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1O DOWNING STREET

Press Notice

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SPEECH BY THE PRIME MINISTERTHE RIGHT HONOURABLE GORDON BROWN MP

ON

SECURITY AND LIBERTY

TO THE

IPPR

ON

TUESDAY 17™ JUNE 2008

CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY

Telephone 020 7930 4433pm.gov.uk

It's a great pleasure to be here today with Jacqui Smith and members ofthe IPPR Security Commission - a non partisan and highly experiencedbody whose work I commend - to discuss the new challenges we all face,indeed one of the greatest challenges of the modern world: how in the faceof global terrorism and organised crime we can best ensure the security,safety and liberties of the British people.

The modern security challenge is defined by new and unprecedentedthreats: terrorism; global organised crime; organised drug trafficking andpeople trafficking. This is the new world in which government must work outhow it best discharges its duty to protect people.

New technology is giving us modern means by which we can dischargethese duties. But, as I will also suggest today, just as we need to employthese modern means to protect people from new threats, we must at thesame time do more to guarantee our liberties. And, facing these modernchallenges, it is our duty to write a new chapter in our country's story —one in which we protect and promote both our security and our liberty - twoequally proud traditions.

The IPPR review starts where I start: that we must understand thechanging world we live in - and the unprecedented changes in scope andscale of the security threat. Indeed when people look back at the history ofthe first decade of the twenty first century, they will see it as a period ofnew and fast changing threats.

First September 11th, then Bali, then Madrid, and then the Londonbombings in July three years ago when I remember how - in the face of theworst terrorist attacks in our history, with British-born suicide bomberskilling and maiming their fellow citizens - the British people, our police andsecurity and emergency services, facing this new challenge, stood as one.

We also remember how, in the face of simultaneous terrorist attacks inLondon and Glasgow a year ago, we again saluted the bravery of thepolice, security services and the public.

And it should not be forgotten that even today, the security service estimatethere are at least 2000 known terrorist suspects, 200 organised networksand 30 current plots.


These are not remote or hypothetical threats. They are, sadly, part oftoday's reality.

And whilst terrorism is the most dramatic new threat, there are other, newsecurity issues that also help define the modern world.

Organised crime has changed beyond recognition from the days of theKrays: no longer confined to a neighbourhood or even a city, but involvingnetworks spanning the world - threatening lives and feeding conflict andinstability.

Drug trafficking too is an ever more sophisticated international business —- stretching from the Helmand Valley - where British forces are serving withgreat courage and distinction to bring order and a chance of progress tothis once lawless region - through international networks, to the streets ofour own cities.

And so too is organised illegal immigration - a problem faced by the entiredeveloped world - which we see at its worst in the callous contempt for lifeof people traffickers who smuggle women and children across the globe forsexual exploitation.

Today, while in many ways we are more secure as a country than at mosttimes in our history, people are understandably fearful that they maybecome victims of terrorist attack. While overall crime is a third lower thanten years ago, people are understandably fearful of guns or knives on ourstreets. And while our border controls are stronger than ever, with morecountries subject to visa requirements and 100 per cent of those visasbased on fingerprints, with instant checks against watch lists - still peopleare understandably fearful about people traffickers or illegal workers. Theseare new threats, they are real concerns. People feel less safe and lesssecure as a result, and I understand that.

All these new challenges reflect the modern world - a world moreinterconnected and interdependent, with travel faster and cheaper thanever before, and the flow of goods and ideas around the world almostinstantaneous. These are, of course, great positive changes, empoweringindividuals and creating new opportunities. But they also create new


challenges for our security. The internet, a revolutionary force for changeand opportunity, is also used to hateful ends by terrorists and criminals.

And in this new world of crime and threats to our security, it is not just thepower of the state that has to be checked and about which we have to bevigilant: it is also the power of individuals and organisations to causeterrible damage that requires us to act and be vigilant too.

I believe that the tools we have to deal with organised crime must beproportionate to the damage done. But these new risks to our security - norespecters of traditional laws or borders, and more complex and global thanever before - cannot solely be managed by the old, tried methods andapproaches.

It could be said that for too long we have used nineteenth century means tosolve twenty first century problems. Instead we must have twenty firstcentury methods to deal with twenty first century challenges.

So I want to focus today on the use of modern technology in fighting crimeand protecting our borders - and focus on the argument that new laws ornew technologies threaten the rights of the individual.

Put it this way: while the old world was one where we could use onlyfingerprints, now we have the technology of DMA.

While the old world relied on the eyes of a policeman out on patrol, todaywe also have the back-up of CCTV.

While the old world used only photographs to identify people, now we havebiometrics.

