In his book 'The Politics of Nationalism and Devolution' (1980), Gordon Brown speculated that given devolution to Scotland the Labour Party might consider a version of what has recently been referred to as ‘English Votes on English Laws’ (EVoEL):

...a revised Scotland Act could embody some form of the ‘in-and-out’ principle. Under such a principle the remaining Scottish MPs at Westminster would not be allowed to take part in the proceedings of the House when it was debating English or Welsh domestic matters. The ‘in-and-out’ principle ought to be attractive to Conservatives since it would ensure them a semi-permanent majority on most social issues at Westminster – no small prize. Labour remains formally committed to devolution and may be expected to consider a plan along these lines in the future.

Gordon Brown is now opposed to English Votes on English Laws. Why do you think he is opposed? (Please select all that apply)

Brown believes that EVoEL would weaken the Labour Party.

Brown believes that Scottish MPs have a right to vote on English matters.

Brown believes that there is no such thing as an 'English legislation' / it is too difficult to separate out English issues from issues that affect other parts of the UK.

Brown believes that EVoEL would damage Parliament because it would create two types of MP by ending the traditional reciprocity whereby all members can vote on all matters.

Brown believes that EVoEL would weaken our sense of Britishness / our sense of British national identity.

Brown believes that EVoEL is a stepping stone to an English parliament.

Brown believes that EVoEL would be the death knell to his favoured solution to the West Lothian Question, English regions.

Brown believes that EVoEL may result in a situation whereby a UK Government may not be able to command a majority for its English business.

Brown believes that EVoEL would make it more difficult for non-English constituency MPs to make it into Cabinet because it would be illogical for them to minister English portfolios.

Brown is anti-English.

Other (please leave a comment).

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In his 1979 pamphlet "A Voter's Guide to the Scottish Assembly - and why you should support it" Gordon Brown complained about the democratic injustice meted out to Scotland under Conservative governments.

between 1959 and 1964 and 1970 and 1974, the Scots people were ruled by a government that they didn't elect, and when the Scottish Grand Committee had to carry a majority of Tory MPs.

That 1979 complaint finds its parallel in today’s Britain. Today it is the people of England who find themselves under a government and prime minister that they did not elect, at the behest of a Labour Party which failed to win the popular vote in England at the last general election.

And just as Scottish committees had to carry a majority of Tory MPs in the past, Gordon Brown's new English Regional Select Committees are proportionately balanced in line with the political composition of the House of Commons (i.e., five Labour, three Conservative and one Liberal Democrat) irrespective of the voting patterns of the region in question.

How did this come about?

In June 2007 the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, announced the appointment of nine regional ministers. In the July 2007 Green Paper, The Governance of Britain, the Government proposed that regional committees should be established. Soon after, the Review of sub-national economic development and regeneration announced the abolition of the existing regional assemblies.

In October 2007 the Modernisation Select Committee announced an inquiry on Regional Accountability. Their report, published on 10 July 2008 recommended that eight regional select committees should be established, with membership reflecting the membership of the House but with fewer members than existing select committees. The Committee also recommended that there should be eight regional grand committees, to include all Members from each region. The grand committees would be places for debate on regional matters, and for questions to be asked of the regional ministers.

On 12 November 2008 the House of Commons agreed to establish eight regional select committees and grand committees. To a man all Conservative and Lib Dem MPs present voted against the Government, but Gordon Brown won the day by a margin of 30 votes.

Prior to that vote Theresa May MP had tabled an amendment to force the House to vote on whether to remove the sections from the Government’s motion which related to regional select committees, so that the motion would only indicate approval for regional grand committees. Grand Committees, argued Ms May, were all that was required to plug the accountability gap.

To plug the regional accountability gap, we need go no further than setting up regional Grand Committees, which would give every Member in a region the opportunity to make their views known about what was being done by bodies in their region. Every part of a region would be represented, and we would avoid the position that could arise with the regional Select Committees, whereby people from outside the region may be included to maintain the Government’s majority. The Grand Committees would not need to meet so often, and their running costs would be significantly lower than those of the regional Select Committees.

The House divided 233 in favour of the motion and 250 against, with the votes of non-English constituency MPs proving decisive. Theresa May's amendment was therefore not carried and the House went on to agree to the establishment of both grand and select committees.

Without any manifesto authorisation and with little by way of public consultation Gordon Brown had ushered in a new era of regional accountability. "This week's vote", remarked Chris Leslie, "marks an important stage in English devolution and the Government should take credit for giving MPs greater scrutiny and accountability over English governance".

On 3 March 2009 the Regional Select Committees were appointed by the House but it is only now that we get to see the Regional Grand Committees at work. The first meeting of an English Regional Grand Committee took place in Exeter on 3rd September when MPs in the South West got to hold Minister for the South West Jim Knight to account. It was an ignominious beginning.

Gary Streeter, Tory MP for South West Devon, rubbished the notion the meeting was bringing Parliament outside London.

He said the key difference was in Whitehall, members addressed ministers with the power to act, whereas Mr Knight could only share views on issues outside his remit as employment minister.

Andrew George, Lib-Dem MP for St Ives, said the [grand] committee had "questionable legitimacy", and criticised the Government's fearful approach to devolution.

Adrian Sanders, Lib-Dem MP for Torbay, hit out at the Government's decision to insist MPs who sat on the South West Regional [Select] Committee, which compiled the report considered by the Grand Committee, were Labour, considering the party has now all but been wiped out in parts of the Westcountry. He branded the decision "partisan", in line with an "authoritarian" approach to government.

Mr Knight was asked by MPs how much time he dedicated to his role, considering he already had the full-time job of employment minister. Many jeered when he said 35-40 per cent of his time was spent on regional affairs, prompting Mr Streeter to label him a "part-time minister".

Today (8th September) the second Grand Committee takes place in Bedford, and if reports are to be believed Tory MPs are expected to boycott it.

The purpose of the Regional Select Committees is to look at how national policy is delivered within the region and to examine the work of regional quangos and government offices.

The Regional Grand Committees are supposed to bring together all MPs from their region to consider the “state of the region” and question Regional Ministers about their work. It can be argued, therefore, that they serve a useful democratic purpose and increase regional accountability.

Should the Tories and Lib Dems use the Grand Committee meetings to hold ministers to account or should they boycott them altogether?

Yes, they should boycott Regional Grand Committees

No, they should not boycott Regional Grand Committees

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Let me state at the outset that this evening I want to put my view that constitutional change - and I mean that in the broadest sense - is at the heart of the debate about the future for our country. Not incidental but integral to our future as a community.

All over Europe, in response to environmental as well as economic and social challenges, there is a growing recognition of the need for a change in the relationship between individuals, community and the state.

And I believe that in Britain constitutional change is essential for two quite fundamental reasons. It is vital because it is our responsibility to ensure the individual is protected against what can be called the vested interests of the state. And it is vital too because constitutional change is also a necessary means of advancing the potential of the individual in our community. In other words we have twin responsibilities to individual citizens as democrats: we must never fail to attack the evil wherever the individual is at risk from the encroachment of the state, and we must never lose sight of the good whenever the individual is empowered by the community.

I want to argue that what in truth we require is an entirely new settlement between the individual, community and government. Indeed, in my view a modern view of socialism must retrieve the broad idea of community from the narrow notion of the state and ensure that the community becomes a means by which individuals can realise their potential, not at the expense of individual liberty but in advancing it.

In other words I will be making the case this evening for constitutional change from Labour values, for I have always believed it is the historic role of the Labour Party to stand up for individual citizens against all vested interests that frustrate their potential. After thirteen years of a Conservative erosion of liberties we now need guaranteed rights: the right to know, the right to be consulted, the right to participate, the right of communities to run their own affairs.

