Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 14th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst, and I look forward to hearing many more of his contributions to this House.

I want to talk about Parts 3 and 4 of the Bill. On Part 4, it is my experience, some years ago as a councillor in Somerset, providing and maintaining sites for Gypsies and Travellers, that leads me to realise what an utter disgrace this part is. The Minister said in opening that this was in the Conservative manifesto, and so it was. It was a dog whistle that really builds on social anxieties to garner votes, and that is about as low as it gets. It also demands the impossible. It reminds me of the ill-guided bedroom tax legislation, because that demanded that people move to smaller houses when there were no smaller houses for them to move to. This is the same: it demands that people solve a situation where there are no sites available for them. It is just inadequate provision. Really, the Government need to rethink this entire part and get rid of this part entirely.

I was interested in the well-meant speech by the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, on Part 3, which I now turn to. It put me in mind of a quote from the author John Grisham, who said:

“Privileged people don’t march and protest; their world is safe and clean and governed by laws designed to keep them happy.”


Of course, the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, reminded us about the suffragettes. Women would not have the vote had they not been marching, protesting and disrupting life around Parliament tremendously. I believe that street protest is a fundamental protection that people have when those in power get it wrong, at not only a national but a local level. We have barely mentioned the local level this afternoon, but that is equally important. Feet on the street is a way of protecting your local playing field or library when they are threatened with closure. This country has rightly deplored regimes that criminalise dissent and discourage protest with threats of jail. Yet here we are, in this part, looking at doing just those things. To be noticed, dissent cannot be silent; it is likely to be disruptive and upsetting. I remember protesting once with the charity Baby Milk Action. We had a small white coffin on the high street in Yeovil, and it did upset passers-by but they were really interested in why we had a coffin there. If this Bill had been in place, I expect we would have been charged with upsetting the local population.

Part 3 of the Bill as it stands would have a very chilling effect on protest, because the proposed crime of serious annoyance carries a big sentence. As others have eloquently said, it is just not adequate to leave the Home Secretary to define that part. When looking at Part 3, I ask myself why it is in the Bill at all. I think it is there because the Government have realised, and Boris Johnson in particular has realised, just how many howls of protest there will be when the current Conservative proposals come into being, in communities in towns and villages that will be excluded from planning decisions under the planning Bill, and from thousands of people as the Government fail on climate change measures, such as the appalling collapse of the Green Homes policy. The Minister condemned some of the Extinction Rebellion actions yesterday. The name of their campaign was Insulate Britain, and that is a direct result of the Government ratting on the Green Homes policy.

In conclusion, do the Government really believe that those who voice their concerns loudly should suffer for life? That is exactly what will happen if they have a criminal record. Algorithms check whether you have a criminal record. It will be impossible for you to get a job interview, to rent a house or to get a visa for the United States. Life will be a series of no, no, no. As this Bill stands, if you care about your future, you cannot afford to go on marches or attend protests. But if you care about the future, you really cannot afford not to do those things. You have to try to protect the things you see as under threat, whether it is the whole planet or your local sports field. Our job is to make sure that that is still possible.

Operation Midland

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer Excerpts

Wednesday 9th November 2016 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what urgent steps they will take to restore confidence in the Metropolitan Police following the conclusions of Sir Richard Henriques report into Operation Midland.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)]

My Lords, allegations of sexual offences are among the most serious to be investigated by the police. The police have a responsibility to investigate such allegations, thoroughly, sensitively and with rigour, so that the facts can be established. Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe was right to ask Sir Richard Henriques to carry out this independent report, and it is now for the Metropolitan Police to address the findings and take action where necessary.

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)]

I thank the Minister for her reply. An initial reading of the report suggests that the operation fell short on a number of issues of natural justice. I want to ask the Minister about one: will she make sure that her department issues guidance that people under investigation should remain anonymous until the police are in a position to bring charges?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, we had a very good debate on this in the last couple of weeks and there is a general principle: people should remain anonymous before charge, but there are circumstances in which names may be released and it is in order for victims to come forward. I must say to the noble Baroness that victims’ groups support that principle.

