Jun 29 2009
Cameron promises to give power back to the people
I am delighted that David Cameron has set out his plans under a Conservative Government to control the power of the state and make it more accountable to people. In a speech at Imperial College, he attacked Labour for having “diminished personal freedom and diluted political accountability” over the last twelve years. He promised, “At the heart of our programme for government will be our intention to change fundamentally the balance of power between the citizen and the state so that ultimately it is people in control of their government, not the other way round.”
David said a Conservative Government would revoke the “unjustified and unreasonable” powers that let authorities enter your home without your permission, and strengthen the right to trial by jury. He promised to scrap the ID card scheme and remove innocent people’s records from the DNA database. And he announced plans to open up information and set public data free:
“In the first year of the next Conservative Government, we will find the most useful information in twenty different areas ranging from information about the NHS to information about schools and road traffic and publish it so people can use it.”
David stressed that, taken together, these measures would “increase personal freedom and political accountability, restore trust, and help bring about the new politics we need so badly.”
Setting the data free is a challenge that needs to be addressed and we can only hope that it is being done in the right way.
I was having a conversation yesterday with a friend and we were discussing the fact that information is power, and who wants to give up power in a political environment.
The problem is all about trust and education, will public bodies trust that people will use this data in a responsible way? I think RewiredState.org and MySociety are prime examples of what can be accomplished with very little effort once the data is available.
“Power back to the People” Sounds fine as a sound byte, but what does it mean?
If the promise is to be taken seriously then it has to mean less centralised government and rejection of big government by the EUropean Uion, which makes about 80% of our laws at present.
It means also a complete rejection of the EU Lisbon treaty/constitution, about which Mr Cameron had given an unqualified and unconditional promise of a national referendum - even better, it was a “cast iron” pledge.
Where is it now?