Leading Article: Bugged by fine liberals

Last week saw much massed raising of liberal glasses, and a toast to the triumph of liberty. The Home Secretary's attempt to grant police the power to bug and burgle at will had been soundly seen off in the Lords. The slippery slope to a police state had, it was cheered, been halted. An Englishman's home remained his castle. There was no end of self-congratulation among peers, and Lord Rees-Mogg could be read in the Times, giving himself a hearty pat on the back for being one of the "good guys". Trebles all round! Amid so many hurrahs, it seems almost churlish to sound a more sober note. However, it should be pointed out that outrage over the Police Bill was distinctly belated, and the subsequent celebrations a little premature. Backslapping liberal Britain looked, last week, for all the world like a parent who had first failed to notice that its child was terribly ill - then, when its life had been saved, had rushed off to the pub to celebrate, neglecting to notice that the child remained on the critical list in intensive care.

Let us take stock of what actually happened last week. Michael Howard had drafted a draconian bill, giving police the kinds of powers no liberal democracy worthy of the name would - or indeed does - tolerate. The Opposition, in the infinite wisdom of Jack Straw, had decided it could not afford to object, for fear of looking flimsy on crime. It was left to lawyers and civil liberties groups to sound the alarm, and prompt an eleventh hour conversion to some sort of opposition from Labour. It is safe to assume that when Jack Straw agreed to the tabling of the party's amendment, it was his voter-counting head, and not a liberty-loving heart, which held sway. Both Labour and the Liberal Democrats' amendments were duly passed, and headlines declared a triumph for civil liberties, and the "defeat" of the Police Bill. This is not strictly true. First, the bill must return to the House of Commons, and there is no knowing, given the current wobbly state of the House, what they will make of it there. But let us suppose that the spirit of the amendments stands. Judicial safeguards notwithstanding, we will have gone from being a state where police are not allowed to break in and bug your home, to one in which they are. To describe this as a liberal triumph is a travesty.

Last week's events did not indicate a principled defence of citizens' freedom at all. Consider, first, the rationale behind the new police powers contained in the bill. The police have been bugging us on the quiet for ages, we are told, so we might as well make it above board. In the same breath that the Government is admitting the police have shown total disregard for the law, it is asking us to place new and greater trust in them. This is a surprising logic, given the Establishment's contempt when it is applied to other matters. When citizens consistently break a law, it seems we must toughen it up; when police break a law, we must abolish it.

Let us also consider the chief reason why so many members of the Lords objected. The judges and law lords were extremely concerned about bugging and burgling, principally because lawyers' offices and judges' chambers were not exempt. They have not shown the same urgent concern for other matters of civil liberty - such as identity cards, the Criminal Justice Act, and the clause in the Police Bill that allows employers to demand a "criminal conviction certificate" from job applicants. What would have happened had Howard excluded lawyers' offices from his bill at the outset? Perhaps the tide of opposition which eventually forced amendments through might never have become more than a ripple.

And now all sorts of other interest groups are waking up to the potential dangers of the Police Bill. Doctors are alarmed about the privacy of patients' records. Journalists are uneasy about their sources. On Friday, we learned that Roman Catholics have cottoned on to what all this may mean for the sanctity of the confessional. It will be only a matter of time before businesses and banks raise the alarm about the threat to commercial confidentiality. They will all surely seek their exemptions from the bill. Objection after objection can be raised, from successive special interests. And what about those with no voice? Michael Howard and Jack Straw should pause and wonder, now, whether a law that requires one tortuous revision after another is not, after all, simply a bad law, and should be swiftly ditched.