The Lib Dems will be delivering on another manifesto commitment when car clamping on private land is banned.
Liberal Democrat ministers Lynne Featherstone and Norman Baker have announced that car clamping on private land is to be banned as part of the Freedom Bill this Autumn.

Home Office minister Lynne Featherstone MP when making the announcment said:

“The Government is committed to ending the menace of rogue private sector wheel clampers once and for all.

“For too long motorists have fallen victim to unscrupulous tactics by many clamping firms. Reports of motorists being marched to cash points or left stranded after their car has been towed are simply unacceptable.

“A ban on clamping and towing on private land will end this abuse and companies who decide to flout new laws will face severe penalties.”

This is a link to the BBC website article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-10993473

Liberal Democrats have uncovered the Governments latest installment of ‘Big Brother’ society with plans to monitor activity on social
networking sites. Home Office minister Vernon Coaker revealed the shocking proposals in a series of exchanges with Liberal Democrat Home
Affairs spokesman Tom Brake.

In the admission, Vernon Coaker disclosed that social networking sites such as Facebook, Bebo and MySpace may be forced to retain private
information about users’ web-browsing habits including the name of every person they correspond with on the site. This mass-surveillance strategy
will be executed under a terror strategy guise, even though almost half the British population – some 25 million people – are members of social
networking sites and are unlikely to have any links with terrorism.

The illiberal move has been attacked by Liberal Democrat MPs, security experts and civil liberty groups alike with Tom Brake describing the
proposals as, “the most expensive snooper’s charter in history”. “It is deeply worrying that they now intend to monitor social networking sites
which contain very sensitive data like sexual orientation, religious beliefs and political views. ”

Tom Brake added that, “Given the Government’s disastrous record with large IT projects and data security, it is likely that data will leak
out of every memory stick, port and disk drive when they start monitoring Facebook, Bebo and MySpace.”

You can back the Liberal Democrat campaign to restore people’s privacy and freedom at http://freedom.libdems.org.uk

The Liberal Democrats have published their Freedom Bill, detailing how the party plans to roll back the authoritarian laws passed by both Labour and Conservative governments which have undermined civil liberties.

Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords protest the restrictions on demonstrating outside Parliament during the passage of the Serious and Organised Crime Act.

The legislation is the first time a major political party has collated all of the laws which have undermined civil liberties into one Bill, so that they can be easily repealed. By axing expensive and ineffective measures that hinder and keep tabs on innocent people, the Bill will help switch efforts to catching the guilty instead.

The 20 measures contained in the draft legislation will:
– Abolish the veto in the Freedom of Information Act that allows ministers to keep information secret
– Scrap the expensive mandatory ID card scheme
– Remove all innocent people from the DNA database, except for those tried for a violent or sexual offence
– Stop councils and others snooping by restricting the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) to serious and terrorist offences
– Regulate CCTV to protect privacy following a Royal Commission on the use of cameras

You can view the bill in detail, comment on the draft and sign up to back the campaign at http://freedom.libdems.org.uk