I will argue not just for acts of Parliament enshrining in statute the long held demand for a Bill of Rights, but also that we must now take seriously the case for a European Bill of Rights so that we can protect the citizen from the potential abuse of power by any major public institution that touches our lives.

I will argue not just for immediate implementation of a Freedom of Information Act to ensure the flow of information from government to citizen and the right to know - and I believe we could do so in months - but argue also that there should be precise duties guaranteeing the right of individuals to information where it is in the public interest to do so, in the dark and secret corners of the private sector.

I will argue not just for reform of the judiciary but for reform of the security services and for a reformed second chamber in place of the anachronism which is the House of Lords.

And I will argue the case not just for home rule for Scotland within the United Kingdom and for the importance of the fresh look now taking place into electoral reform, but also for the principle of devolution applied all round throughout the country.

This lecture comes shortly before an election. Originally it was planned to come shortly after an election when calmer seas prevailed. My purpose is not to catch the next day's morning headlines but to reflect on questions that are rather more enduring. I will not list a set of constitutional changes, but will propose what I believe a constitutional agenda must include, not as detailed policy but as parameters for a debate that will continue long after the election.

My main purpose is to set a course for constitutional change. To make it more than just a shopping list of attractive ideas. To place it within a framework of belief about Britain as a community that can reach and touch all our people. To make constitutional change central, to make it popular and thus to make it attainable.

Let me start from Scotland to demonstrate what I mean. Scotland has just seen a unique all-party Constitutional Convention in which I have had the privilege to play a part: a Convention that has included not just one but a number of political parties and also enjoyed broad representation from the churches, local authorities, voluntary organisations, trades unions, and others throughout Scottish society from what might be called civil society.

The Convention rightly demands a Scottish parliament with entrenched powers. An aspiration first developed in its modern form a century ago, a widely held demand for change which has occasioned 20 Home Rule bills throughout this century already. An insistent demand for change which has brought administrative devolution as an inadequate substitute for legislative devolution. And now a popular demand that is so pressing and urgent that I believe that in the coming years we shall see the creation of a parliament which will not just be an inspiration to those seeking fundamental democratic change for the constitution in Scotland but throughout the United Kingdom as well.

For against old fashioned and unacceptable ideas of Crown sovereignty, the Convention asserts the sovereignty of the people, with legitimacy and authority flowing upwards and not downwards. It demands, and I believe will secure, the entrenchment of rights including a right to know. It demands more equal representation for women, rightly beginning to tackle the unacceptable under- representation of women at all levels of our political system. It demands a reformed electoral system, reflecting the widespread concern about the current system.

In Scotland the status quo is now so discredited that it is no longer an option. And it is because the Scottish parliament is the precursor for one in Wales and regional devolution throughout Britain that the West Lothian question - essentially that different M.P.s will have differing roles at Westminster - is not a genuine problem in proceeding with change.

Now I understand that the Prime Minister's view of the best solution is that instead of 7,000 civil servants running Scotland immune from Scottish democratic control, we should have 7,000 civil servants running Scotland immune from Scottish democratic control but wearing name tags.

But the Convention is in fact a response to two deep and widely felt concerns neither of which I feel he understands. First, that individual rights have been ignored because of the remoteness and the insensitivity of centralised government and, second, that the exercise of power has been separated from the democratic control.

But it is more than that. The demand for change is not just because London is far away but because Scotland is nearer ... indeed home, because the Scottish nation sees itself as a community whose interests cannot be properly advanced by the British state alone without the participation of the Scottish community through its own democratic parliament.

Indeed Scotland is a community that, in recognition of its interdependence, has a sense of what must be done by government to ensure individuals can achieve their potential. So there is a demand not just for accountable government but for government used effectively on behalf of the community.

And in transforming the government of Scotland I would argue that instead of retreating towards the old nineteenth century idea and trappings of an exclusive nation state with army, navy and defence forces and a separate currency - a nation state defined in relation to other nations and mainly in antithesis to its largest neighbour - what Scotland is demanding is a modern national identity, with autonomy on vital social and many economic matters within Britain and Europe. Recognising we are interdependent communities we want to link up across nations, not turn our backs on each other. Achieving, in short, the dream of Home Rule without the retreat into separation.

But the tumultuous events in Scotland are not the only calls for a new settlement in the United Kingdom. From Clive Ponting to GCHQ, from judicial error to excessive secrecy, we have become more centralised, less sensitive to individual rights and less free than we were.

And I have to say that the Citizen's Charters are no compensation for the failure of government and no substitute for the essential reform of government. The problem is much deeper than this. It is about the relationship between individual, community and the state, and I want to put the problem in a historical context.

There have been two attempts at a new settlement of the relationship between individuals, the community and the state in recent years. The boldest was the post-1945 settlement.

In 1945 individual freedom was to be guaranteed by social security rather than charity, with the state as provider ensuring for each citizen welfare, health care, education, social security and work. At the time, and for the time, it was the most ambitious programme of social and economic reform, one utterly necessary for many of the improvements we now take for granted today, not least our National Health Service.

Individual well-being was to be advanced by the active state delivering entitlements for the individual. But inevitably, as time passed and aspirations grew, individuals saw themselves less as passive recipients of benefits delivered by government and more as active participants seeking to shape their destiny. And the settlement did not in the end stand the test of time because it often seemed to many that the state and the community were one and the same thing.

Nationalised industries acted without the direct involvement of workforce or community. Scotland, Wales and the regions were granted benevolent administration without democratic rights to run their own affairs.

So, despite all the great achievements in health care, social security and education, there was not just an underdeveloped sense of community, but often an assumption that state and community interests were synonymous. Instead of government being an extension of community, it often looked to many like a substitute for it.

The response came in 1979 when Mrs Thatcher encouraged popular resentment against taxation, collectivism, bureaucracy and the local and national state, and attempted a new settlement between individual, community and government. The problem was identified by the new right Thatcherites as too much government and too little individual freedom. Individual well-being was to be guaranteed by less government even at the expense of social security.

But the new right did not recognise the individual as part of an interdependent community, quite the opposite. The individual was to make his or her own way in the marketplace unaided by government and set apart from any idea of society or community. There was - in Mrs Thatcher's own words - no such thing as society.

The result was that responsibilities conventionally accepted by the community that most of us had assumed would be discharged by government were abandoned or at least substantially eroded and reduced. Not just in social affairs (the responsibilities for public services of reasonable quality and the duty of the community to those in poverty) but also in the responsibility previously accepted by governments of all parties to stabilise the economy. Hence the extremes of boom and bust in the stop-go economics of the 1980's and 1990's. Hence the inability to improve research and innovation and training and education. Hence the now widening training and education gap.

The 1979 settlement abandoned responsibilities for individual well-being that government had discharged on behalf of the community, because it was now assumed that these could be left to the individual in the marketplace. The debate was wrongly identified as one between government and no government, when the real issue was better government. The result is that thirteen wasted years for the British constitution have directly contributed to thirteen wasted years for the British economy and for Britain as a community.

Let me say therefore where the heart of the difference in this debate lies. The new right believe individuals fulfil themselves best with no need for society and less need for government. I believe that in a modern interdependent society individual well-being is best advanced by a strong community backed up by active and accountable government.

And even those who now try to rescue the Conservative Party from the mistakes of crude free-market individualism have a similar problem. Unable to come to terms with a modern view of the constitution or society, their social market economy - dependent on the idea at best of compassion rather than rights - merely heralds a return to nineteenth-century paternalism.

But neither nineteenth-century paternalism nor eighteenth-century free market liberalism can answer questions of the relationship between individual community and government that now require a modern twentieth-century democratic settlement. A settlement that recognises first that the state may become a vested interest and that the individual needs the proper and guaranteed protection of a modern constitution so that government is accountable. And second, a settlement that recognises that individual potential is best developed in a community and that the community need not be a threat to individual liberty but can assist the fulfilment of it.