Of course all these new technologies raise new problems and I will discussthem today. But the answer is not to reject the new 21st century means ofdetecting and preventing crime - but to simultaneously adopt the newtechnologies where they can help and to strengthen the protection ofthe individual:

• never subjecting the citizen to arbitrary treatment,• always respecting basic rights and freedoms,


• and, wherever new action is needed, matching it with strongersafeguards and more transparency and scrutiny.

So the question is how - at one and the same time - we can ensure we giveno quarter to terrorism and organised crime, while still advancing theliberties our society is founded upon.

And there is, in my view, a British way of meeting this challenge. TheBritish way cannot be a head-in-the-sand approach that ignores the factthat the world has changed with the advent of terrorism which aims forcivilian casualties on a massive scale and which respects not only no law,but also no recognisable moral framework.

Instead, it must be an approach that is prepared to make the difficultdecisions to protect our security - not by ignoring the demands of libertybut always at the same time doing everything we can to protect theindividual from unfair or arbitrary treatment. This is the driving force behindthe proposals the Government is bringing forward - including the counter-terrorism provisions we asked Parliament to approve last week. And wedon't suggest these changes to be tough or populist - but because webelieve they are necessary.

Let us turn first to the issue of terrorism legislation, and in particulardetention before charge. There are two key respects in which the terroristthreat has changed:

• the threat of suicide attacks without warning and mass casualties,requiring the police and security services to intervene earlier to averttragedy, but without necessarily having the evidence to charge,

• the increasing complexity of plots - with many thousands of exhibitshaving to be examined, far in excess of IRA investigations in the past- and networks spanning the globe, requiring days and weeks topursue and unravel.

These are the arguments which led us to propose a procedure under whichin only the rarest circumstances - a grave and exceptional terrorist threat -detention before charge could be extended from 28 to 42 days.

And I believe that people do appreciate the complexity of the issue - andrecognise that the way in which we balance the need to maintain our


security with the need to safeguard our basic freedoms must be renewed ina changing world.

For just as it is difficult to argue that the terrorist threat has not changed, itis also difficult to claim that this change is not serious enough to justifychange in our laws. The challenge - as I said when I backed the case forlonger pre charge detention in 2006 - is how to match a change in our lawswith stronger safeguards, so we protect both the civil liberties of theindividual and the security needs of all individuals. But I stress the centralpoint: the safeguards cannot lie in measures that make it impossible for thepolice to complete an investigation into terrorist activities - somethingwhich would in the end harm all our civil liberties - but must lie instead inensuring that the civil liberties of a person detained are protected by clearrules and by proper accountability.

I argued then, and I believe now, that by preserving the primacy of thecourts, backed up by proper oversight and, in the end, Parliamentaryscrutiny, we can achieve a settlement that ensures both our tradition ofliberty and our need for security. These protections include oversight by thejudiciary, Parliamentary scrutiny, an independent review process, andindependent legal advice for Parliament.

The debate rightly focused on the role of Parliament - the requirement forParliament within seven days to approve the declaration of exceptionalcircumstances - just as Parliament must also approve each year theextension of the existing 28 day limit, a decision it will face this week. Butthis important debate should not lead us to overlook the continuing role ofthe judiciary. It remains true under our proposals that no person could beheld in pre charge detention without the agreement every seven days of asenior judge - completely independent of the executive. And I will never -neither here nor in any other area - seek to question the right of judges tomake decisions in individual cases, or undermine the role of theindependent judiciary which has done so much over the centuries tosafeguard British values.

The reform of our laws is only one part of our response to the new terroristthreat - which is backed also by increased resources, from £1 billion in2001 to £3.5 billion in 2011, and includes improvements to our counter-terrorist policing and security services, new protections at our borders and


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for our national infrastructure, and a new approach to the long termchallenge of isolating and confronting extremism - the long term struggle towin the battle of ideas.

We must recognise that winning the battle of ideas means championingliberty. To say we should ignore the longstanding claims of liberty whenfaced with the urgent needs of security is tempting to some, but never tome - it would be to embark down an illiberal path that is as unacceptable tothe British people as it is to me.

Let us be clear - the new, more open, global society creates both newfreedoms for all of us but also new opportunities for terrorists and criminalsto use against us the very freedom and mobility and openness we rightlytake pride in. And we must advance this open society with our eyes open -for we cannot now ever forget the ease with which, unless we act, terroristcrime can flourish in our midst.

Just as when we change our laws to respond to the new terrorist threat, wemust match new laws with new protections for liberty - so we must alsoharness new technology which can improve our security - but again wemust do so with new and proper safeguards.

