Richard Fuller MP “do we fully appreciate the scale of what we have done?”
22nd Feb 2021
by Sceptic Nurse [for many more video from the Sceptic Nurse, click here]
I missed this one last week – its a fantastic speech by Richard Fuller, in the House of Commons on 22nd February 2021
“The most telling aspect of today’s debate is the focus on specifics rather than on principle, on trends in data and details of subsidy rather than the eager pursuit of freedom, on continuing comfort with the state making choices for us rather than a clamour by us for the freedom to be responsible for ourselves.
As Oxford University ranks the stringency of the UK’s response the fourth most restrictive in the world after Cuba, Eritrea and Ireland, this absence is telling.
One year ago, few of us would have suggested that the state could ban people from leaving their home, from leaving the country, from getting married, or from touching a loved one in their final moment, or that it could stop a child receiving education or keep an elderly person living alone from the comfort of a neighbourly chat over a cup of tea. Do we fully appreciate the scale of what we have done?
This has been a year of ambiguous choices, when each of us in Parliament has had to wrestle with our conscience to render judgments with many unknowns, yet each of us, rightly or wrongly, has allowed essential freedoms to lapse and thus been party to the creation of a new illiberal precedent that may imperil the meaning of liberty for decades to come.
We should each reflect on our judgments to determine how we can repair our common heritage of freedom. The House should reflect on whether it has provided effective legislative scrutiny and whether casting Members away gave too much allowance for Executive decree.
We should reflect on whether the experiment of remote technology has substituted a pretence for the substance of scrutiny, parading a Potemkin Parliament as the real thing.
Ministers should reflect on whether speed of response became an excuse, rather than a genuine requirement for presumptive Executive action and whether the drift towards lawmaking without the sharing of adequate data and without questioning or accountability with Parliament became a lazy path routinely chosen for convenience, rather than need.
The Opposition should consider why their response to the greatest power grab by the state has been to demand more state, more restriction and more control.
They made a series of cynical, tactical moves designed to wrongfoot Government mid-crisis, at best setting out a vision of even greater repression and control while heightening public fears and worry.
I and my colleagues on the Government Back Benches should reflect on whether a more vigorous defence of our liberties was called for, and if so, why we did not heed that call.
For our citizens, we should ask to what purpose we removed those liberties a year ago and for what purpose we are withholding those liberties yet further today.
The decision has not been so much one of medical necessity, but rather of a presumed political necessity.
We should reflect candidly and fearlessly on whether the accumulated costs in diminished livelihoods, debts, school closures, misdiagnoses, loneliness and lives lost as a result of these measures have been worth the reduction in covid deaths and the avoidance of an annual rate of death for our population that was commonplace and went unremarked barely two decades ago.
Whatever the conclusions of our reflections, we must now resolve together to lead the recovery of these liberties with every moment and every strength we have”
Richard Fuller is MP for North East Bedfordshire.
People’s Media News
UK RELOADED THE LIBERTY BEACON WEB WIDE NEWS LIBERTY RISING EUROPE RELOADED TELEGRA.PH DAILY SCARE WE FIGHT BACK
First featured on UK Reloaded
••••
The Liberty Beacon Project is now expanding at a near exponential rate, and for this we are grateful and excited! But we must also be practical. For 7 years we have not asked for any donations, and have built this project with our own funds as we grew. We are now experiencing ever increasing growing pains due to the large number of websites and projects we represent. So we have just installed donation buttons on our websites and ask that you consider this when you visit them. Nothing is too small. We thank you for all your support and your considerations … (TLB)
••••
Comment Policy: As a privately owned web site, we reserve the right to remove comments that contain spam, advertising, vulgarity, threats of violence, racism, or personal/abusive attacks on other users. This also applies to trolling, the use of more than one alias, or just intentional mischief. Enforcement of this policy is at the discretion of this websites administrators. Repeat offenders may be blocked or permanently banned without prior warning.
••••
Disclaimer: TLB websites contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to our readers under the provisions of “fair use” in an effort to advance a better understanding of political, health, economic and social issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than “fair use” you must request permission from the copyright owner.
••••
Disclaimer: The information and opinions shared are for informational purposes only including, but not limited to, text, graphics, images and other material are not intended as medical advice or instruction. Nothing mentioned is intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.
Leave a Reply