It is important for everyone, but particularly important for democratic socialists, that we recognise the need for individuals to be protected against any possible vested interests within the state.

Let me explain why democratic socialists more than anyone should be concerned in this way. Conservatives seek few if any additional responsibilities for government, and many suggest much less. They see well-being advanced primarily by the individual acting unaided on his or her own; while when I talk of individuals flourishing as part of a community where common needs are met through sharing responsibility, I assume an active role for government. But where I invoke the need for government I have a special responsibility to ensure its accountability. Indeed, those who argue for us to take seriously the responsibilities of government must always be more vigilant in arguing that in the exercise of these responsibilities there must be the maximum openness and accountability.

Holding the state accountable to the citizen is important for another reason. Socialists have long recognised that all societies tend to produce accumulated reservoirs of power. They entrench themselves, threatening to become vested interests - either in the private or public sector - hostile to any kind of reform or change. We have always identified such vested interests as our fundamental target.

Nineteenth-century socialism developed as a protest against the power of the main vested interests that then denied opportunity - the power of private capital. Twentieth-century socialists often were slow to realise that vested interests can operate throughout society. Indeed when socialism began as an attack on the vested interests of private wealth it used the state as the instrument of that attack. Yet the state was capable of becoming a vested interest in itself, capable of denying individuals opportunity and frustrating their potential to fulfil themselves.

I see the historic role of the Labour Party as nothing less than to stand up for the individual against any and every concentration of power that denies opportunity to individuals in British society whether cartels or cliques, whether in the public or private sector. And that is why socialists must demand that individuals have entrenched rights to protect them from the modern state.

But in our concern about the encroachment of the state on the individual we must never forget that community is still necessary as a means for individuals fulfilling themselves. Indeed I believe that the greatest failure of the last decade - and a loss that diminishes us all - has been the denial of the importance of community. Libertarians have been so afraid of the power that society can exercise over the individual they have sought to detach the individual from the very society of which he or she is part. Yet community is vital for the safety, health and development of individuals. Individuals on their own cannot make the streets safe at night. When disease strikes there is no such thing as a one- man health service. And almost all of us here today owe much that we have to the opportunities that have come from the collective provision of education. And take the environment today. Not only is it the case that individuals, no matter how rich, cannot buy themselves out of countryside pollution or urban decay - it is also true that private affluence loses its savour amidst public squalor, a recognition that we are dependent each upon one another.

So no-one can be in any doubt that there is a public interest in the community not just protecting the individual against pollution but positively acting to demand and ensure the highest standards: a common interest, not only in any one nation but also across the world.

So individuals need community and individuals depend on each other in a community. It is as wrong to see ourselves merely as Robinson Crusoes with no concerns beyond the immediate family, no bonds beyond the front door, no responsibilities beyond the garden gate, as it is to see ourselves as merely the repositories of society's values, somehow subsumed in the social order.

Etzioni has written that individuals stick to each other if they get too close but freeze if they get too far apart. It is time to see the crude dichotomy between community and individuals, that has frustrated political discussion in recent years, as both unrealistic and damaging. People do not live in isolation. People do not live in markets. People live in communities.

I think of Britain as a community of citizens with common needs, mutual interests, shared objectives, related goals and most of all linked destinies. A Britain not of strangers who only compete but a Britain of neighbours who recognise each other and recognise we depend upon each other. A Britain that is a society of individuals whose interactions are determined not by the invisible hand of the free market beloved of right wing economists, but a society where individuals depend freely and willingly upon what Dr James Stockinger has described as the hands of others. It is, he says, the hands of others who grow the food we eat, sew the clothes we wear, and build the homes we inhabit. It is the hands of others who tend us when we are sick, and who raise us up when we fall. And it is the hands of others who lift us first into the cradle and lower us finally into the grave.

We must rescue and restore the idea of community and do more than that, assert how individuals benefit from strong communities, not as a threat to their individual liberties but as an assistance to their fulfilment.

Community is not merely the aggregate of individuals joined together temporarily out of convenience - the community, in Bentham's words, as a fictitious body. Nor is it merely the source of authority seeking, in the name of duty, to impose standards of behaviour on warring individuals, because anarchy is seen as a greater danger than authoritarianism.

We must break away from the extreme views of the individual struggling for advantage against a community holding him back and that of the community struggling to hold the anti-social individual down. So I neither support Locke when he says rights are vested in individuals who do nothing more than delegate these rights to a community and I reject Hobbes when he argues for individuals subordinating all their rights for security. Community arises because we depend on each other.

It is said that the pressure for citizenship in Britain comes from the compassion of the fortunate towards the least fortunate. But modern citizenship is built on the recognition of interdependence. It is distinct from individualism including such paternalism. It recognises the citizen as part of a wider and interdependent community.

Indeed I believe that democratic socialism was founded on this belief in the value of community and society; that its main inspiration is the ethic of community rather than a theory of economy; and that the idea that individuals realise their potential to the full as part of the society in which they live leads us to embrace the idea that the community should stand up on behalf of individuals against the vested interests that hold them back. It is, let us be clear, community assisting the individual not the individual subsumed in community or subordinated to it.

But it is partly because the community has succeeded in the past in creating new opportunities that people have become more assertive, with a broader view of what they can achieve, less inclined to be passive recipients of welfare, more inclined to demand the right to realise their diversity of talents, interests and desires to the full. It is significant that all constitutions that have stood the test of time have had an implicit if not explicit view of society and human nature that recognises such aspirations.

The French constitution says that: 'The community shall be based on the equality and the solidarity of the peoples composing it'. The Italian constitution 'recognises and guarantees the inviolable rights of man both as an individual and as a member of the social groups in which his personality finds expression...' The American constitution starts with the words 'We the people...'

But anyone studying our unwritten British constitution will find implicit in it the idea of leaders and led, the Hobbesian view that the role of government is to empower leaders, unbounded by any limitations, to deal with the threat to security posed by those who must be led.

It is time to escape from that bleak Hobbesian view. A view which, if I may say so, now seems after 300 years and the experience of many other nations to be: nasty, poor, British and short. It is now time to think about the liberation of potential and the empowerment of the citizen.

We can see it reflected every day in the permanent influence of the women's movement demanding genuine liberation in place of what has invariably been second class citizenship. When women say - for example - that they should not be faced with the unfair choice between the jobs they need and the children they love they are expressing the legitimate desire to have the right to fulfil their potential.

When we think of the rights of children, we think of them growing, through parental support, child care, nursery education, a stimulating environment, the love of friends and neighbours: developing their potential to the full. But the argument for the fulfilment of potential does not apply only to children. Adults too should enjoy the right that we should become the best that we have it in us to become, and not just the best that other people have decided we may be allowed to be.

So the growing demand of individuals is that they should be in a position to realise their potential, to bridge the gap between what they are and what they have it in them to become. And the aspirations of the individual within the community and the means whereby the community responds become a central question to be addressed when we look at how we are to be governed.

Rightly any programme for a modern society and modern economy and the policies that arise from it must encompass a debate about how markets can work in the public interest, how individuals at work - employees and managers - can cooperate effectively to use capital in the public interest, how we can ensure the highest quality public services that are both accountable and open, and how poverty can be tackled not just in the interests of advancing social and economic opportunities and rights of individuals themselves but in securing social cohesion.

But a modern constitution is essential to protect individuals against the state and to empower them within an interdependent community. In this way the agenda for constitutional change becomes essential to the task of establishing a modern view of society and in my view a modern view of democratic socialism. That agenda will be familiar to supporters of Charter 88 but I want briefly and in conclusion to address certain aspects of it.