Calais: Refugee Camp

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer Excerpts

Thursday 15th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)]

My Lords, I, too, appreciate the work that the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, has done. He has done as much as a parliamentarian can, and more, to keep this issue at the top of our agenda. I add my heartfelt thanks to him for all his effort and work in doing that.

The noble Lord has covered the issues that the Minister needs to answer this afternoon. I shall add some comments as the trustee of a charity, Articulate, which works in the camp in Calais with its partner Hummingbird. These charities work to provide a safe space for children in the camp where they spend some hours doing things that children normally do, such as drawing and playing. I want to pay tribute to all the volunteers who go over to Calais for these charities, at their own expense, often giving up their own work to do so. The conditions they work in are really difficult, and there is no structure to rely on, a point I shall come back to at the end of my speech. I shall share a few of their comments with noble Lords and then ask the Minister a question.

The first comment from one of our volunteers is: “I used to worry when I read about the refugee crisis and the so-called Jungle in Calais in our newspapers, or saw images of children in the camp living in squalid conditions on my TV screen. But now I worry when I don’t—when I know that what is happening is going unreported”.

The second comment is: “I have been working in Calais with children and young people since April, and each week that I go I see the situation deteriorate. Now with winter approaching, hope in the camp is diminishing and the boys are taking greater risks to get to the UK. I now worry each week when I leave the camp that a child we have got to know over the past five months will become another name on the ever growing list of children who have disappeared or lost their lives crossing borders”.

The third comment is: “A deaf boy who we see regularly in our safe space drew me a picture of the different ways he attempts to get into a lorry each night to get to the UK. The image only highlights to me the absolute danger this child is in”.

The volunteers mention many of the health issues—“weeping, itchy eyes from the CRS firing tear gas into the camp, children who have terrible coughs, children who have scabies. These children certainly need proper medical attention”.

The final comment is along the lines that were mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, in her powerful contribution: “The camp has no protection from within, you could say it is pretty lawless. CRS who guard it are known to be physically abusive to the children and the children report this to us frequently. There is no one official to tell when things are happening at night. The worst thing about the camp, they said, was the lack of protection. The youngest we work with who is unaccompanied is eight, and there are children with disabilities and high needs in the camp”.

My comment to the Minister echoes that of the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, and the noble Lord, Lord Dubs. Surely the very least that can be provided by two of the wealthiest nations in western Europe is temporary accommodation that is fit for children, regular, nutritious food that they can count on and medical attention that addresses their basic needs while they are going through the lengthy processes that they will inevitably have to go through. From time to time, Ministers have said that this would not be possible because it might create a pull factor, but it can be ring-fenced to the children there now—not a huge number. The fact that we in Britain and France cannot get our officials and Home Secretaries together to provide something like this in the next few months, until these children get their passage, is something the Minister needs to explain this afternoon.

Calais: Refugee Children

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer Excerpts

Wednesday 7th September 2016 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government when they will address the position of the refugee children in the Calais camps who are eligible to come to Britain.

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. In doing so, I declare an interest as a trustee of a charity that works in the Calais camp, among other places.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)]

My Lords, we are already working closely with the French to help to identify and transfer children who are eligible and are about to second another UK expert to France to support that work. Over 70 children have been accepted already this year and more arrive almost every week. Transfer requests are now generally processed within 10 days, and children are transferred within weeks.

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her reply, and I read carefully her reply to my noble friend yesterday. However, as she said, some 70 children have been accepted this year, which is about two a week, and yesterday she asserted that her department is working very quickly. Is she satisfied that that is quick enough? Given that the French intend to dismantle the camp by Christmas and that at least 370 children are eligible, that should be more like 20 a week. Further, does she realise that young people seeing the camp dismantled will take greater and greater risks in trying to get on to vehicles coming to the UK? Can the Minister assure the House that her department will be able to up the capacity to at least nearer 20 a week?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, on the question of whether we are doing things quickly enough, in an ideal world we would move all the children tomorrow. However, we cannot just take a child out of a country—I tried to make that clear yesterday and I make it clear today. Following due process is in the best interests of any child whom we are concerned about. We have to take account of the laws of the country in question—that is, France. When the child is in France, he or she is under its jurisdiction. We are working very closely with that country to make sure that children are transferred as quickly as possible. The welfare of the child is utmost.

