Civil Liberties Q&A (Questions and Answers)

Civil Rights: New Labour, Freedom and the Human Rights Act
Law in Focus Series
Series Editor: Professor Keith Ewing, King's College, London

This exciting new book in the Law in Focus Series centres on those areas of domestic civil liberties and human rights that are directly affected by the powers of state agents, mainly the police and the security and intelligence services. It examines the probable impact of the Human Rights Act on those powers, focusing especially on New Labour's own legislative programme. New Labour has put into place a new and very extensive legislative framework for counter terrorism and state surveillance, in the shape of the Terrorism Act 2000 and the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. The author analyses the record of the Conservative Governments from 1979 to 1997 in those areas and compares it with the stance taken by the New Labour Government. In addition, the author considers the potentially immense effect in those areas of the Human Rights Act 1998, now fully in force. The author argues that although the Human Rights Act is New Labour legislation it is, ironically, likely to be used to temper the excesses of New Labour's 'state power' scheme.

This critical and challenging book:

· Analyses the extensive counter-terrorism provisions of the Terrorism Act 2000
· Examines the provisions of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 - the most comprehensive state surveillance scheme ever introduced by a UK government
· Considers key civil liberties issues currently arising from the powers of state agents
· Analyses the impact of the HRA 1998 on the established and the new legislation
· Reflects on New Labour's position on civil liberties and human rights

Helen Fenwick is Reader in Law at the University of Durham. She is an experienced and widely published researcher and writer in the field of public law generally, and teaches in the areas of civil liberties, media law and human rights.

Other titles in this series

Women Under the Law
Aileen McColgan

Longman

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