At the hustings in Woodstock on Tuesday 27th April the 3 'main' parties saw the economy as the key issue facing the country.  To many it is, but the economy is going to be solved in slow time by detailed cuts and tax increases.  What might not be solved at all is the continuing erosion of our liberty. If anything the situation is planned to get worse as Governments take more powers to themselves.  The EU is heading in the same direction - the European Arrest warant sounds like a good idea until you're held indefinitely on uncertain evidence whilst a Greek judge takes his time in using his inquisitorial powers.  Read the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 if you don't think our Government has excessive and arbitrary powers (indeed individual ministers have massive powers to declare emergencies on the basis of very slight evidence).

There are campaign groups trying to slow or stop the progress of certain invasive powers.  I am a member of one of them - No2ID.  I was a founder and early committee member of No2ID Oxford and am still on their mailing list.  I strongly exhort readers to get involved if they can.  This e-mail should work: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it  

To me, poor that I am, I would rather be free than rich and would rather live in a broke democracy than live in a wealthy dictatorship.

Many organisations are sending lists of questions to candidates and to answer all of them would be time consuming and frequently wouldn't affect the voting intentions of any Witney constituent.  I make an exception with No2ID.  I want people to know where I stand on key issues relating to our personal freedom.  Here, therefore, are questions from No2ID (grammatical solecisms are included - come on guys you don't start a sentence with a preposition).  My answers are in bold.

QUESTIONS FOR CANDIDATES

1)  The National Identity Scheme is not just about ID cards. It is built on a National Identity Register, a set of linked databases behind the cards holding an archive of personal information. The Identity Cards Act 2006 provides for lifelong control of personal identity by the state and data-sharing without the knowledge or consent of the individual. The Act permits any official document to be designated, compelling registration for anyone who needs that document. Though the UK is under no obligation to add fingerprints to the passport, the Home Office intends to make fingerprinting and joining the National Identity Register compulsory for anyone who applies for a passport from 2012.

If elected, would you vote to repeal the Identity Cards Act 2006? Would you also oppose moves to make a database of passport holders and their fingerprints a feature of the British passport?

A.  Yes I would repeal the Identity Cards Act 2006 as a major priority.  I would oppose any attempt to store the fingerprints of British passport holders not convicted of a major crime.

2)  Medical confidentiality is fundamental to public health. If people feel that what they say to their doctor will not remain private, they may fail to disclose vital information or avoid treatment, assisting the spread of disease. By seizing all medical records and making them centrally accessible to hundreds of thousands of people - in the NHS and outside - the electronic Care Records System destroys the assurance of confidentiality. The Department for Health is seeking now to upload from GP’s surgeries sensitive data, including chronic conditions and prescriptions. It is using a fraudulent definition of ‘consent’ in order to do it, with heavy promotion using public money, of claims about benefits that are not supported by evidence. Patients are made to jump through unnecessary hoops in order to exercise their right to opt out.

If elected, would you work to ensure that control of medical records remains with patients and their own doctors, and that they are shared only with properly informed consent?

A.  Yes.  Modern technology allows surgeries to store patient records and transfer them only when they are genuinely needed outside of the surgery and with the patients' (or next of kin's) informed consent.

3)  The National DNA Database contains the profiles of almost one million people who have not been convicted of any crime. A few notorious cases are quoted to justify this, but detailed examination usually shows they could have been solved using proper police procedure and a database only of convicted criminals. Treating the innocent as criminal suspects corrodes relations between the police and the public, and undermines confidence in the quite proper use of DNA detection.

How should the DNA database be operated? If elected, would you vote to remove immediately and automatically all profiles of unconvicted people from the DNA database?

A.  I would vote to remove all profiles of unconvicted people from the DNA database apart from those being used in an ongoing criminal investigation.  Retention for people not convicted of the offence investigated should be exceptional and with a court order based on sound evidential grounds.

4)  ContactPoint, an index of every child (and family) in England and Wales is now operating, despite technical and security faults. It identifies the most vulnerable by flagging those using sensitive services and is accessible to hundreds of thousands of people. It is too big ever to be secure. The existence of a "shielding" scheme, denied to most families, suggests that in fact ContactPoint itself is a potential danger to children. Putting record-keeping on a database can’t correct the failures of child protection to act, which is the cause of the most notorious tragedies.

Are the hundreds of millions spent on ContactPoint and related databases not better spent in other ways?

A.  The question is whether ContactPoint is appropriate and cost effective.  There appears to be a presumption that all families require constant monitoring because they are all likely to be guilty of something or the children are all likely to be vulnerable.  The genuinely vulnerable are better protected by targetted retention of information and targetted monitoring.  No database could have saved Baby P (the doctor didn't carry out a thorough examination) or Victoria Climbie (social workers wrote reports on a child they hadn't seen).  Children of the rich and famous (and politicians) should not be shielded; this creates a 2 tier society and sends out the message that the Government does not believe the information is held securely or is accessed by people who cannot be trusted with it.