Terrorist Attack in Nice

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer Excerpts

Monday 18th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Lord makes a good point about the things we need to do in this country, which we do. The amount of barriers outside this building has certainly increased in the time that I have been here, and our security and intelligence services monitor the places around the country which they feel are vulnerable, and measures are put in place accordingly.

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)]

One of the things that the French really appreciated after the attacks in Paris was that British people continued to visit France, and enjoy all that it has to offer, in such numbers. I am sure that the Minister will agree with me that it is really important for the message to go out that France is no more dangerous than any other country—I declare my interests in the register—and that it is a destination that British people should still be pleased to visit.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Baroness reflects some of the comments that I heard in the light of some of the spikes in hate crime after the EU referendum. We should not let these sorts of events defeat us: France is a beautiful country that many people want—and will continue to want—to visit, and we should not be cowed by these sorts of threats. We should continue our daily lives and our holidays to these lovely countries.

Queen’s Speech

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)]

My Lords, this Government have told us time and again that they have a long-term economic plan but they have been pretty silent on any environmental plan.

The issue I want to talk about is a big threat to our next generation—I think that is widely recognised—but it is also symptomatic of how economics have taken over from social and environmental issues. The issue I want to talk about is obesity and why the next generation are eating so badly that they are becoming either really obese or malnourished. We now have the worst overweight figures in the OECD. Why is that? I recognise that it is a long-term problem but it starts because the food system itself is broken.

Steve Hilton, David Cameron’s erstwhile adviser, was talking about this during the publicity for the publication of his book a couple of weeks ago. He says that taxpayer subsidies prop up an iniquitous structure rigidly set up in favour of “big food” and that those subsidies should be redirected to farmers and producers who are doing the right thing. I agree with him, but what a shame he did not say that when he was at the heart of government. The food sector is always siloed into one government department when actually it is a question of things that happen in Defra, the Department of Health and the Department for Education—it cuts across all departments. So what a shame he did not take advantage of his position while he had it.

The food system is broken. At one end we have the producers producing excellent meat, fruit and veg who cannot make a reasonable living. The noble Lord, Lord Plumb, highlighted the dairy farmers. The noble Lord, Lord Curry, put it rather well, I thought, when he said that the farmers are those with whom the buck stops. Young, enterprising would-be growers cannot even afford the land upon which to start.

Of course, historically the choice was made to subsidise sugar production and not vegetables, and wheat but not fruit, and we have had to live with the results of that. But it is also a part of the system where manufacturers are creating processed foods that really have no nutritional value. Supermarkets are basically in a race to the bottom on cost and have found that the less nutritious food sells if you give it enough so-called mouth appeal—that is, sweet, salty foods. I am sure that noble Lords will be as shocked as I was by the Netmums finding that:

“Sugar is used in massive quantities by the food industry”.

The example given was Heinz Farley’s Rusks, which contain 29g of sugar per 100g. Those are for babies and nearly a third is sugar.

However, the answers are within our reach. One of the best moments for me of the coalition Government was when Nick Clegg, then Deputy Prime Minister, announced that the long-held Liberal Democrat policy of starting children off with a good nutritional input would become government policy so that proper school meals would be provided for every single infant school pupil for free. I hope that this Government will continue that drive to make sure that at least primary schoolchildren get that sort of start in life. Perhaps the Minister will reflect on the fact that while the Government are set on creating more academies and free schools, those children will be offered meals that do not have to measure up to any nutritional standards at all.

I was very saddened to read that the UK Government are now one of only three out of 28 in the EU to decline to take part in an EU scheme that makes the provision of affordable fruit and vegetables for schoolchildren a possibility. I wonder why the Government have declined to take part in that. We took part in the milk scheme that the EU ran and that has been amalgamated with the fruit and veg scheme. Of course, obesity is not just a UK problem and this is one example of the EU trying to give children a better start in life. Why would we not take part in that? We need a total overhaul of a broken food system which is ruining the health of our children and, at the same time, ruining countries far away.

