A poll run by PoliticsHome this week revealed a fascinating result to the question: "Do you think in general, the state has too much or too little of a say in what people can and cannot do?" Nearly four-fifths of the sample (79%) answered that the state had too much of a say, while only 8% believe the state has too little say.

If the poll is an accurate reflection of the nation's mood this is an important finding. For some time I have been aware of sharp change in the public's attitudes to surveillance, as well as a general feeling that the government is too quick to seize personal data and tell people how to lead their lives.

The poll suggests that public has solidly come out against the idea that everyone who has regular contact with other people's children should be subject to the vetting and barring procedure. A total of 73% thought the new laws unfair. By party, the breakdown is as follows – 83 per cent of Conservative voters were against the laws, 77% of Liberal Democrats and 58% of Labour supporters. So even Labour voters have their doubts about this particular policy, which, incidentally, was the subject of a spirited campaign run by Josie Appleton of the Manifesto Club long before the media woke to the implications of what the ISA checks would mean for ordinary people.

The change in attitudes has been a long time coming and the announcement of the Conservative policy to reduce the rise of the surveillance state (about which I will write later) may indicate that private Tory polling shows widespread concerns across all parties about the character of Labour's laws.

This is to be expected because Labour supporters like David Goodhart of Prospect magazine, who writes in defence of state control and intrusion, are few and far between, while voices of protest have mounted through the last year, with people such as Stella Rimington, the former director of MI5, Sir Ken MacDonald, the former director of public prosecutions and Lord Bingham the former chief law lord all expressing grave concerns.

There have been books aplenty – The Assault on Liberty by Dominic Raab, What Price Liberty? by Ben Wilson, Liberty in the Age of Terror by AC Grayling and most recently Freedom for Sale by John Kampfner. All of these excellent titles mount a defence of liberty in Britain which the Goodharts of the world have failed to answer with any manifest conviction

And there have been many important reports, most notably from the joint committee on human rights, the information commissioner and the house of lords constitutional committee, which all warned of a slide into the surveillance state. The annual report from the interceptions commissioner, Sir Paul Kennedy, recently revealed that 504,073 requests for people's private communications data were made by official bodies. One in 78 people had become subject to some kind of official snooping. That statistic struck many like a brick between the eyes.