Jack Straw today gave his backing to David Miliband as the man best placed to lead Labour from opposition to Government.

One of the reasons Mr Straw gave for supporting a fellow former Foreign Secretary was Mr Miliband's willingness to defend the record of the last Labour government.

Yet was the Blackburn MP over-egging it when he set out what he regarded as a “terrific” record?

He stated that the last Government had “the greatest advances in civil liberties of any post-war government, through the Human Rights Act, Freedom of Information Act, Equality Act, legislation to outlaw discrimination on grounds of race, religion, gender or sexuality”

Yet the civil liberties campaigners we spoke to suggested there was much more to the story than this.

While the measures listed by Mr Straw were praised, it seems there are other elements that have proved far less palatable to civil liberties champions.

This includes measures such as control orders, a system whereby terrorism suspects are closely monitored, and which, in the view of campaign group Liberty, puts people under “indefinite house arrest “ and constitutes “punishment without trial.”

Likewise the Labour government's moves to increase the length of time terrorism suspects could be detained without charge to 28 days, and attempts to increase it first to 90 but then 42 days, both aroused widespread opposition on civil libertarian grounds.

Elsewhere, be it changes to the laws on the retention of DNA samples from people subsequently acquitted, or Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000, which broadened powers for stop and search, or a ban on protests within 1km of Parliament included in the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005, or attempts to introduce compulsory ID cards, Labour were criticised for pursuing policies running against a civil liberties agenda.

It should be noted, however, that ID cards were actually championed by former Home Secretary Charles Clarke as a measure to boost civil liberties. However the view was not shared by campaigners at NO2ID, who  fought against the cards as a ”threat to liberty”.

Indeed the cards were part of a wider debate over the creation of the ‘database state’ and the potential for civil liberties infringements.

When the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust looked at the issue, the findings showed that of the 46 databases analysed, only six were found to have proper legal basis for privacy intrusions.

It seems that in addition to the legislation cited by Mr Straw in defence Labour’s civil liberties record, there are other points to consider which lead to a much more mixed picture.

Last year a joint project between the Convention on Modern Liberty and University College London’s Human Rights Unit produced a report entitled ’What We’ve Lost’.

The report listed all the measures passed by the last Government that in the view of those involved with the project constituted “the wholesale removal of rights that were apparently protected by the HRA”.

It therefore seems possible to challenge the way Labour’s record on civil liberties is portrayed by Jack Straw.

When we spoke to Anthony Barnett of Open Democracy, who also helped bring together the Convention on Modern Liberty, he told us there was a ‘dual nature’ to Labour’s record on civil liberties.

"On personal liberty, in terms of freedom of information or the ability to claim our fundamental rights, Labour began by passing epochal legislation. But it failed to ensure they had the popular support they need and deserve.

"It then set about creating a database state of the most intrusive and centralising kind which became an increasing threat to our liberty, to the point of even being complicit in torture. Thus what began as a period of great improvement in British liberty became a lost opportunity that turned into a clear danger to our rights and freedom."

However it seems Mr Straw is right to point to the significance of the Human Rights Act, for the passage of this legislation has actually enabled legal challenges from the likes of Liberty to subsequent measures that were proposed by the Labour Government.

But to only talk about the legislation he listed, is to only tell half the story of the relationship between the last Labour Government and civil liberties.