Take the issue of identity - the second issue I want to discuss today.People's identity is precious and needs to be secure. But is a simple factthat the scale of identity fraud is increasing - that more people are facingdistressing and disruptive attempts to steal their identity, and technologyhas made it far easier for people to perpetuate that fraud. But newtechnology offers us an opportunity to redress the balance. So one of thebest examples of how we can confront the modern criminal whilerespecting liberties is the use of biometrics, already planned to beintroduced into passports across the world, but also offering us theopportunity to protect individuals' identities in their everyday lives.

We know that as many as one in four criminals use false identities - andwith terrorist suspects it is almost universal. One September 11th hijackerused 30 false identities to obtain credit cards and a quarter of a milliondollars of debt. Many terrorist suspects arrested since 2001 have had largenumbers of false identities. No one is suggesting that an identity cardscheme will stop terrorist attacks overnight. But if it can make it harder for


people not just to travel across borders with multiple identities, but also toraise money or rent safe houses or buy sensitive material - all anonymously- it can potentially disrupt the operations of terrorists and other criminals -something we must surely be making every effort to do.

But as well as the contribution which I believe a biometric identity schemecan make to these national challenges, 1 believe it can also make apowerful contribution on an individual level to our personal security.Opponents of the identity card scheme like to suggest that its solemotivation is to enhance the power of the state - but in fact it starts from arecognition of the importance of something which is fundamental to therights of the individual: the right to have your identity protected and secure.This is why, despite years of exaggeration about its costs and itsimplications for liberty, public support for it remains so strong.

People understand the value of secure identity. In banking, to protect theirmoney, people were happy to move from signatures to PIN numbers.Increasingly they are moving to biometrics - for example, many people nowhave laptops activated by finger-scans.

But as with our proposals on terrorist legislation, we must match our effortsto improve our security with stronger safeguards on liberty. We have noplans for it to become compulsory for people to carry an ID card. We havemade this clear in the legislation: that the identity card scheme will not beused to place new requirements on people, but, on those occasions ineveryday life where people already have to carry ID - if they want to provetheir age, or open a bank account, or apply for a job, or register with a GP -it will provide a better, more convenient and more secure way of doing it,not just relying on a couple of utility bills, and one which meets a nationalstandard.

The new generation of passports will require travellers to register theirbiometrics to protect against passport fraud— digital photographs, finger-scans and in some cases iris scans - and this is happening across theworld. The question is whether in the interests of wider security we shouldgo beyond this to a national identity scheme - not just for passports, butalso to help inside our borders in the fight against crime, illegal working,benefit fraud and terrorism.


I welcome the report of the all-party Home Affairs Select Committee on 5June, which - based not on knee-jerk reactions but a year of thorough andimpartial research - firmly rejected the characterisation of Britain as a"Surveillance Society" - but warned at the same time against complacency,and called for both practical measures and principled commitments fromthe Government to ensure the balance of liberty and security is maintained.

I believe that the new plan for the ID card scheme announced by the HomeSecretary in March included important steps in the direction of the "principleof data minimization" which the Committee recommends.

We have redesigned the scheme so that people's names and addresseswill be kept separately, on a separate database, from their photographsand biometrics. We are working with the Information Commissioner toensure that he has full oversight of how this information is stored andprotected and used. And we also welcome the opportunity to discuss withthe Committee any constructive suggestions to go further in this directionincluding, for example, clearer and stronger protocols on access to data.

That same all-party report looked also at the next issue I want to discuss,the importance on tackling crime of the modern technology of CCTV.

From the IRA terrorist campaign in the 1990s and the Brixton nail bomberin 1999, to the terrorist incidents in London in July 2005, CCTV either usedby the police or released to the public helped in the identification ofsuspects, and played an important role in the subsequent prosecutions. Incentral Newcastle, after CCTV was installed, burglaries fell by 56 per cent,criminal damage by 34 per cent, and theft by 11 per cent.

It is the clear benefits of CCTV in fighting crime - from terrorism down toanti-social behaviour - which have led to its increased use by the policeand transport and local authorities - and also by shops and businesses.The role of Government however is not just to identify the opportunities forimproving our security but, again, to match them with strong safeguards onour liberty and privacy. We absolutely accept the challenge set down by theHome Affairs Committee: that we must demonstrate that "any extension ofthe use of camera surveillance is justified by evidence of its effectiveness".And I can tell you today that in addition to the safeguards set out in ourCCTV strategy in November we are happy to accept the Committee's


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recommendation that the Information Commissioner should produce anannual report on the state of surveillance in the UK for Parliamentarydebate.

So let us not pretend that CCTV is intrinsically the enemy of liberty. Usedcorrectly, with the right and proper safeguards, CCTV cuts crime, andmakes people feel safer - in some cases, it actually helps give them backtheir liberty, the liberty to go about their everyday lives with reassurance.