I am sad, too, that the noble Lord, Lord Eden of Winton, is to leave this House because he is one of the few to have championed biodiversity and what is happening to the rainforests. In countries far away, the impact of the vast quantities of soya grown to feed our cattle and pigs is massive, when our home-grown grass for cattle produces a far healthier diet and meat of a superior quality. Those countries far away are losing their varied habitats to a monoculture, so we will miss the examples from the noble Lord, Lord Eden, of that sort of destruction.

The Government are consulting on the Human Rights Act. They should bear in mind that a decent environment in which to live is one of the most basic rights of all. Environmental protection, whether here or abroad, must be considered as part of human rights. Although there was no protection of the environment in the original 1949 European Convention on Human Rights, many other countries have since recognised its importance of in their fundamental laws. Notably, Germany added that in 1994, while in France in 2004 an environmental charter was added to the French constitution. We are approaching the 800th anniversary of the Charter of the Forest. We have talked a lot about Magna Carta, which was terrific for the barons, but the Charter of the Forest was what gave the person living on the land, and trying to make a living from it, some rights of their own against the encroachment of the King. It is time that we celebrated that 800th anniversary by thinking about environmental rights and putting them at the heart of what we regard as human rights.

Children: Online Privacy

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer Excerpts

Thursday 16th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

The noble Baroness is absolutely right that we need to keep this matter constantly under review. We cannot be at all complacent about it and the relevant advice will need to be strengthened as the technology advances. The Government have set up a website through the National Crime Agency called Thinkuknow, which is aimed specifically at young people—indeed, children as young as five—and has specific information on this issue. In the context of this Question, new guidance is available there to young people who feel that they may have been a victim of this particular hacking incident.

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)]

My Lords, as the shocking case in Indonesia showed, not only are children in this country at risk, but adults in this country are preying on the privacy of children in countries which may not have the same capacity as we do to ensure the privacy of their children.

[Lord Bates]

Yes, indeed, my noble friend is absolutely right. That is why the child exploitation unit command within the National Crime Agency is now able to tap into the National Cyber Crime Unit. There are officers in some 40 different countries around the world. It is also why the Prime Minister will host a conference in December with representatives and partners from more than 50 countries to see what more can be done.

Drugs

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)]

My Lords, I warmly congratulate my new noble friend Lady Manzoor on her excellent maiden speech. I was grateful to her for sharing with us her experiences in the health service over so many years and for her strong support for moving drugs policy and government efforts from the Home Office to the health department. It is that sort of experience that supports my gut feeling that that is the right thing to do.

I add my congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, not just on introducing the debate today but on all her hard work over recent months and indeed years over this issue. I know that she has tirelessly visited many different countries, not only all the EU countries but a great number of South American ones. She has put before us a lot of evidence and reports on this issue that have really helped to inform us. I shall refer slightly later to one of those in particular. I am extremely grateful to her. I think that she has really encouraged us in this House to address the issue in a far more in-depth way.

If we look at the 2010 drugs strategy and the government response to the Home Affairs Select Committee report, we can see that the Government are still hoping against hope that the “war on drugs” posture will continue to be credible. However, as we have heard from so many speakers, it simply is not. Many speakers, although I shall not repeat what they have said, have given examples of how it is not helping those on harder drugs to deal with their health problem or indeed helping young people wend their precarious way through the world of recreational drugs.

I particularly want to home in on the failure of the current posture of the Government as a world leader. We like to think of the UK engaging in international dialogue and acting as a world power in a responsible way. Unfortunately, the Government’s 2010 drugs strategy states:

“We must make the UK an unattractive destination for drug traffickers”.

On the face of it, that is a reasonable statement, but where does the UK suggest would be a better destination? On to which of our friends and allies are we wishing the problem? It is a global problem, and even if we could make the UK so unattractive that no hard drug crossed our borders, the rest of the world would still be suffering from serious, ruthless criminals who have an easy route to vast profits. We would not be immune to the effects of that, so let us not make that sort of statement.

