the worst of all worlds – it is intrusive, ineffective and enormously expensive. Labour’s surveillance state and over-reliance on databases has exposed the public in North East Cambridgeshire to greater risk, not less. These databases give people a false sense of security at the same time as being unreliable in many cases.”

Commenting on the Independent Safeguarding Authority, he added:

“The Government’s nanny-state attitude will do nothing to safeguard the children most at risk. Checks are needed on those who work with children, but vetting one in four of the population is complete nonsense. Parents must be able to give lifts to their children’s friends without having to be vetted and monitored by the ISA first.”