The hon. Gentleman takes me neatly to my closing point. If I understand him correctly, he is making an argument about civil liberties and freedoms. One does not have to be a libertarian to cherish freedom and liberty, as I hope we all do in this House. Libertarianism is the extreme form. It is the difference between liberty regulated and controlled—parametered, if one will—and liberty laissez-faire. It strikes me as rather incongruous for a libertarian to wish to become a lawmaker, because most laws are there to control, prohibit and regulate.
It seems masochistic: “I am a free market libertarian, yet I have decided to put myself in the shackles of lawmaking in order to restrict the liberties that I cherish.” The hon. Gentleman makes a serious point, but we have to deal with society as it is, rather than as we might like it to be. Things have changed.
The ultra-libertarian would ask why we force people to wear seatbelts, as people should be free to hurl themselves through their windscreen at speed. Why do we have speed limits? The libertarian would say that we should be absolutely free to drive at whatever speed, irrespective of the conditions. I remember, back at university, hearing an eccentric American—that can sometimes be a tautology—questioning, from the extreme wing of libertarianism, the merits or otherwise of ages of sexual consent.
I suggest that all we do, and our inspiration for doing it, is benign and kindly. Too often, it is interpreted as being paternalistic and patronising, but I like what the Secretary of State said about this approach to lawmaking being in the proud one nation tradition of the Conservative party, because Tories like order, not disorder.