5)  The creation of the Independent Safeguarding Authority means a massive expansion of police checking. The Authority can ban you from your career for accusations, or even for its own idea of 'risk factors' in your legal behaviour. Lifelong retention of arrest records by the police means ‘enhanced’ Criminal Records checks may treat you as a convicted criminal simply for being arrested – affecting your potential employment and volunteering, with no right of appeal. Mass checking feeds suspicion and undermines trust, but there is no evidence that it prevents any sort of crime.

If elected, what would you do to reform vetting and barring schemes?

A.  No person should be subject to sanction without corroborative evidence of wrongdoing that is current and relevant.   If an action, like using a prostitute, is legal then there should be no sanction available or applied. Lifelong retention of arrest records when no crime has been committed should not be allowed.  Vetting should be targetted - a drink driving offence is not relevant where money handling is the issue, a financial offence is not relevant to child care safety checks.

6)  Despite denying plans for a central database of communications data, the Home Office set up a new directorate just this January to push forward the £2 billion Interception Modernisation Programme (IMP). The intent is store details of everyone you call, text or e-mail and which websites you visit – providing a record of clues to your religious and political beliefs, your sexual interests and personal relationships, your financial and medical worries – ‘just in case’ they become of interest to the authorities. Phone tapping and opening mail is so sensitive that it is a power exercised only on the approval of the Home Secretary, and cannot even be mentioned in court. But collecting communications data, and building techniques for them to be arbitrarily investigated, makes much more available to be known about every one of us without any form of warrant or independent oversight.

If elected, would you vote to ensure that access to any form of personal communications is only permitted to formal investigations under warrant?

A.  Yes.  This area frightens me.  I want to be able to talk to people around the world at will safe in the knowledge that nobody can correlate all of the information and use it against me.  If a website is legal and accessible, as, for instance, most porn is, then I am an adult and can make my own decisions whether to look or not.  I do not want other people to monitor what I am looking at.  People should be free to be sentient adults.

7) Tens of millions of law-abiding citizens are being routinely monitored as they travel, on the roads by Automatic Number Plate Recognition – without any legal basis – and in the air or by sea when detailed passenger records are passed to the Home Office’s e-Borders data centre even as you leave the country. Vast quantities of information, including your financial details from ticketing, and pictures of who you are travelling with, are being kept. For five years in the case of road data, and ten years at least for e-Borders. It is passed around government agencies, and even sent abroad. Such records are used to match records with ‘intelligence’ (which usually means guesses) from other sources – exposing unsuspecting citizens to suspicion, arbitrary penalties, and worse.

What limits would you place on the database surveillance of those travelling abroad and within the UK?

A.  There are 2 different issues here.  Within the UK I want to see a reduction in the amount of cameras monitoring our every move.  Cameras are a useful tool, but the information held by them should be limited by time and quantity and purpose.  There should be a presumption against the need for surveillance.  For the UK to maintain its freedoms there needs to be strong and effective border control, based on a presumption that people are going about their lawful business, that ensures that those entering and leaving the country do so lawfully.  To do this there has to be some basic counting in and counting out with information on numbers retained indefinitely for statistical purposes, but information on individual movements retained for a limited time.  Long-term retention of information should always to be based on supervision of the courts or a government minister. No information, other than that needed to protect the security of our country, should be transferred outside of the country.  Ministerial oversight of the activities of the security services is necessary, but without compromising operational effectiveness.

Having had my home in the Witney constituency for over 15 years I have obviously done a lot of the things you do.  I've shopped alongside you, I've drank in the pubs and sat in the restaurants when you've been there.  I've held open the doors or let you into the traffic. I might have been your neighbour.  I've also worked in many local businesses after my own communications business failed in an overcrowded market.  If you remember a darker haired, slimmer version of me that is also probable.  If you went to Edith Moorhouse or Gateway Primary Schools or Carterton Comp and Burford Sixth Form with Bex/Becky/Baxtabillion Wesson then you probably know me as 'Becky's dad' and might have even slept over at my house (I certainly seem to remember stepping over a lot of sleeping bodies on Saturday and Sunday mornings).

When I first arrived in the constituency I was an officer in the Royal Air Force based at RAF Brize Norton.  It's a few years ago now, but you might recall working with me in Operations Wing or being part of the same social circles, fencing club or church.  If you are in the RAF remember I am the only candidate who has ever lived in Married Quarters.  Only I know what a march out is like and only I understand the issues you face with separation and operational commitments (been there, seen it, done it, got the T-shirt).

I left the RAF and became involved in local politics.  I have stood for election many times and was elected as a District Councillor for Carterton South (1998-2002) and Town Councillor Carterton North/Rock Farm Ward (1999-2007).  I have stood for all district wards in Carterton as I have moved within the town (12 Warwick Close, 55 Milestone Road, 17 Northwood Crescent and 9 Brome Way). I have knocked on thousands of doors and met hundreds of electors as I have canvassed over the years.  I cannot remember you all, but if you've lived in Carterton you might well have met me on your doorstep.  I attended many functions and spoke with constituents in Carterton Town Hall and at other civic functions throughout the constiuency.

