The Earl of Onslow, one of the 92 hereditary peers who sits and votes in the House of Lords and takes the Conservative whip, has written an open letter to David Cameron, leader of the Conservative Party. As you would expect, it has a predictable Conservative-Tory spin but he raises some important questions about why the Tory leadership is not doing more to oppose Tony Blair's assault on traditional common law liberties.

"What surprises, worries and depresses me is the apparent relative quietude on the part of the Conservative party on these issues. I repeat - it did not vote against the Regulatory Reform Bill on second reading. It has not remembered the great Edward Gibbon's comment on Augustus Caesar's Rome: 'The principles of a free constitution are irrecoverably lost when the legislative power is nominated by the executive.'"