Originally from: Farmtalking
                        
The following is not good news so perhaps it's worth lobbying your MP before 15th September – (find his or her address here – http://www.parliament.uk/directories/hciolists/alms.cfm).

Sunday, September 05, 2004 Telegraph: Christopher Booker's Notebook (Filed: 05/09/2004)

 In 10 days' time the House of Lords will be debating one of the most extraordinary pieces of legislation ever placed before Parliament, the Civil Contingencies Bill. No one could disagree that a government should have contingency plans and powers to deal with a major public emergency. This Bill, sponsored by a junior Home Office minister, Douglas Alexander, opens with a soothing claim that nothing in it is incompatible with the Human Rights Act; and Part One reads almost like a parody of bureaucratic tinkering, under such headings as "Advice and assistance to business", together with a section defining how the Act shall apply to Scotland and Wales.

Only in Part Two, after 13 pages, does the truly extraordinary nature of this legislation suddenly explode off the page, as Section 21 sets out the powers it will give to a tiny group of ministers and "regional co-ordinators" in the event of an emergency being declared. The conditions for this could hardly be more loosely or widely defined, including anything from a terrorist incident to flooding, a chemical spill or a recurrence of foot and mouth.

In any such instance, senior ministers (including whips) will be given virtually unlimited powers to do anything they think fit, virtually without parliamentary control. They will be empowered to "disapply" any law or act of Parliament they choose, simply by issuing regulations.

 They will be permitted to order any person or body to go anywhere, or to "perform any function"; to forbid any travel or movement; to order the requisition, confiscation or destruction of any property (with or without compensation); and to prohibit any assemblies of persons, however small.

 This tiny, unaccountable group of politicians and officials will be empowered to issue regulatory edicts off their own bat for any purpose, enforced by criminal penalties.

 Such powers go far beyond anything on the UK statute book before, even in time of war. Yet when this Bill had its second reading in the Commons on January 19, MPs were only allowed time to discuss its innocuous Part One. (One or two honourable exceptions, such as Richard Shepherd and Bob Marshall-Andrews, did try to ring alarm bells on Part Two.) The Bill was then approved by 286 votes to 138.

 When it first came before the Lords late on the evening of July 5, again one or two peers protested at its more extreme provisions. But unless they are joined on September 15 by enough others to provoke a real rebellion, we shall have an Act which would in effect permit the setting up in this country of a dictatorship as sweeping as anything achieved under Hitler.

 It would be scant consolation to know that this was sanctioned by Parliament, even if MPs had scarcely been given a chance to discuss it.