Index Interview: The salami slicing of free speech

Conservative MP Dominic Raab talks to Mike Harris about civil liberties, free speech and how he wouldnt lose any sleep if the UKs communications data bill were canned

This is the first of a new Index Interviews series

LONDON, 16/10/2012 (INDEX). Dominic Raabs father fled Czechoslovakia just before the Second World War. The Conservative politician cites the fall of the Berlin Wall as one of his biggest political influences and Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn as the writer whose life he most admires. In many ways, his style is from another generation of politicians; he shoots from the hip describing Vladimir Putin as a very Machiavellian, ruthless politician, he is unaccompanied by an aide, and, rarer still, he doesnt check his BlackBerry every five minutes.

Index is meeting Raab in a side room off Portcullis House, Parliaments new office block for members of Parliament (MPs) and their staff. On the agenda are free speech issues both in the UK and abroad from the Leveson Inquiry to the Kremlins suppression of Russian NGOs.

Lets start with an easy question: Does he believe the culture of offence has got worse? He does.

There is certainly much more legal restriction on what you can say. Weve seen it with the incitement to religious hatred debate, he says, the glorification of terrorism debate and the ASBOs (Antisocial Behaviour Orders) that originated under the last government. His concern is that these limitations are making society less open: Were narrowing the space where free speech and open debate takes place.

Raab defends preacher Philip Howard, who was banned from street preaching by Westminster Council in 2006:

I used to walk past him on Oxford Street with his microphone. The eccentricities of British life thrive on there being an open space where free expression can take place, and I dont think most people thought he was such a nuisance that he ought to have been banned from preaching. Were seeing the salami slicing of free speech.

The law I draw is the very clear one that John Stuart Mill drew, that you shouldnt be saying things which incite violence or disorder, or cause tangible concrete harm to other people. Mere offence or insults dont satisfy that test.

Raab is clear he thinks the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has over-prosecuted free speech cases in the past citing the Paul Chambers Twitter joke trial case: Aside from the free speech issue, what a waste of money!

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Index Interview: The salami slicing of free speech