First, from the belief that socialism must take on the vested interests of government as well as those of capital and wealth, springs the clear need for the rights of the individual to be protected in law in the constitution and to be exercisable against executive power.

The method of achieving this can be debated. It could of course be done through an entrenched Bill of Rights possibly through incorporation of the European Convention of Human Rights. Alternatively individual rights could be defined through specific items of legislation which are then made subject to a special legislative procedure which in effect entrenches them. On this basis then, this debate can continue but a Bill of Rights in one form or another there will be.

And this must be accompanied by the affirmative action essential not just to outlaw sexual, racial and other discrimination - for example by genuinely achieving equal access to the law - but also to positively promote greater equality ensuring that in a modern society, as I have indicated, civil rights are matched by economic and social opportunities in the workplace and elsewhere.

And as the power of European institutions threatens to grow, especially that of the Commission, so does the need for accountability and protection for individual rights. For that reason the European Commission too must be subject to the European Convention of Human Rights. In the longer term I have no doubt we will have to consider a new European Bill of Rights, protecting the rights of European citizens from any abuse of power by European institutions.

We must make freedom of information a priority and in my view there is now an opportunity as well as the demand to act rapidly. It is clear that to make our community more efficient and to protect individual liberty we should have a free flow of information between government and governed. That is why, as Roy Hattersley has outlined, we need a Freedom of Information Act that ensures not only a presumption in favour of disclosure, but also that public interest defence must be available where there is a question-mark over the illegitimate disclosure of information by civil servants.

But because of what I say about vested interests as a whole I want to extend this concept in two ways. First, freedom of information should apply not just to the apparatus of the state but to those dark and secret corners of private power. There should be specific obligations on companies to inform employees, shareholders and the public where it is in the public interest to do so or where it is clearly legitimate for individuals to require such information.

Secondly, freedom of information should be seen not just as a brake upon the natural tendency towards secrecy of powerful institutions. It should be an attempt to actively provide information to the community that needs it.

For example, how can we debate seriously the environment, the economy, unemployment, or the state of our public services if we are denied the vital information - the true, not politically doctored facts and figures - which must necessarily form the basis for such a debate? I believe, for example, that what we call official statistics should come from a central statistical office; not subject to government interference as it is at the moment but independent of government.

In this way the constitutional debate is about content as well as about form, about how to make rights effective in practice as well as in theory.

Thus, there is a duty in the modern constitution to ensure the best possible consultation throughout our society. Public consultation is a mark of a mature democracy, not only when government seeks to make major legislative changes - for example over local taxation - but also at a smaller scale where new developments are planned. We must also ensure the fullest democratic participation in decisions.

Crucial, obviously, to any debate about the rules governing our society is the method of deciding its government. The debate about electoral reform is now proceeding apace and I welcome it. In Scotland we have already adopted the principles for change in a Scottish parliament reflecting a growing recognition that the present system is outdated. Indeed I believe there is now a majority in the Labour Party for an open and comprehensive debate on electoral reform.

It should proceed on the basis of fairness not electoral advantage. It should be because of its intrinsic worth - not as an alternative to winning elections under the present system. Then, in the detail of different systems of voting, the crucial questions arise. Systems are widely varied and have had quite different consequences when they have been tried. The debate, in other words, must concentrate on mechanisms as well as ideals. In particular, I and many others would want to ensure whatever system is adopted maintains the close link between the constituency as a community and its representative.

We must also widen our notion of what we mean by participation. Throughout the community encouragement should be given to individuals to participate in the major decisions that affect their lives.

There must also be proper accountability for all those who exercise power in the public's name. I favour certain public appointments made subject to the scrutiny of a House of Commons committee, so reducing the prime ministerial power of patronage. But I also favour placing the security services under public scrutiny through Parliament, a reform that is long overdue.

We must ensure that those who exercise power, whether in the executive or judiciary as well as the legislature, are able to reflect the public interest. Measures have been spelt out for increasing the representation of women but it will also be equally important that those who administer the law themselves be more representative. What is fascinating now is that real and profound concern about our legal system can no longer be dismissed as confined to fringe or minority groups. Recent cases have seriously undermined public confidence in our legal system. There must be a thorough reform of judicial appointment.

I believe that there must be a wholesale devolution of power. I have made the case for a Scottish parliament now and for the reform of government in Wales and the regions pointing towards a written constitution. In replacing the indefensible House of Lords on a democratic basis, consideration should be given to introducing a regional element to the second chamber. But the devolution of power that I favour is far more widespread. I believe that more generally communities should be in a position to take more control over their own decisions.

That is why we must begin a radical discussion of how the community can work to organise its affairs, breaking out of the one-dimensional view of government that has dominated too much of our thinking. Where there is a public interest there need not be a centralised public-sector bureaucracy always directly involved in provision. Sometimes the best role for government is merely to enable or encourage, or to act as a catalyst or coordinator. At other times government can be partner or simply financier, helping communities to organise themselves.

Indeed the constitution fit for the 21st century should be one of the servant state, the state serving the community and the individual, placed beneath a sovereign people and not above it.

And finally, part of a new settlement between individual community and government is to reinvigorate the notion of public service. For thirteen years we have heard much about the evils of the public sector, as it has been denigrated. It is time to talk about the value of our public services as a reflection of the shared concerns of a British society that educates the young, cares for its sick and disabled, shares responsibilities for the elderly and frail. Teachers and all those who work in the education service, doctors, nurses, orderlies, assistants and all those who work in the health service, the police service and of course the civil service itself.

With young people it is time to harness idealism and energy in the meeting of needs by public service. In the 1960's, from America, there was launched the Peace Corps, an international commitment to harness the idealism of young people to break out of the impotence many felt in the face of the threat to world peace. Now in the 1990's, from Britain, it may be that we should be considering a new corps, a world environment corps, to harness the idealism of young people to break out of the impotence many feel in the face of the threat to the world environment.

We need a British initiated but world-wide organisation through which young people can be trained to meet the environmental challenges of our time: whether helping environmental improvement in Britain, or tackling reclamation or pollution in other parts of the world. This is one of many proposals that we could discuss that will over time reinvigorate the idea, central to the notion of community, that public service is a noble aspiration.

In conclusion, the current movement for constitutional reform is of historic importance. It signals the demand for a decisive shift in the balance of power in Britain, a long overdue transfer of sovereignty from those who govern to those who are governed, from an ancient and indefensible Crown sovereignty to a modern popular sovereignty, not just tidying up our constitution but transforming it.

What I have tried to do is to set the movement for constitutional change within the framework of democratic socialism and I make no apology for doing that.

I have put forward the idea of a new settlement, based on two requirements: the first, that the individual is protected against the state, and the second, that the individual is empowered to develop his or her potential as part of our community. I believe that the Labour Party is the natural party of reform in government and that when I argue that the historic role is to stand up for the individual citizen against vested interests I also mean that the community should open doors for the individual, break down barriers that frustrate choice and chances, empower people with new opportunities, using the power of all to advance the good of each.

I have said that central to this is the notion that Britain needs a new view of community, and that this requires in turn a modern constitution to give it effect. I believe that we can break out of the discredited alternatives of old style state power and new style individualism. Instead I believe that the challenge of the 1990's is to create, as we move towards a new century, a new settlement between individual and community. One that recognises both our rights and aspirations as individuals and our needs and shared values as a community. Not so much the end of history, as one academic put it, but the opening of a new chapter.

In a speech on liberty at the University of Westminster, Thursday 25 October 2007, Gordon Brown said that the discussion would focus on how to "entrench and enhance" individual freedoms while also detailng the responsibilities "that flow from British citizenship". Mr Brown expressed his hope that the debate be informed by all people and all viewpoints regardless of any political affiliation.

I want to talk today about liberty - what it means for Britain, for our British identity and in particular what it means in the 21st century for the relationship between the private individual and the public realm.

