Forget Covid passes and masks – there are bigger threats to freedom in Britain right now

The government is currently pushing through legislation that echoes elements of the authoritarian regimes I have lived and reported under during my career, writes Bel Trew

Some bills or amendments are so disturbing that international rights groups have spoken out. Yet critics of Covid restrictions are silent (Leon Neal/PA) (PA Wire)

One of the most discombobulating things about living and working for so many years abroad is re-entry shock. On returning home you are plunged back into everyday details of the domestic agenda of households, politicians and rulers – and, hand on heart, I can say it gets more disturbing each trip home.

Over the weekend I watched GB News to try to catch up on a corner of British political thought I don’t have a huge amount of exposure to, living in Lebanon. On Nigel Farage’s show there were long discussions about the divisive notion of vaccine passports and affiliated measures that they said were restrictions of liberties and wouldn’t help stem the spread of Covid. These views were largely expressed by a Conservative MP, but were echoed by others across the political divide and across other British news channels.

Vaccine passports and Covid passes (in some cases even mask mandates) have been dismissed as massive encroachments on our freedoms. Alarms were sounded. And some even took to the streets this weekend.

But through all of this I couldn’t help thinking about the inconsistency, if not hypocrisy, of it all.

That is because, right now, there are pieces of legislation the authorities are trying to push through that could encroach on freedoms – that to me echo elements of the authoritarian regimes I have lived and reported under during my career.

That, in my opinion, could do far more damage than a mandatory piece of paper granting us access to football stadiums or nightclubs or a piece of cloth over our noses.

Some of those bills or amendments are so disturbing that international rights groups have spoken out. But weirdly, in comparison to the Covid debate, there is comparative silence from the public, from those rebellious freedoms-loving parliamentarians, and, dare I say it, from some wings of the media.

Among them are last-minute amendments to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, after it passed through the Commons and before it goes to the House of Lords in January.

Critics say it effectively criminalises the act of protest – something the government denies. They have sounded the alarm about additions including making a criminal offence of “locking on” or even “being equipped to lock on” – when protesters make it difficult to remove them from their place of protest. Groups such as Greenpeace have claimed the language is so vague that it could be applied to people linking arms at protests. Other police powers have been expanded, including allowing them to crack down on protests on the basis of noise.

Another concerning bill is the Nationality and Borders Bill which, among other things, will make it completely legal for the government to strip people of their citizenship without even having to inform them.

I’ve interviewed British women affiliated with or who lived under Isis, including women who rights groups claim are victims of trafficking. One of them found out by chance she was no longer British over a year after it happened. Together with her child, she is now left to languish indefinitely in a squalid detention centre in north-east Syria – something that the Kurdish authorities who run that slice of war-ravaged country say they cannot handle and is causing them massive security problems.

I don’t think dumping citizens in the desert will help the national security of this country. Neither will robbing British children of a future. Outside of the context of Isis, it will disproportionately affect minority ethnic citizens – effectively creating a two-tiered standard of British nationality.

To keep up to speed with all the latest opinions and comment sign up to our free weekly Voices Dispatches newsletter by clicking here

There is also the proposed bill to introduce mandatory voter IDs for elections, which equality and democracy campaigners argue would deter millions of potential voters, most likely from the poorest and most marginalised parts of the country.

Meanwhile there are also plans to move some whistle-blower protections in the Official Secrets Act, which several journalists have argued will mean we could be treated like spies – something Boris Johnson himself has denied.

The government has defended all these actions, saying they are essential for our national security, for domestic peace, law and order.

That could be argued in some specific instances, but I fear that in the aggregate we are watching a concerted erosion of freedoms.

And so my question is this: where are those who say they are on a crusade to protect our liberties? If they’re taking to the streets for Covid restrictions, why not protest all these issues?