Brown’s security strategy is the worst of all worlds

It’s draconian, expensive and ineffective, says David Davis. All the evidence shows that the Prime Minister is eroding our civil liberties pointlessly

As shadow home secretary for five years, it became an office joke that, faced with difficult policy questions, I would demand ‘get me the evidence!’ I am a scientist by training and, while 69 per cent of the public believe I took a principled stance in resigning from Parliament, that decision was also based on a rigorous empirical assessment of the evidence. The reality is that the relentless stream of repressive measures taken by this government over the last eleven years — whether 42 days pre-charge detention or any other — has not made us any safer. In many cases, they have jeopardised our security. In other cases, they are an irrelevant distraction — of time, resources and energy — from the real job at hand, namely protecting the public.