Letter to the Bracknell Standard from Ray Earwicker

11.21.59am BST (GMT +0100) Wed 22nd Jul 2009

Two of your readers drew attention last week to the damage this Labour Government has done to the economic and social fabric of this country and the promises it has broken (Standard, July 16).

Not only has this Government shown itself to be totally unfit to govern but time and again it has demonstrated its moral bankruptcy by saying one thing and doing another.

Earlier this month 74 Labour MPs signed a written Commons motion, together with Liberal Democrat and Conservative MPs, urging the Government to review its one-sided extradition treaty with the U.S. This treaty is supposed to cover acts of terrorism following 9/11 but it is being used inappropriately to extradite British citizens such as Gary McKinnon, who suffers from Asperger's Syndrome, to face charges of hacking into Pentagon/NASA computer systems in search of UFOs.

Needless to say when the debate came to a vote it became clear, with a few honorable exceptions that nearly all these Labour MPs voted with the Government under pressure from their Whips. The motion was subsequently lost and Mr McKinnon now faces the prospect of up to 60 years in an American jail, where he will almost certainly die if convicted, unless the Director of Public Prosecutions decides to allow the case to be heard in an English court after all.

Labour MPs could not even bring themselves to support the reform of their own expenses last year and they have meekly allowed the Government to maintain a culture of official secrecy and minimal parliamentary scrutiny in order to protect their own backs and that of the Government.

A General Election is urgently needed to elect a government that will hopefully put the country's interests before that of its own.

Ray Earwicker

Lib-Dem Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Bracknell.