Police State

Hewitt defends mental health proposals

Controversial revisions to mental health legislation will strike the right balance between improving patient safeguards and protecting the public, the health secretary, Patricia Hewitt, said yesterday.

The introduction of supervised community treatment is "essential" to help ensure that discharged patients continue to take medication and treatment to keep them well and help to protect the wider public, she said.

Ms Hewitt was opening a Commons second reading debate on the mental health bill.

The bill, which has suffered a series of defeats in the Lords, would amend existing legislation to ensure patients continue to take medication following discharge and to prevent relapses.

Its provisions will see some psychiatric patients discharged from hospital subject to supervised community treatment. Those undergoing the treatment will be obliged to comply with a specified regime, which campaigners say will place unnecessary restrictions on their civil liberties and may deter people with mental health problems from coming forward for treatment.

This is even more scary than talking CCTV.

If this becomes law and if a far right government got into power, they could lock up anyone who is 'subversive', or who is different from the norm, like Stalin and his gulags.

Scary

'Problem' children to be monitored for signs of criminality

Tony Blair faced charges of taking a step further towards turning Britain into a surveillance state, after he set out plans to monitor children for signs of criminality, to allow police to collect more DNA samples, and to expand the use of CCTV cameras.

He also announced proposals to restrict the activities of career criminals after their release from prison and to review the operation of the police service.

Critics of the plan, which was published yesterday, said it was an erosion of civil liberties under the cover of fighting crime. Most controversial was a proposal to "establish universal checks throughout a child's development" to "identify those at most at risk of offending".

The tests could take place at key moments in a child's life, including the move from primary to secondary school, but it was unclear what form they would take.

This is very creepy, shades of Minority Report.

What sort of questions would they ask I wonder? Are you a criminal - Yes/No

Not the only creepy story today - Reid tightens up UK visa rules