I want to talk for a moment about the visit that I was privileged to make to Colombia with the IPU and about one of the insights that gave me. It has since been underpinned by the excellent report on the coca leaf by Sophia Ostler of the UK IPU. In Colombia, I saw first hand some of the realities for the police in trying to deal with narco trafficking and I saw the UK supporting them in that. I think we still have 40 officers out there helping, and the Colombians are very grateful for that effort. One of the unforeseen effects of that support is the shift of the coca-growing effort to Peru and Bolivia. The question is: what else can small-scale peasant farmers high in the mountains grow and are there alternatives to that or to the coca leaf? That is where the report is so valuable. It shows all the current alternatives, from Coca-Cola to Red Bull. It states that companies are extremely reticent about where their coca leaf comes from and that a helpful start would be more openness and accountability from international companies already engaged in legitimate trade in the coca leaf. There are lots of other uses. It is depressing that countries in the Andean region have had to suppress their cultural use of coca tea and so on because of the UN’s attitude to their traditional use. Everything I have said about coca and the Andean region could be said about Afghanistan and opium growing.

Food Security Policy

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer Excerpts

Thursday 24th May 2012 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer]

That this House takes note of the Government’s policies on food security.

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer]

My Lords, I declare an interest in my family vineyard and farm, Vignobles Temperley, and family cider business. I was absolutely delighted to win this topic in the balloted debate, but I am even happier to see such an array of experts who will contribute. Noble Lords know that even in the UK and Europe we cannot afford to be complacent about food security. We are the lucky post-war generation who, by and large, have not seen shortages. We have only recently begun to understand the importance of the concept of global food security rather than seeing it as an issue only when there is a regional famine or shortage far from these shores.

One of the problems has been that political attention has not really focused on food production or nutritious consumption for a long time. We did not even get government time to debate the Chief Scientific Adviser’s immensely important report The Future of Food and Farming but, just like buses, you wait for ever and then they all come at once. The G8 had food security high on its agenda last weekend. This week, the Environmental Audit Committee in the Commons published its excellent report Sustainable Food and in this House this subject for debate wins the ballot. At least we are focusing attention.

In March this year, the UN high-level task force on food security made the point that there is no one set of policies to tackle food security that is globally applicable, but it identified some key pointers and the crucial importance of sustained political commitment. Historically in the UK, political attention has focused on food production when there has been a crisis or a scare such as salmonella in eggs or a disease such as foot and mouth or BSE. For a moment, food and food issues are a political hot topic, and then attention wanders away again to the more seductive stage of foreign affairs or the Olympics, but circuses would lose their charm without bread. I am pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Curry, is going to speak this afternoon because his commission did a lot to bring this to national attention.

In nations where many people live a precarious existence, a food price increase or a shortage can cause the sort of riots that we saw in dozens of countries in 2008 and that were repeated to some extent during last year’s price spike. Even in rich and middle-income nations, we must assume that things are not always going to be as comfortable and easy as they have been over past decades. The expertise in today’s list of speakers allows me not to attempt to address why and how climate change, water shortages, storage problems and animal diseases are undermining food security.

The only international issue I will touch on is the relatively new phenomenon of some richer nations and multinationals buying up vast tracts of land, especially in Africa: so-called recolonisation or land grabbing. At its worst, land grabbing dispossesses whole villages from their subsidence existence against their will. There is an illusion that big international deals bring investment and new technology to a region, benefiting local people, but in fact that ideal is rarely achieved. More often, local communities are dispossessed of their lands and return, if at all, only as minimally paid workers and profits are exported. Fred Pearce in his recent book, The Land Grabbers, gives many examples from different continents of the huge downsides to the practice. I am sure many of your Lordships have seen examples on your travels. I certainly have, notably in Ethiopia. The UN has just adopted historic land grab guidelines for rich countries buying land in developing nations. Guidelines are better than nothing, but there is something immoral about dispossessing the already very poor to feed the well off better or to provide biofuel for their motorcars. I hope the UK Government will support this UN initiative and ensure that UK-listed companies do not ignore the UN guidelines.

