{"id":4044,"date":"2008-07-07T09:16:20","date_gmt":"2008-07-07T08:16:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=4044"},"modified":"2008-07-07T09:16:20","modified_gmt":"2008-07-07T08:16:20","slug":"big-brother-government-costs-us-20billion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/surveillance-big-brother\/big-brother-government-costs-us-20billion\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Big Brother’ government costs us \u00a320billion"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Andrew Porter<\/a> | The cost of Britain\u2019s “surveillance society” measures is now running at \u00a320 billion, a new report reveals today.<\/p>\n

\n

The amount is equivalent to \u00a3800 per household and includes \u00a319 billion for the planned ID card system and \u00a3500 million for CCTV cameras.<\/p>\n

The report by the TaxPayers\u2019 Alliance was highlighted by David Davis, the former shadow home secretary, who stands in a by-election this week on the issue of civil liberties. Mr Davis resigned as an MP after the opposition failed to defeat Government plans to hold terrorism suspects for 42 days.<\/p>\n

Mr Davis said: \u201cThis is yet further damning evidence of Big Brother\u2019s expensive tastes. ID cards, CCTV, the DNA database and other measures are a huge waste of taxpayers\u2019 money on policies that undermine freedom and are utterly ineffective in fighting crime or terrorism.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the same time, the Government has failed to deal robustly with extremists and terrorists, like Abu Hamza. Yet again, this government penalise the innocent, and is a soft touch for the guilty.\u201d<\/p>\n

Abu Hamza\u2019s extradition was requested in 2004 by the United States, where he is wanted for terrorism offences.<\/p>\n

But despite being convicted of a number of charges in Britain two years ago, he has still not been deported. The cost to taxpayers is estimated at \u00a32.75 million in welfare payments, council housing, NHS bills, trials and legal appeals.<\/p>\n

Mr Davis also cited Abu Qatada, known as Osama bin Laden\u2019s \u201cright hand man in Europe\u201d, who has not been deported to Jordan to face terrorism charges because of concern about his human rights. The cost of this is close to \u00a31.5 million.<\/p>\n

Yesterday, Mr Davis went head-to-head with a senior member of the Government for the first time since he shocked Westminster by standing down as an MP.<\/p>\n

He told Tony McNulty, the Home Office Minister, on Sky News, that the Government had \u201crun away\u201d from a fight with him in the Haltemprice and Howden seat. He added that 42-day detention would \u201cnot save a single life\u201d.<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cIt will undermine some of the fundamental principles of our justice, it will give the terrorists a propaganda coup and it may actually make the threat of terrorism worse.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Mr McNulty replied that the \u201creserve power\u201d had been carefully drawn up. He said: \u201cIt is not a universal and permanent extension. Most people get that \u2026 David doesn\u2019t for his own reasons.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ministers have also denied that the ID card system will cost as much as the TaxPayers\u2019 Alliance report says. In addition, they have insisted that CCTV has the backing of the public and challenged opponents to say which cameras they would \u201cpull down\u201d in the name of civil liberties.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Andrew Porter | The cost of Britain\u2019s “surveillance society” measures is now running at \u00a320 billion, a new report reveals today. The amount is equivalent to \u00a3800 per household and includes \u00a319 billion for the planned ID card system and \u00a3500 million for CCTV cameras. The report by the TaxPayers\u2019 Alliance was highlighted by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1614,1615],"tags":[30,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-4044","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-surveillance-big-brother","7":"category-uk-news","8":"tag-big-brother","9":"tag-uk-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4044\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}