Today 100’s of supine MPs will do as their Party leaders have told them and pass a law that is known as DRIP. The Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill was introduced into Parliament on Thursday 10th July having already gained agreement from the leaders of all three major parties, which in itself is both unusual and should raise questions amongst the rest of society. The expectation is that this legislation will be passed and have received Royal Assent by the end of this week. The fact that all three Party Leaders have agreed to support the Bill means that the only MPs who might oppose it are the rebels in each party, along with members of the small parties and any Independent MPs who have not been consulted behind the closed doors of No 10 Downing Street. Sadly this is too few a number to raise the prospect of delay or failure. Although DRIP is being described as emergency legislation, the date when the need for this legislation was first made clear was the 8th April. Yet nothing was discussed publicly till the end of last week.

I oppose DRIP because it appears to be rushed through without any attempt to reassure ordinary people of its proportionality. We are being told that the Bill will give powers to the security services to record details of phone calls and emails, yet the details of the Bill have been kept secret until this week. The surveillance is to be directed at the population at large, yet we have heard nothing about the level of safeguards and indeed the appropriateness of this Bill. The Bill has parallels with the Child Abuse enquiry, which has taken a long time for the Government to agree to, and then within days of being announced, the Home Office had rushed out with the name of a Chairman who was clearly unsuited to the post for various reasons. The problem with DRIP is that the Parliament is being ignored by the executive and the main opposition party who have done a deal behind closed doors.

In my view this Bill illustrates perfectly the failure of a democracy which is dominated by three Political Parties that between them represent less than 400,000 people out of a Population of around 60M. If this Bill was to introduce a law that impacted the Trade Unions or the wealthy donors of the Conservatives one can be sure that there would be long discussions and the law would take months to achieve. However because it only impacts ordinary people and their private conversations these parties are quite happy to see the processes and procedures of a responsible Parliament, brushed under the speakers chair.