I am going limit the rest my contribution to Britain. This week, the NFU launched the campaign “Farming Delivers for Britain” which demonstrates that our agriculture is a bright spot among the austerity gloom. That is good news indeed, but how well are we caring for the basics that enable that agriculture and make us so well placed to feed ourselves and to maintain healthy exports not just of food but also of knowledge? Knowledge and expertise are probably our most useful contribution to global food security.

I am going to focus on just a few of the essential ingredients of a healthy UK production and consumption food policy and on perhaps the most fundamental thing of all, which is soil. A properly managed soil can do so many different things. It stores carbon, retains water, maintains a vibrant ecosystem, reduces pollutant run-off and cuts greenhouse gas emissions, and also produces healthy, nutritious crops. However, I am sure that your Lordships have often seen water flooding off the fields during heavy rain, washing down the drains into streams and filling rivers. It is even more terrifying when you fly, look down at rivers and see that they are dark brown after heavy rains. That is the soil washing into the oceans. We have not looked after our soils. They are literally disappearing through erosion, including wind erosion. The erosion rate is about five times faster than the formation rate. We are also losing prime soils to development. We are just tarmacking them over. We cannot afford that rate of loss and, if we have not lost it, soil fertility itself has been diminished by farming practices over decades. The Food Ethics Council recently produced an excellent collection of research called Soil: A Fragile Foundation. It highlights the national lack of targets and indicators of a healthy soil. I wonder whether the Minister’s department is tackling that now.

Back in 2006, there was an EU soil thematic strategy which would have helped with some of this but the then UK Government blocked its implementation, thereby setting us back many years. Now I assume that we are supporting the EU soils framework directive wholeheartedly. Then there is the farm regulation review, which suggested a duty of care for soils. Can the Minister say whether Defra is considering that? How does practical support for farming practices—increased soil and health structure—fit into the CAP reform proposals?

Secondly, we should play to our strengths. In the UK, we have some of the best grass-growing conditions in the whole world and a wonderful range of livestock breeds, both old, traditional breeds and modern breeds. Their genetic strengths are in world-wide demand. I hope that Defra’s policy will be to support and strengthen this sector rather than to encourage the development of a livestock sector that will rely on vast quantities of imported soya or require the UK to devote considerable acreage to protein production for cattle lots and dairy production, US-style. How is Defra’s assessment of the intensive dairy proposals going? What work is Defra doing on carbon footprinting the different production methods?

On insects, they have an up side and a down side. The down side is, of course, that they can be such tremendous pests. Last year, a letter in the Times from the UK’s leading entomologists highlighted the fact that there were actually only 10 professors of entomology left in the UK. It is such a crucial area of study—the huge impact of insects on food production and storage. I ask the Minister whether that position has improved.

While I am on the subject of insects, I turn to bees. I welcome Defra’s healthy bee action plan, which is a great step forward. It addresses the health of the honey bee, but the honey bee pollinates only about 15% of our crops and wild flowers that are insect-pollinated. The other 85% are pollinated by the other 265 species of bee and pollinators, which are also suffering severe declines of about half their numbers. Can Defra produce similar plans and guidance to help to ensure that the decline of the wild bee population is halted and reversed?

Food security is all about resilience and diversity. We must value our seed heritage and our different animal breeds. I congratulate Garden Organic on its heritage seed library collection and, indeed, Kew on its work. These and other organisations are guarding and developing for future generations—and, in the case of Garden Organic, for the public to use—a large number of unusual and heirloom varieties.

The hot topic of this afternoon may well be biotechnology. I am looking forward to the contributions on that. Public confidence in GM was adversely affected right at the beginning by the Monsanto approach which tried to prevent farmers saving seed. The public came to understand that it was just about the bottom line and not the public good. That approach bred distrust and suspicion. I hope that we can move away from that first generation of GM. I do not that think GM is the answer to food security issues, but nor should we seek to halt scientific exploration and trials. There are many interesting things to explore. Among the less controversial but very interesting advances of biological sciences that are being progressed is accelerated selective breeding, which deals with same-species genetic changes rather than cross-species manipulation. I am anxious that we not be diverted by huge EU battles over GM. It has already sucked so much political capital, energy and investment, leaving fundamental deficiencies in the rest of the scientific effort. Can the Minister tell us the latest UK position on EU negotiations over GM?

