| On this page you will find details of Democratic Audit’s most recent research findings and analysis, with links to further information and briefings. The Audit's report, The Rules of the Game: Terrorism, Community and Human Rights, has won widespread informed praise for its measured and incisive analysis. |
Counter terrorism laws, human rights and community
Home-grown terrorism presents a real, but unquantifiable, danger to the people of the United Kingdom. Terrorist cells are becoming more proficient and further terrorist attacks are likely to occur. It is the first duty of the government, the intelligence and security services and the police to protect the public and to adopt counter terrorism laws and practices that minimise the risks from terrorism to the public. Our report analyses the government’s counter terrorism laws, practice and rhetoric and the work of the intelligence and police services; asks primarily how effective the overall strategy is; assesses its human rights and community consequences; and strongly recommends changes in direction.
Our findings: the government’s counter terrorism legislation and aggressive rhetorical stance are between them creating serious losses in human rights and criminal justice protections; loosening the fabric of justice and civil liberties in the UK; and harming community relations and multiculturalism. The government has subverted its own counter terrorism strategy for short-term and sometimes electoral gains, thus prejudicing the ability of the security forces to gain the trust and cooperation from the Muslim communities that they require to combat terrorism effectively. The impact of the legislation and its implementation has been self-defeating and harmful.
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Parliamentary Oversight of External Policies
Foreign policy has a huge impact on our daily lives. If nothing else, the invasion and occupation of Iraq has made that plain. But foreign affairs affect everything from food prices to terrorism, from equal pay to more unpredictable weather, from global migration to international crime and the drug trade, from the dangers from weapons of mass destruction to liability to HIV/AIDS and global pandemics.
People have strong views about Britain's role abroad and want to play a part in decisions about going to war, or selling arms, or giving aid, or making trade fairer (see the results of our opinion poll, >>). But we are mere spectators with no say in the decisions taken in our name by the Prime Minister, by other ministers and even by unknown officials. Even MPs, our elected representatives, have little or no say in these decisions.
The 'royal prerogative', a pre-democratic relic of monarchical rule, gives the Prime Minister, ministers and officials the power to make ‘foreign policy’ and go to war without ever being required to seek parliamentary or popular approval. Reform is now promised in The Governance of Britain green paper.
We published a full analysis of the weaknesses in democratic control over foreign policy jointly with the Federal Trust and One World Trust in Not in Our Name: Democracy and Foreign Policy in the UK, Politico's, 2006, and are being funded by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust to continue our researches.
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The Closed Box
Foreign policy – the 'closed box'
Since we published Not in Our Name, the Foreign Affairs Committee has published the evidence of Carne Ross, a former high-ranking FCO official, to the Butler inquiry, revealing damaging details of the government's change of heart over the threat of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Carne Ross had given evidence to the FAC, saying that foreign policy was a 'closed box' and parliamentary oversight was 'negligible'.
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