I want to explore how together we can write a new chapter in our country’s story of liberty - and do so in a world where, as in each generation, traditional questions about the freedoms and responsibilities of the individual re-emerge but also where new issues of terrorism and security, the internet and modern technology are opening new frontiers in both our lives and our liberties.

Addressing these issues is a challenge for all who believe in liberty, regardless of political party. Men and women are Conservative or Labour, Liberal Democrat or of some other party - or of no political allegiance. But we are first of all citizens of our country with a shared history and a common destiny.

And I believe that together we can chart a better way forward. In particular, I believe that by applying our enduring ideals to new challenges we can start immediately to make changes in our constitution and laws to safeguard and extend the liberties of our citizens:

• respecting and extending freedom of assembly, new rights for the public expression of dissent;
• respecting freedom to organise and petition, new freedoms that guarantee the independence of non-governmental organisations;
• respecting freedoms for our press, the removal of barriers to investigative journalism;
• respecting the public right to know, new rights to access public information where previously it has been withheld;
• respecting privacy in the home, new rights against arbitrary intrusion;
• in a world of new technology, new rights to protect your private information;
• and respecting the need for freedom from arbitrary treatment, new provision for independent judicial scrutiny and open parliamentary oversight.

Renewing for our time our commitment to freedom and contributing to a new British constitutional settlement for our generation.

And my starting point is that from the time of Magna Carta, to the civil wars and revolutions of the 17th century, through to the liberalism of Victorian Britain and the widening and deepening of democracy and fundamental rights throughout the last century, there has been a British tradition of liberty - what one writer has called our ‘gift to the world’.

Of course liberty - with roots that go back to antiquity - is not and cannot be solely a British idea. In one sense, liberty is rooted in the human spirit and does not have a nationality. But first with the Magna Carta and then through Milton and Locke to more recent writers as diverse as Orwell and Churchill, philosophers and politicians have extolled the virtues of a Britain that, in the words of the American revolutionary Patrick Henry, ‘made liberty the foundation of everything’, and ‘became a great, mighty and splendid nation…because liberty is its direct end and foundation’.

At that time few doubted that modern ideas of liberty originated from our country. Britain ‘hath been the temple as it were of liberty’ said Bolingbroke as early as 1730 ‘whilst her sacred fires have been extinguished in so many countries, here they have been religiously kept alive’. ‘The civil wars of Rome ended in slavery and those of the English in liberty’ Voltaire wrote. ‘The English are the only people upon earth who have been able to regulate the power of kings by resisting them…The English are jealous not only of their own liberty but even of that of other nations’.

So powerful did this British idea of liberty become that the American War of Independence was fought on both sides ‘in the name of British liberty’ and the first great student of American democracy de Tocqueville acknowledge its roots across the Atlantic: ‘I enjoyed, too, in England’, he said, ‘what I have long been deprived of - a union between the religious and the political world, between public and private virtue, between Christianity and liberty’.

A century and more later, facing fascism on the right and Stalinism on the left, Orwell wrote that ‘the totalitarian idea that there is no such thing as law - there is only power - has never taken root in England [where] such concepts as justice, liberty and objective truth are still believed in’.

And while we should not overstate it, the anthems that today celebrate our country have at their heart a call to liberty. In 1902 A.C Benson wrote ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ to define Britain as ‘the mother of the free’ and two centuries before Rule Britannia, written in England by a Scot, resounded with the resolve ‘Britons never never shall be slaves’.

Of course the cause has been hard fought — won and lost and won again. But if you draw a line through all the peaks and valleys, the direction over time is upward.

A passion for liberty has determined the decisive political debates of our history, inspired many of our defining political moments, and those debates, conducted in the crucible of great events, have, in my view, forged over time a distinctly British interpretation of liberty —— one that asserts the importance of freedom from prejudice, of rights to privacy, and of limits to the scope of arbitrary state power, but one that also rejects the selfishness of extreme libertarianism and demands that the realm of individual freedom encompasses not just some but all of us.

And I believe that to each generation falls the task of expanding the idea of British liberty and to each generation also the task of rediscovering liberty’s central importance as a founding value of our country and its animating force.

Indeed I am concerned that too often in recent years the public dialogue in our country has undervalued the importance of liberty. Too often the political debate has become polarised between a new right that has emphasised laissez-faire more than liberty and an old left that has mistakenly marginalised liberty by seeing it as the enemy of equality.

Now is the time to reaffirm our distinctive British story of liberty - to show it is as rich, powerful and relevant to the life of the nation today as ever; to apply its lessons to the new tests of our time.

So instead of invoking the unique nature of the threats we face today as a reason for relinquishing our historical attachment to British liberty, we meet these tests not by abandoning principles of liberty but by giving them new life.

We all approach the history of these islands in our own way. But for me certain key themes emerge over and over again through the centuries to characterise the British conception of liberty.

First, I trace the historical roots of liberty in Britain to a struggle for tolerance, by which I mean also a gradual acceptance of pluralism - a notion of political liberty that would allow those of different denominations and beliefs to coexist peacefully together.

The commitment in Britain to basic freedoms of worship, assembly, speech and press began to emerge in the 16th and 17th centuries alongside a rejection of religious persecution. ‘If not equal all, yet all equally free’ wrote Milton in Paradise Lost.

This did not happen all at once, or without setbacks and struggle. The flames of religious intolerance burned across this land too. But never as strongly as in continental Europe.

And down the centuries the British people have come to demonstrate a shared belief that respect for the dignity and value of every human being demands that all be given the freedom and space to live their lives by their own choices, free from the control and unjustified interference of others.

There is of course always the danger that villains of history become redeemed by the passage of time. There is a human instinct to recast the past as a lost golden age. I do not wish to fall into that trap. Nor should we succumb to an excessively Whig-like interpretation of history that assumes an inevitable stage-by-stage progress. In particular we should neither glorify nor distort what has gone before - and the struggles, both the ups and downs, of empire are not long behind us - to uphold a particular view of where we are now or what we can become.

So we need to recognise, for example, that it took until 1829 for Catholic emancipation, even later for legislation ending discrimination against the Jewish community. It is true that in 1914 our franchise was more narrowly restricted than nearly all other countries in Europe. It was only in the second half of the twentieth century that Parliament took action to combat discrimination against women and ethnic minorities and there is still much work to do in these areas and against discrimination on the grounds of sexuality, disability and religion.

But the single most powerful thread that runs though our history is a succession of chapters in the defence of liberty and toleration.

We gave refuge to Huguenots fleeing persecution in the 1600s.

By the eighteenth century, London was arguably already the world’s most diverse city - a situation which we can remain proud of in Britain to this day.

The abolition of slavery was an act that led the world in the defence of human dignity - and today our abhorrence of torture is and must be unequivocal.

And as the chapters have unfolded and the battles have been won, tolerance in Britain has evolved from a passive defence of free speech and freedoms of press and assembly into a positive assertion of their place in our progress.

Indeed today one of the qualities British people say they admire most about our country is our tolerance, and the characteristic that makes them most ashamed is any intolerance.

And this British idea of liberty evolved into something even more remarkable in the early modern era - the right to dissent - fought for by the civil war dissenters and embodied in the campaigns of the chartists and later the suffragettes.

Now, tolerance may have been instrumental in shaping modern British beliefs in liberty, but liberty for Britain steadily became not just about mutual acceptance but also about due process against arbitrary power.

While this great tradition can be traced back to the Magna Carta, it was the rise of the modern state with all the new powers at its disposal that made the 17th century the pivotal period in the struggle against arbitrary and unaccountable government —— as Britain led the way in the battle for freedom from hierarchical rule, for human rights and for the rule of law.

