At 8.05 this morning, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg unveiled his latest pet project: the Your Freedom website, an internet forum in which members of the public are invited to discuss the laws they would like to see repealed and the civil liberties they would like to see restored. At 8.30, I signed up, fearing the worst: as an occasional browser of the BBC’s abominable Have Your Say pages, I expected a continuous stream of fervently right-wing, borderline-bigoted vitriol.

In fact, I was pleasantly surprised. One of the very first suggestions, perhaps due to some early-bird member of PEN or follower of Index on Censorship, was an intelligent proposal to reword sections 4a and 5 of the Public Order Act 1986. These sections currently allow the police carte blanche to arrest anyone who engages in a speech act which, intentionally or otherwise, causes “harassment, alarm or distress”. If the new government is at all serious about protecting free speech, this has to go.

Alas, by 9, this suggestion had long been drowned out by a chorus of rather more predictable bugbears. Fox hunters stood up to demand the right to torment animals. Smokers stood up to demand the right to smoke in public places. Cannabis users stood up to demand the right to smoke cannabis. Illegal downloaders stood up to demand the right to carry on downloading without fear of disconnection. And some people perversely decided that the best way to protect our rights was to scrap the Human Rights Act.

These demands were iterated many times over in many different threads, leaving almost no space at all for suggestions motivated by a genuine, selfless concern for the rights of others. If the aim of this odd gimmick is to facilitate serious, fruitful debate about civil liberties, it was ill-conceived from the outset and will fail miserably.

But I am disinclined to impute such honest motives to this government. When “consultation” comes in the form of a chaotic, poorly moderated shouting match in which selfish, short-sighted and simplistic proposals are the most likely to rise to the top, David Cameron’s government is left under no obligation to respond to sensible suggestions. It will do as much or as little as it likes, knowing it can point any angered correspondents or petitioners towards this black hole of a forum.

Filed under: civilliberties, conservatives, davidcameron, jonathanbirch, ukpolitics on July 1st, 2010