Charter 88

EDM number 558 in 1993-94, proposed by Robert Maclennan on 09/02/1994.

That this House welcomes the efforts of Charter 88, the popular campaign for constitutional reform to raise awareness of the constitutional implications of aspects of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Bill, the Police and Magistrates' Courts Bill and the Deregulation and Contracting Out Bill; believes that measures contained in these bills may jeopardize individual liberties in contravention of the European Convention on Human Rights, will undermine the central tenet of the criminal justice system, the presumption of innocence, by undermining the right to silence, will weaken the local accountability of the police and its independence of centralised political control, and will undermine the independence of the judiciary and the constitutional duty of Parliament to hold the Executive to account; and calls upon the Government to address these concerns and to ensure that the constitutional system of checks and balances is not so compromised.

This motion has been signed by a total of 160 MPs.