And tracing Coke’s defence of common law, the work of John Locke and the Bill of Rights of 1689 right through to the first of the Reform Acts, Macaulay concluded that ‘the authority of law and the security of property were found to be compatible with a liberty of discussion and of individual action never before known’.

And in the mid to late 20th century, this idea of liberty increasingly became the foundation of a new international order where the right of everyone - human rights - should be respected by everyone. On an island off Newfoundland in 1941, Churchill and Roosevelt together drew up the Atlantic Charter, and by beginning the system of international law based on the fundamental rights of all human beings, Britain led the way in asserting the inviolability of individual rights, irrespective of race or nationality and made the freedoms so dear to Britain the cornerstone of a new international order. And a few years later Britain led the way in the European Convention of Human Rights so that the same insistence on tolerance, the same defence against the arbitrary power of governments, the same fundamental rights and implicit mutual obligations between all human beings could provide protection to all individuals wherever they were.

One view of the American tradition of liberty manifests itself in the ‘leave me alone’ state. But while concern for privacy is central in our tradition, the British conception of liberty which runs though and defines much of our national experience has not led, at least for most of our history, to notions of the isolated individual left on his own — it is privacy not loneliness that British people seem to value. Nor did it lead to selfish individualism.

Instead, throughout the last three hundred years in Britain, as Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks has eloquently described, the progress of the idea of liberty has gone hand in hand with notions of social responsibility: ‘the active citizen’, the ‘good neighbour’, and civic pride, emphasising that people are not just self interested but members of a wider community - sustained by the mutual obligation we all feel to each other.

As Gertrude Himmelfarb puts it, in Britain the enlightenment focus on asserting the rights of individuals was accompanied by a cluster of ’social virtues’ —- benevolence, improvement, civic society and the moral sense underlying shared purpose. Thus John Stuart Mill did not, in the end, call for unfettered freedoms, but argued that ‘there are many positive acts for the benefit of others which he may rightfully be compelled to perform’.

So I recall a British story of liberty rooted in tolerance, the liberty that is necessary to uphold the dignity of each and all; reinforced by due process against the exercise of arbitrary power; best advanced in the modern world when we recognise the responsibilities we owe to each other; and now as a new generation expands the frontiers of liberty, also increasingly about empowering the individual to make the most of their potential. As T. H. Green put it: ‘when we speak of freedom as something to be so highly prized, we mean a positive power or capacity of doing or enjoying something worth doing or enjoying, and that, too, something that we do or enjoy in common with others’.

Indeed, from more than a century ago, in the view of British thinkers - not just Green but Hobson, Hobhouse and Tawney - freedom could only be fully realised when society was prepared to overcome the barriers that prevented people from realising their true potential. Hobson put it as a question when he asked: ‘is a man free who has not equal opportunity with his fellows of such access to all material and moral means of personal development and work as shall contribute to his own welfare and that of his society?’.

So in this modern view freedom comes to mean not just freedom from interference, but also freedom to aspire - the opportunity and the chance to live a rounded life in which for everyone there is a place for choice and talent to flourish.

So I am in no doubt that our freedoms, our openness and tolerance, and our very enterprise and creativity which flow from these qualities — what we value about being British - emerge from this rich and historic tradition.

Yet all too often on the political right, liberty has been reduced to a simplistic libertarianism in which freedom and licence assumed a rough equivalence, and the absence of government from public life seen as essential to maximise liberty - such as in the 19th century with the continued acceptance of child labour.

And some politicians of the left have mistakenly seen liberty at odds with equality and were too often prepared to compromise or even ignore the sanctity of freedoms of the individual.

But these simplistic caricatures are unacceptable: we need a more rounded and realistic conception of liberty.

In a world of increasingly rapid change and multiplying challenges - facing for example a terrorist threat or a challenge to our tolerance - democracies must be able to bring people together, mark out common ground, and energise the will and the resources of all.

It is the open society that responds best to new challenges and we are fortunate in being able to do so by drawing on that British story of liberty.

Indeed, the components of our liberty are the building blocks for such a society:
our belief in the freedom of speech and expression and conscience and dissent helps create the open society; our determination to subject the state to greater scrutiny and accountability sustains such openness; the reinforcement of civic responsibility and the empowerment of the individual gives our country the underlying strength we need to succeed in the years ahead.

And while some people argue that in this changing world the concern for liberty has to take its place behind other commitments, I am convinced that both to rebuild our constitution for the modern age and to unify the country to meet and master every challenge, we need to consciously and with determination found the next stage of constitutional development firmly on the story of British liberty.

This will only be possible if we face up to the hard choices that have to be made in government. Precious as it is, liberty is not the only value we prize and not the only priority for government. The test for any government will be how it makes those hard choices, how it strikes the balance. To claim that we should ignore the claims of liberty when faced with the needs of security would be to embark down an authoritarian path that I believe would be unacceptable to the British people. But to ignore the duty of government to protect its people - and to be unwilling to face up to hard choices - is the politics of gesture and irresponsibility.

In my view, the key to making these hard choices in a way that is compatible with our traditions of liberty is to, at all times, apply the liberty test, respecting fundamental rights and freedoms, and wherever action is needed by government, it never subjects the citizen to arbitrary treatment, is transparent and proportionate in its measures and at all times also requires proper scrutiny by, and accountability to, Parliament and the people.

And so I want today to give you some examples of how in accordance with this approach we can, consistent with our security and the other priorities of government, do far more to entrench liberty in our constitutional settlement.

First, it is the British way to stand up for freedom of assembly, speech and press.

Wherever and whenever there are question marks over the ability to express dissent I believe that the balance should be with those taking action to defend and extend the liberty of individuals and their freedoms to express their views within the law.

So as I set out before the summer, I think it right - in consultation with the Metropolitan Police, Parliament, the Mayor of London, Westminster City Council and civil liberties groups - to review the law to ensure that people’s right to protest outside the very heart of our democracy - the House of Commons - is not subject to unnecessary restrictions. And the Home Secretary is publishing a consultation document on this issue today.

Alongside this it is important, as the Government has made clear, that charities are guaranteed the independence and the right to have their voice heard and to campaign on the issues that matter to them.

In addition, there is a case for applying our enduring ideas of liberty to ensure that the laws governing the press in this country fully respect freedom of speech.

The key is to achieve the right balance between freedom of the press, the protection of individual privacy, and public safety and security - and I now believe there is more we can do to ensure that freedom of expression and legitimate journalism are protected.

We agree with the Select Committee on Culture that a free press is the hallmark of our democracy, that there is no case for statutory regulation of the press, that self-regulation of the press should be maintained and that it is for the publishers themselves to demonstrate by their decisions that they can sustain and bolster public confidence in the way information is gathered and used.

But for our part - and to make sure that in pursuing essential policy objectives like combating terrorism and tackling hate crime any new measures do not curb legitimate liberties to speak and be heard - Jack Straw, the Secretary of State for Justice, will investigate the idea of a freedom of expression audit for future legislation.

Last year, in a draft bill, we published proposals which would limit media access to coroners’ courts. Having undertaken extensive consultation we have now decided not to go ahead with these proposals.

No one wants to see criminals profiting from publishing books about their crimes. At the same time, we must ensure that the freedom of the press to investigate and report is maintained. Our preferred option, subject to further technical examination, would be for the public to have the right through civil orders to recover payments made to people where these payments can be constituted as benefits of crime.

The wilful abuse of personal data is of serious concern so there are proposals currently under consideration to clamp down on those who profit illegally from trade in personal data. But Jack Straw has asked the Information Commissioner to produce guidance, in consultation with the Press Complaints Commission, to make sure we take into account concerns about the new rules - which allow for a prison sentence of up to two years. Clear guidance will make sure that legitimate investigative journalism is not impeded but that the sanctions provide a strong deterrent to protect individual privacy.