I ran, with minimal success a business dealing in communications products, but was a regular attender at Witney Chamber of Commerce Business Breakfast as well as the Oxford/Thames Valley Chamber networking meetings and might have done business with you.  I seemed to buy more than I sold!  I've been to many of the other networking meetings in the district.

After my business failed I went straight into factories to pay off my banks.  I had barely recovered financially when my wife died and, after a period on housing benefit, I returned to a mixture of professional overseas contracts intermingled with agency work whilst remaining a part time director of South West Oxon NHS PCT - 2001-2006 (being a homeless, widowed single parent demanded a lot of flexibility).

I have worked for periods between one day and several weeks at the following businesses:

Aurora Fashions, Stanton Harcourt

Ambic Plastics, Witney

Dataplastics, Witney

OGM - Woodstock and Eynsham

JSP - Worsham, Little Riss and Standlake

Magna Industries, Little Riss

Deans Foods, Standlake

All Fresh Foods, Standlake

Fabulous Baking Boys, Witney

The Roof Light Company, Milton-under-Wychwood

Antalis, Witney

Jonathan Crisp, Eynsham

Swan Laundry, Witney

Scholastic Books, Witney

Jordans, Witney

Corndell Furniture, Witney

Burford Quarry, Burford

and one or 2 others that don't spring to mind at present.

The point is that I have shared the work experiences of so many of you.  I know many of the machines you know and can drive a forklift or reach truck under supervision.  None of the other candidates have the range of experiences I have had in the consituency and none of them have met so many of you so regularly in their daily dealings.  The 4 who live permanently outside the constituency wouldn't even be able to find the factories and workshops unaided and most of them wouldn't lower themselves to do the things I am prepared to do.

As for our pubs, I have drank in most of the pubs in the constituency and have met many of you, inadvertently, for casual chats.  I don't remember everyone I've met as we've discussed the weather, our children, the river, the log fires etc.  Not only have I drank in most of the pubs, but I have gone the whole hog and morris danced outside many of them - I am the plump dancer in Cotswold whites in Ducklington colours.  You might have gawped in amazement at the height I can caper or kick, or you might not.  You might have heard me sing the odd folk song; and trust me when I sing them they are odd.  I also dance rapper/English short sword around Chippy as well as performing a 16th century ale tasting ceremony.  You will not recognise me from my stunning performance of Cleopatra with Ducklington Mummers and I sincerely hope you don't recognise me with the fake tin breasts as the Princess Fair with King Stone Mummers.

If you think you've seen me about, unlike most of the other candidates, then you definitely have.

Policies, for a happier country, in no particular order:

1. Withdrawal from the EU.

2. Introduce a flat tax system to abolish uncertainty and confusion in the income tax regime.  Riase the threshhold for paying tax incrementally so that the lower paid are removed from taxation all together (a target of £11,000 at today's rates should be achievable in time).  Those on minimum wage should not pay tax. This would give an incentive for less well off people to work if all of their basic earnings were retained.

3. Protect the defence budget and ensure that service personnel are well treated (I am an ex-Royal Air Force officer and am ideally suited to look after the interests of Brize Norton). 

4. Abolish duty on draught real ales served in pubs. This increases jobs in the local economy whilst making social drinking more affordable. People should be in the pub not in front of a telly with a few cans.

5. Allow those publicans who wish to to seek licences for designated smoking rooms.

6. Allow hand guns to be legally held at registered gun clubs for sporting purposes. There are more illegal guns in society than ever before following the 'ban'. These are not held by sportsmen, but criminals.

7. Allow a free vote on licenced hunting with dogs.

8. Loosen the restrictions on entertainment and allow unamplified music in pubs and clubs without a licence.

9. Encourage the continuance of traditional pub games and traditions. Allow, as the Germans do, the purchase of traditional costume, such morris kit, to be tax deductible.

10. Lower the drinking age to 16 for low alcohol beers (up to 4%). Landlords to retain discretion over who drinks in their pubs.

11. Have a long-term energy policy based on nuclear with alternative green sources such as wave power or fusion as back up.  Stop the building of windmills across the countryside; they barely break even after several years. The UK must be in control of its energy resources.

12. Fight to ensure Oxfordshire gets equality in the allocation of health resources.

13. Reduce police bureaucracy. Less laws that are properly enforced leads to a better ordered society.

14. Householders to be given the right to protect property against unlawful intruders.

15. Press for a review and reduction of quangos.

16. Introduce a temporary amnesty for illegal immigrants, granting 6-month residence for those who come forward. All other illegal immigrants to be removed so that the decision over who should live in our country is transferred to our government from the Triads and Mafia gangs who currently make the decision, for a fee, on who may or may not travel to the UK. Migration policy to be fair to those resident here legally.

17. All foreign offenders sentenced to prison to be deported, regardless of whether they are EU citizens or not.