Let us turn now to look at a fourth issue, the use of another moderntechnology, DNA, in policing: another example, where 1 believe that insteadof reflecting the technologies of the modern world we should adopt themwhile ensuring that the individual is properly protected against anypossibility of arbitrary treatment.

Through a series of careful changes we have made DNA one of the mosteffective tools in fighting crime. And we have worked with the police andalso the Home Affairs Select Committee and others to ensure that propersafeguards are in place.

As a result, the National DNA Database has revolutionised the way thepolice protect the public. In the last full year for which figures have beenmade public, the DNA database matched suspects with over 40,000crimes. That's over a hundred crimes a day which would be harder tosolve, sometimes impossible, without the use of DNA - including 450homicides, almost 650 rapes, over 200 other sex offences, almost 2,000violent offences and over 8,500 burglaries.

I say to those who questioned the changes in the Criminal Justice andPolice Act 2001, which allowed DNA to be retained from all chargedsuspects even if not found guilty: if we had not made this change, 8,000suspects who have been matched with crime scenes since 2001 would inall probability have got away, their DNA having been deleted from thedatabase. This includes 114 murders, 55 attempted murders, 116 rapes, 68other sexual offences, 119 aggravated burglaries, and 127 drugs offences.

And I say to those who opposed the proposals in the Criminal Justice Act2003, to allow the police to take DNA samples not just from those charged,but from all those arrested for serious, recordable offences: again, if we


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had not made this change, there would be serious and dangerous criminalsescaping justice and continuing to pose a threat to the public. It is simplynot responsible government to let such opportunities to use newtechnologies to protect the public pass us by.

But again, we have matched these careful extensions in the use of DNAwith the right safeguards: DNA can only be recorded for people arrested fora recordable offence; the use of that DNA has clear limits set down inlegislation, by the Police and Criminal Evidence Act; and there are stringentlimits on those who are able to access the information.

So whether in seizing the opportunity of new technologies, or meeting newsecurity threats, the challenge for each generation is to confront change, torespond to it decisively, and to conduct an open debate on how best to doso without ever losing sight of the value of our liberties - and the equalresponsibility of renewing the safeguards on our liberties to meet thechallenges of the modern world.

And it is a measure of the emphasis that we place on at all times advancingthe liberties of the individual that we have in the past year done more toextend freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press andfreedom of information. To summarise, we have given people new rights toprotest outside Parliament, made it easier for people free of charge toexercise their right to Freedom of Information - and we are nowconsidering a freedom of expression audit for all legislation. We haveremoved barriers to investigative journalism; introduced new freedoms thatguarantee the independence of non-governmental organisations; while atthe same time surrendering many powers from the executive to Parliament,and thus to greater public accountability and scrutiny.

And wherever and whenever there are question marks over the ability toexpress dissent, I believe that the presumption should be with defendingand extending the liberty of individuals to express their views within the law.Our belief in the freedom of speech and expression and conscience anddissent is what helped create the open society; our belief that it is right tosubject the state to greater scrutiny and accountability sustains suchopenness; and this openness and civic freedom and responsibility givesour country the underlying strength it needs to succeed.


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These issues I have been discussing - how we maintain our security andadvance our freedoms - are some of the biggest questions governmentshave to face.

It is a debate that has been gathering force in recent times, and it is rightand the mark of a healthy democracy that these issues should bevigorously debated.

Unlike the modern history of many other countries, we are a people whomneither invaders from abroad nor despots at home could ever subjugate.

And I agree with those who argue that the very freedoms we have built upover generations are the freedoms terrorists most want to destroy. And wemust not - we will not - allow them to do so. But equally, to say we shouldignore the new demands of security - to assume that the laws andpractices which have applied in the past are enough to face the future, tobe unwilling to face up to difficult choices and ultimately to neglect thefundamental duty to protect our security - this is the politics ofcomplacency.

Last year when I took on this job I said it was my earnest hope thatagreeing the answers to these questions could be above party politics. Andthe Home Secretary, Justice Secretary and I have sought and appealed fora consensus on these issues - not just on the terrorism legislation currentlybefore Parliament, but on constitutional reform and on the broad range ofissues covered in our first ever National Security Strategy published inMarch, and on specific questions such as the use of intercept evidence.Why? Because I believe that, while we may be Labour or Conservative orLiberal Democrat or some other party or none, we are first of all citizens ofone country, with a shared story and a common destiny.

But much as consensus is important, we cannot ignore anotherfundamental responsibility - to take the actions that are necessary. Ourproud history was not built out of a refusal to confront new challenges, butforged from a willingness to engage with fundamental questions - and todo so with principle and pragmatism. New challenges require new meansof addressing them. But at all times the enduring responsibility remains thesame - both protecting the security of all and safeguarding the individual'sright to be free.


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ENDS


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