The Liberal Democrats have gone on the offensive with the launch of The Freedom Bill.

The Freedom Bill would restore civil liberties and democratic rights in Britain - and with your help we can make it happen. The Freedom Bill will reverse laws introduced under successive Conservative and Labour governments, reinstating ancient freedoms like the right to trial by jury and preventing modern infringements such as the National Identity Register.

The Liberal Democrats are determined to resist the slow death by a thousand cuts of our hard-won British liberties. Some of the changes detailed here may seem small in themselves but taken together they cumulate to a colossal loss of personal freedom in less than two decades. George Orwell’s 1984 was a warning, not a blueprint. Yet the Big Brother society is growing. Our forebears who fought so hard for the rights we have had stripped away would be shocked at what we’ve lost.

The Bill includes a mixture of existing and new policy, all centred on regaining the freedoms that have been slowly eroded over the last 20 years. Highlights include scrapping ID cards for all, removing all innocent people from the DNA database and scrapping ContactPoint, the database of all children in Britain.

The Freedom Bill includes the following measures:

• Scrap ID cards for everyone, including foreign nationals
• Ensure that there are no restrictions in the right to trial by jury for serious offences including fraud.
• Restore the right to protest in Parliament Square, at the heart of our democracy.
• Abolish the flawed control orders regime.
• Renegotiate the unfair extradition treaty with the United States.
• Restore the right to public assembly for more than two people.
• Scrap the ContactPoint database of all children in Britain.
• Strengthen freedom of information by giving greater powers to the Information Commissioner and reducing exemptions.
• Stop criminalising trespass.
• Restore the public interest defence for whistleblowers.
• Prevent allegations of ‘bad character’ from being used in court.
• Restore the right to silence when accused in court.
• Prevent bailiffs from using force.
• Restrict the use of surveillance powers to the investigation of serious crimes and stop councils snooping.
• Restore the principle of double jeopardy in UK law.
• Remove innocent people from the DNA database.
• Reduce the maximum period of pre-charge detention to 14 days.
• Scrap the ministerial veto which allowed the Government to block the release of Cabinet minutes relating to the Iraq war.
• Require explicit parental consent for biometric information to be taken from children.
• Regulate CCTV following a Royal Commission on cameras.

This high-profile principled stance will hopefully fuel the debate on civil liberties and make it a real issue at the forthcoming general election. You can read the full text here and sign the petition in support and to get updates on the campaign’s progress. I encourage all of our readers, regardless of party affiliation, to forward The Freedom Bill onto as many people as they can. We need a full and frank debate on the future of our freedoms in this country and this is a great vehicle for that to happen.