Because liberty cannot flourish in the darkness, our rights and freedoms are protected by the daylight of public scrutiny as much as by the decisions of Parliament or independent judges.

So it is clear that to protect individual liberty we should have the freest possible flow of information between government and the people.

In the last ten years in Britain we have created a new legislative framework requiring openness and transparency in the state’s relationships with the public. The Freedom of Information Act has been a landmark piece of legislation, enshrining for the first time in our laws the public’s right to access information.

Freedom of Information (FoI) can be inconvenient, at times frustrating and indeed embarrassing for governments. But Freedom of Information is the right course because government belongs to the people, not the politicians.

I now believe there is more we can do to change the culture and the workings of government to make it more open — whilst of course continuing to maintain safeguards in areas like national security.

When anything is provided without cost, it does risk being open to abuse. However the Government does not believe that more restrictive rules on cost limits of FoI requests are the way forward. And so Jack Straw has decided, and has announced today, that we will not tighten FoI fees regulations as previously proposed.

We do this because of the risk that such proposals might have placed unacceptable barriers between the people and public information. Public information does not belong to Government, it belongs to the public on whose behalf government is conducted. Wherever possible that should be the guiding principle behind the implementation of our Freedom of Information Act.

So it is right also to consider extending the coverage of freedom of information and the Freedom of Information Act. And we are also today publishing a consultation document to consider whether additional organisations discharging a public function - including in some instances private sector companies running services for the public sector - should be brought within the scope of Freedom of Information legislation.

Freedom of Information is not simply about current discussions within government but about the restrictions we place on the publication of historical documents.

It is an irony that the information that can be made available on request on current events and current decisions is still withheld as a matter of course for similar events and similar decisions that happened 20 or 25 years ago.

Under the present arrangements historical records are transferred to the national archives and are only opened to public access after thirty years or where explicitly requested under the FoI Act. It is time to look again at whether historical records can be made available for public inspection much more swiftly than under the current arrangements.

There are of course cost and security implications of a more open approach which we will need to examine thoroughly. So I have asked Paul Dacre, Editor-in-Chief of Associated Newspapers and member of the Press Complaints Commission - working with Sir Joe Pilling, former Permanent Secretary of the Northern Ireland Office, and the eminent historian David Cannadine - to review this rule. And we look forward to receiving their proposals in the first half of 2008.

At the same time, we know that increasing the flow of publicly available real-time data about what is happening on the ground - whether about local policing or local health services - is vital in enabling people to make informed choices about how they use their local services and the standards they expect. And even in the most sensitive sphere, national security - where everyone agrees that some safeguards have to be in place to respect confidentiality - it is right to consider the circumstances in which we open up more information for debate. For the first time - starting later this year - the Government will publish, for parliamentary debate and public scrutiny, our National Security Strategy setting out for the British people the threats we face and the objectives we pursue. New rules will also govern a more open approach to the working of the Intelligence and Security Committee and I have agreed with the Chair of the ISC that Parliament should have a clear role in the appointment of members to the Committee.

The advancement of individual liberty depends upon the protection from arbitrary interference of the person and private property and, above all, the home.

I am aware of concerns that have been expressed about the powers of public authorities to enter homes and business premises without permission - powers that have been granted piecemeal over the years in pursuit of generally agreed public goals such as the protection of children, action against criminals - and, more recently, suspected terrorists.

In the last year we have tried, in the interests of protecting the privacy of the home dweller, to regularise the circumstances in which bailiffs have permission to enter homes.

But I believe we can go much further.

There are a surprisingly high number - at least 250 - of provisions granting power to enter homes and premises without permission. This high number reflects how often they are drawn very narrowly - not least because of our traditional respect for liberty and privacy.

I share the concerns about the need for additional protections for the liberties and rights of the citizen. And I believe that one of the strongest guarantees is a clear understanding of what these rights are and that is more difficult with the very existence of hundreds of laws.

So the Home Secretary is working with the Association of Chief Police Officers to examine, in the name of clarity and the greatest possible protection for the individual, the scope for bringing together all existing police powers of entry into a single understandable code. But, besides the police, many other public authorities covering areas like public health, animal welfare, health and safety, and customs and excise, also have powers of entry. So, alongside the review of police powers, the Home Secretary will establish and coordinate a wider review of all other powers of entry.

But it is not enough to clarify and subject these powers to the liberty test. Any change should be and will be accompanied by guidance on how these powers should be exercised and the rights members of the public have to take action if those expectations are not met. And we should consider whether we need to do more to offer redress for the individual against any disproportionate use of powers by the state.

In the same way as we do more to safeguard privacy in the home, so too we will review in consultation with the police and civil liberties organisations whether we need - whilst never compromising our security - to improve the guidance for police officers on the exercise of Section 44 of the 2000 Terrorism Act — so we can both ensure that they have the powers they need and preserve trust in the way power is used.

Up until now our concerns about privacy have focused on the physical space of our homes and neighbourhoods. What is new about 21st century ideas of privacy is that they rightly extend far beyond the home right across our lives to the way information about us is handled.

This is the century of information. Our ability to compete in the global economy, to protect ourselves against crime and terrorist attack, depends not just on natural wealth or on walls or fences but on our ability to use information - in industry, in our schools and universities, at our borders, in our police forces and intelligence services. And it is clear that we can use DNA to help solve crimes and we can use new powers of access to information to deny terrorists and criminals financial freedom and the ability to move across borders.

At the same time, a great prize of the information age is that by sharing information across the public sector - responsibly, transparently but also swiftly - we can now deliver personalised services for millions of people, something not dreamt of in 1945 and not possible even ten years ago. So for a pensioner, for example, this might mean dealing with issues about their pension, meals on wheels and a handrail at home together in one phone call or visit, even though the data about those services is held by different bits of the public and voluntary sectors.

But if Governments do not insist on accountability where people’s data is concerned - and are not held independently to account - then we risk losing people’s trust which is fundamental to all these issues and more.

And as what is possible changes, so the protections we afford to individuals must change, and we must respond to the need for a more secure way of establishing and protecting people’s identity; to the new opportunities to use biometrics to identify false passports or DNA to solve crime; to the need to deny terrorists and criminals financial freedom and the ability to move across borders; to the pressure to provide more personalised public services. In all these areas the challenge is both to be able to use, where appropriate, the opportunities of new technology in pursuit of security or in pursuit of justice — and simultaneously to put in place proper standards and oversight to protect liberty.

The information age has, as Tom Friedman has so well drawn out, flattened hierarchies and potentially increased the power of all citizens. So we should not fear the advent of the information age - and it should not lead us to abandon or fear for our values - but at the same time I believe we require a new and imaginative approach to accountability and to winning people’s trust in the ways in which information is held and used.

In previous centuries people’s identities were protected in the only ways people knew how - with the requirement to register at the time of birth, marriage and death. Today we have the benefit not just of the fingerprint technology of the last century but advances in biometric technology in this, that can protect individuals and society against crime, fraud, illegal immigration and terrorism - and protect for each and every individual our own identity.

With identity fraud on the increase the need for this personal protection is increasing, as was recognised in the recent report by the All-Party Group on Identity Fraud. Banks, credit card companies, retail stores and computer companies now all use sophisticated identification techniques, including biometric technologies, to identify people.

And on those occasions where we already have to identify ourselves - when we open a bank account or withdraw money, pay for something, cross borders or register with a GP - citizens themselves are recognising that it is in their interests to have a modern and secure means of identification which better protects against crime, fraud and illegal immigration and also protects each of them as individuals, their property but also their privacy.

And so the issue for the future is not whether biometrics are used - they are now already being used by companies, by retailers, on new laptop computers in place of passwords to protect personal security and privacy: the question is how they will be used and under what protections for the rights of the individual.

