Wednesday, May 21, 2008, 12:06 AM GMT [General]

Daniel Hannan

For the first time in my life, I’m in the pages of Hello! magazine. And not in a good way. The paper is campaigning alongside the McCanns in favour of an Amber Alert scheme for missing children. In the current issue, it lists 14 villainous British MEPs who haven’t signed the written declaration in support of the policy. I am among the monsters.

Regular readers may find this puzzling. After all, <REFERENCE title="Why Hannan supports the McCanns" destination="internal" display-type="link" target="_self" object-id="301295" object-type="2" parent-id="103709" anchor="">I do support the Amber Alert initiative</REFERENCE>. As I wrote here last month, “it is perfectly reasonable to seek to co-ordinate such a scheme at European level. If the EU stuck to cross-border issues of this kind, no one would have a problem with it.”

Why, then, am I listed? Because, on principle, I don’t sign written declarations. I have blogged often before about the invidious nature of <REFERENCE title="Declamatory legislation" destination="internal" display-type="link" target="_self" object-id="202814" object-type="2" parent-id="85622" anchor="">declamatory legislation</REFERENCE>. But written declarations aren’t even legislation: they are simply declamatory. Even if every single MEP should sign one, the only consequence would be that the Commission would be obliged to consider the idea. In this case, though, the Commission is already considering the idea.

Anyway, my own preference is for the scheme to be inter-governmental. The involvement of the self-serving and inefficient Commission bureaucracy has ruined more than one good initiative in the past. I would much rather have the Amber Alert run enthusiastically by national media than regulated by some inefficient EU agency.

But that isn’t really the point of this blog. My real beef is with the moral blackmail involved. At least one of the non-signatories, who has some experience in this area, argues that an Amber Alert scheme is misguided, and that the broadcasting of an abducted child’s name can put that child at risk. On balance, I don’t agree with him: evidence suggests that an early media blitz can prompt the abductor to release his victim and, in at least one case, an alert prompted the child herself to ring the hotline. But good and sincere people can disagree with me.

I am reminded of the filthy tabloid campaign that followed the Dunblane massacre. Those MPs who did not vote for a complete ban on handguns were attacked as if they somehow didn’t care about the murdered children. Never mind that such a ban would have made no difference. Never mind that the Cullen Report came out against a total prohibition. Cool arguments were drowned out by “I care more than you do” posturing. One of the worst offenders was Tony Blair who, in a nauseating speech to the Labour conference, said: “Some Tories accuse us of being emotional. Well, if they had been in that gym, if they had met those parents, sitting in those tiny chairs where once their children sat, they’d have been emotional, too”. It was at that moment that I began to get a full measure of the man.

I don’t blame Hello! The desire to protect children is encoded deep in our DNA, and we can’t help becoming emotional when the subject comes up. But legislation is not a mechanism to vent our feelings. It is there — or at least, it ought to be there — to provide proportionate remedies to identified problems. I happen to agree with the magazine. But it should have the decency to accept the motives of those who don’t.

[ 7 comments ]