Labour has created a "mountain" of new rules and criminal offences, the Liberal Democrats have claimed.

The Lib Dems said that since Tony Blair came to power the government had brought into being or amended more than a thousand new offences.

Speaking yesterday, Lib Dem leader Charles Kennedy launched a five-point plan to protect civil liberties in the face of "more presidential, less transparent and less accountable government.

"There is an important division emerging here in British politics - which supercedes the of language of left and right," he said.

"It is a division between 'liberal' and 'illiberal'; between those whose instinct in dealing with complex problems is authoritarian, and those who seek an effective balance between our rights, responsibilities and security."