This is an issue for both private and public sector transactions alike. And whatever views people have in the debate we are currently engaged in about the management of identity for entry into our country and in other respects, I believe we need a wider debate - right across the public and private sectors - about the right form of independent oversight and parliamentary scrutiny and safeguards.

So notwithstanding the continuing debate about identity cards, it is right that the Information Commissioner - independent of Government - should continue to have, on behalf of the public, oversight of how Government collects, hold and uses data — testing it against the best data protection laws and ensuring individuals will have the right to see the information held on them. And it is the British way to insist that we do all we can to protect individual citizens and their rights. So we must always ensure that there is - as we have legislated on ID cards - proper accountability to Parliament, with limits to use of the data enshrined in parliamentary legislation, the exercise of responsibilities in this area subject to regular and open scrutiny by Parliament, with detailed reports on any new powers published and laid before it.

These are issues not just for us but for others — and I know that similar debates are going on around the world. Jack Straw and I have asked the Information Commissioner, Richard Thomas and Doctor Mark Walport, Director of the Wellcome Trust, to undertake a review of the framework for the use of information - in both the private and public sector - to assess whether it is right for today’s landscape and strikes the right balance —– giving people the protection they are entitled to, while allowing them to make the most of the opportunities which are being opened up by the new information age.

Concerns people rightly have about modern protections for personal privacy are matched by concerns people rightly have about the protection of time honoured rights in the face of unprecedented new threats to our security.

Terrorism can today strike anywhere and anytime.

The very freedoms we have built up over generations are the freedoms terrorist most want to destroy.

By insisting that liberty is and remains at the centre of our constitution, we rightly raise the bar we have to meet when it comes to measures to protect the security of individuals and communities against the terrorist threat.

For me this means that any necessary steps we take to enforce security must always be accompanied by the strongest of safeguards to ensure there is scrutiny, accountability and transparency in the decisions that are made and that at all times we preserve the primacy of independent courts and strengthen accountability to Parliament.

I am in no doubt about the desirability of a debate over pre-charge detention. It is central to our tradition of civil liberties that no one should be held arbitrarily, and it is right that the longer someone is detained, the more concerns there are about arbitrary treatment.

The police and others - including the independent reviewer Lord Carlile - have argued that the clear trends in recent terrorist cases towards greater complexity, greater numbers and international links suggest that in the future 28 days may not be enough and we are also considering other proposals including post-charge questioning.

But weighing that case for an extension of days against legitimate concerns about arbitrary treatment, I know the importance of making sure that whatever specific changes are agreed for special, perhaps exceptional, circumstances that might arise, there will be - and must be - greater protections for the individual —- both greater legal or judicial safeguards on executive decisions and more intensive scrutiny of them by Parliament.

Our commitment to liberty - to the restriction of arbitrary power and to the empowerment of the individual - is of course also the foundation for our recent proposals on constitutional reform launched in July.

I believe that trust in our institutions can only be strengthened if our constitutional reforms are explicitly founded on British ideas of liberty — and that it is imperative that in every generation we re-examine areas where the executive has discretion and where to limit that discretion would be in the interests of good government.

In my first days as Chancellor of the Exchequer I gave up power to the Bank of England. To restore the credibility of government economic policy we had to constrain the power of government to put the politics of the moment ahead of the national economic interest.

Now - in my first few months as Prime Minister - we are consulting on other areas where the Prime Minister and executive should surrender or limit their powers, re-examining patronage where it is arbitrary and at all times seeking to bring the executive under democratic control.

In my statement to Parliament before the summer, I proposed that in twelve areas important to our national life the Prime Minister and executive should surrender or limit their powers - the exclusive exercise of which by the government should have no place in a modern democracy - including:

• the power of the executive to declare war;
• the power of the executive to ratify international treaties without decision by Parliament;
• and powers in the appointment of judges — ensuring the independence of the judiciary and recognising their role in safeguarding liberty.

Further consultation documents on those reforms are being published by Jack Straw today.

These are the specific measures we are taking forward now, but we are also beginning a wider, longer-term debate about how best to entrench liberty in our constitution itself.

Today, Jack Straw is signalling the start of a national consultation on the case for a new British Bill of Rights and Duties - or, as I said in July, for moving towards a written constitution.

This will include a discussion of how we can entrench and enhance our liberties - building upon existing rights and freedoms but not diluting them - but also make more explicit the responsibilities that implicitly accompany rights. We will also examine the rights and responsibilities that flow from British citizenship, informed by the work being carried out by Peter Goldsmith on citizenship.

The debate about a Bill of Rights and Duties will be of fundamental importance to our liberties and to our constitutional settlement and opens a new chapter in the British story of liberty. So it is right that the discussion should engage those of all parties and none who believe in our democracy and the importance of liberty within it in a constructive dialogue. And this debate is not just for one party or one year but for all parties and for this generation. I hope other political parties will join this dialogue.

At all times in our history we have had to debate how the need for strong and effective government can be combined with the pursuit and preservation of liberty.

Such debates are both inevitable and desirable.

The challenge for each generation is to conduct an open debate without ever losing sight of the value of our liberties.

Indeed the character of our country will be defined by how we write the next chapter of British liberty - by whether we do so responsibly and in a way that respects and builds on our traditions, and progressively adds to and enlarges rather then reduces the sphere of freedom.

And as we make these decisions, we must never forget that the state and the people are not equivalent. The state is always the servant of the people.

We must remember that liberty belongs to the people and not governments.

It is the challenge and the opportunity for our generation to write the next chapter of British liberty in a way that honours the progress of the past - and promises a wider and more secure freedom to our children.

Gordon Brown MP, Prime Minister and Leader of the Labour Party, sets out his ambition for a fairer Britain in Winning the fight for Britain's future, a detailed policy document, issued to Labour MPs and published online for party members ahead of Labour's 2008 Conference in Manchester.

The following extract is on Democratic and Constitutional Change

Nationally it means seeing through constitutional reform that increases the trust that people have in politics. That is why Labour will implement a wholly or mainly elected House of Lords; why we have empowered Parliament to hold the executive to account; and why we will bring forward plans for a Bill of Rights and Responsibilities.

Constitutional reform is not just about the grand issues that populate textbooks: it is about protecting the individual against the state and about balancing liberty and security. It is also about overcoming the daily frustrations of public life, the concerns people have about local authority rubbish collection, the ability of parents to get schools admission authorities to listen to what is best for their children. It is about getting support to tackle anti-social behaviour. It is about tackling the discrimination and prejudice many of our people still face.

The constitution of the union has always evolved to meet the modern needs and rising hopes of our people as it did most notably when we created the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly within the United Kingdom. We’re proud of having created devolution and it works well. We’re committed to devolution as a way of meeting the needs and hopes of different nations within the Union. The challenges that face all of the nations within the Union keep changing. That is why we along with others have set up the Calman commission in Scotland to examine how best to develop devolution in a way that meets their needs and strengthens the Union.

In Northern Ireland, devolved government has been restored since May 2007, and in partnership with the Irish government and the devolved Northern Irish executive we are working towards completing the final steps on the path to full devolution of power according to the St Andrews Agreement.

Where power is located, how it is distributed, and how it can be exercised, go to the heart of the most elemental human aspiration: for each of us, to live our lives fulfilled, peacefully, free from arbitrary interference and control by others.

This always matters but when times are good it is sometimes easy to forget the importance of the equitable distribution of power. When most are prospering, concerns about whether people have adequate control over their lives may slip into the background. But when times are tougher, and people feel more vulnerable and threatened, then a sense that they do not have adequate control over their own life, and that others are controlling it for them, creates risks for the peace, stability, and cohesion of society. We saw this over and over again in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

That is why we will drive forward our programme of constitutional reform, in the face of Conservative indifference and hostility, so that it delivers the fairest possible distribution of power in our society.