Stephen Tall

Polling firm YouGov has surveyed the British public on their attitudes to this week’s big news story: the detention of David Miranda, partner of Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who’s worked with Edward Snowden, the former US intelligence officer on whistleblowing / leaking details of the the surveillance activities of the US and British intelligence agencies.

‘Public divided’ is how YouGov’s summarised it, pretty fairly. This in itself is surprising: generally the public favours ‘national security’ over ‘individual liberty’ when push comes to shove. This suggests the police’s actions, possibly in themselves unlawful, have worried more than just the usual civil liberties groups (in which I include most Lib Dems). It may also have something to do with the Guardian’s original framing of the story, which implied Mr Miranda had been targeted simply because of his relationship with Mr Greenwald, rather than because of the material he may have been carrying.

Overall, the British public supports the current Schedule 7 arrangements (which are in the process of being amended by the Government) by a 3-to-1 margin: 66% support the police having powers to detain individuals for up to nine hours without the need for either evidence or ‘reasonable’ suspicion, while 22% oppose this.

I was interested to see the party breakdowns. (NB: we need to be cautious about these, especially with the Lib Dem and Ukip figures, as these sub-group sample sizes are much smaller and the possible margin of error therefore much larger.) As you might imagine, Lib Dems are least supportive, though a majority (54%) do still support Schedule 7. Conservative and Ukip voters are most enthusiastic, with 4-in-5 of their voters backing the Schedule 7 powers.

YouGov Survey Results (20th – 21st August 2013)

But what about reforming Schedule 7 in the light of the David Miranda detention case? Though two-thirds of the public support the current Schedule 7, a plurality of voters (42%) also favour reforming it so that the police may only use detention powers where there is reasonable suspicion. However, one-third of voters (33%) support its retention as is. Lib Dem voters are most likely to back reform, by 56% to 36%.

A couple of interesting reveals from these figures.

First, the similarity of views between current Lib Dem and Labour voters. Scan down the figures for all the questions asked in the survey and they’re very closely aligned. Whether Labour voters would have taken the same view if there were a Labour government is a moot point, of course: voters tend to give a more sympathetic hearing to their own side, treat with greater suspicion what the ‘other lot’ says.

And secondly, the similarity of views between current Conservative and Ukip voters. This is most clearly shown in the response to the question of if/how Schedule 7 should be reformed. Astonishingly, one-in-five Conservative and Ukip voters back the police being given unlimited powers of detention – ie, the police having the right to detain anyone in Britain (and not just those entering or leaving the country) and seize their computer and mobile phone, without needing ‘reasonable suspicion’ of a crime being planned or committed – which are tantamount to a police state.

* Stephen Tall is Co-Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice, and edited the 2013 publication, The Coalition and Beyond: Liberal Reforms for the Decade Ahead. He is also a Research Associate for the liberal think-tank CentreForum and writes at his own site, The Collected Stephen Tall.