The Legitimate Roles of Government, MPs and Civil Servants

The only legitimate purpose of government is to ensure the liberty of each person to whom it is accountable.

Liberty is the ability for an individual to have the widest and freest choices available at all times.

The power required to administer this duty - of ensuring liberty - is such that it is also the power to enslave the population.

To ensure that the government do not abuse or misuse the power they have, the people regularly have the opportunity to replace the government. Also, on an ongoing basis there are non-governmental MPs in place to ensure that the government only work within their legitimate purpose.

It is common for MP's in the UK (and other elected members in other countries) to be called 'law-makers' however, by definition, every law is a reduction in liberty, so law must be minimised, it must be as small and limited as possible. So while the government itself has the authority to make law, it is our elected MP's job to ensure as little law as possible exists at anyone time they should be law-slakers. This will include blocking new law that is non-essential or not in line with a governments only legitimate purpose, also of repealing old laws that are no longer relevant or non-essential. In each case where a law is so repealed, it should be clearly explained how and why the law was ever considered necessary in the first place.

I do not believe that free men should be subject to law that they cannot understand, or cannot know. Accordingly all law should be understandable to (say) 98% of 10 year olds - the age of criminal responsibility. Also, there must be little enough law that it can be completely read and understood by 98% of individuals by the time they are 10 years old.

I would propose a rolling 10 year programme of law review and renewal - whereby all laws are automatically repealed after 10 years if they have not already been directly repealed and have not been actively renewed. If this programme were started today, in ten years we would have a new, complete and exhaustive body of law, understandable and knowable by all, and all existing law could be dumped.

The problem with the civil service is that they are not regularly replaced or rewnewed, so corruption and abuse can run continuously, indefinitely - this must be addressed so that we (and our elected representatives) have the upper hand at all times.