We have another round of CAP reform coming up. We must use this round to make sure that it offers farmers support that is all about farming for the future as well as for today. One of the things that worries me most about the future is the lack of young entrepreneurial people choosing to go into farming and food production. On this, I miss my late noble friend Lord Livsey, who often decried in this House the contraction of our agricultural college places. I hope that that decline has halted or will be put into reverse.

There are lots of other forms of support for farmers, such as co-operatives—buying co-ops, selling co-ops, machinery co-ops—which other countries practise far more than we do. There is a great strength of advice for the struggling lone farmer from that sort of circle. I hope that Defra plans to strengthen co-operation between farmers. There have been some interesting examples in various parts of the country, including Somerset. It is work that needs more impetus.

I am sure that other speakers will highlight other examples and the very interesting report, Innovation in EU Agriculture, from Sub-Committee D of the EU Committee. I am pleased that members of that sub-committee are speaking this afternoon. The report covered developments such as precision agriculture, with precise dosages and timing of fertilisers, and better land practice. I will not have time to talk about agro-forestry or perennial crops, or low-till and no-till regimes, but all these things offer us a tremendous amount for the future. It is actually an exciting time in agriculture.

Amartya Sen said that,

“there is no such thing as an apolitical food problem”.

We have many of the tools that could enable us to solve the issue of precarious food security. We can do it, but we need to keep the political attention firmly focused on food and food security. I beg to move.

[Baroness Verma]

My Lords, I remind noble Lords that this is a time-limited debate. When the clock shows “6”, you are in your seventh minute.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer]

I warmly thank all noble Lords who have spoken and the Minister for his very detailed and thoughtful reply. In doing so, I congratulate him on securing that £250 million for the science budget. It cannot have been easy, and the interview today on “Farming Today” with the director of the BBSRC was a good one, because it showed how the budget would be distributed very generally. We will be glad to see that, and to know that it will not be over-focused on one thing.

I am grateful to noble Lords for focusing on the issue of waste. As so many contributors said, it is ridiculous that we are worrying about feeding more people when we have almost enough food in the world to feed the 9 billion that will be. It is just that we waste it by throwing it away here or it failing in storage in the developing world.

This was an incredibly useful debate. I would very much agree with the noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth, about commodity speculation. That probably merits a whole other debate in itself. I hope that we can look forward to a more regular debate on food security and think that this afternoon will have proved the worth of having one.

Motion agreed.

Protection of Freedoms Bill

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer Excerpts

Tuesday 13th December 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer]

My Lords, it is very interesting that the Opposition have chosen to table a fairly narrow amendment to RIPA to explore these issues. In fact, the criticism from the very moment that it was conceived, let alone drafted or passed into law, was that it was poorly drafted and had many problems which I shall enumerate more fully under my Amendment 128.

It is interesting that the Opposition have chosen to table such a narrow amendment. Have they ignored all the other constructive suggestions that have been made? They are focusing their attention simply on this one issue when, in fact, as the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, has pointed out, it is probably the area of RIPA with the least problems.

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I am grateful for that intervention from my noble friend Lady Miller.

The measures in Clauses 37 and 38, together with the changes that we propose to make through secondary legislation, will deliver the coalition commitment to limit local authority use of RIPA—a commitment we made when the coalition came into being following the last election. The Bill also gives effect to the conclusions of the counter-terrorism review which was published in January. That review recommended two changes to the use of RIPA powers by local authorities.

First, these clauses will require that the exercise of RIPA powers by local authorities be subject to prior judicial approval. The second change, which will limit local authority use of directed surveillance to the investigation of offences which carry a maximum six-month sentence, will be implemented through secondary legislation made under RIPA. That will ensure that direct surveillance cannot be used to investigate relatively low-level matters, such as littering, dog fouling and schools enrolment, while still allowing it to be used against large-scale matters such as fly-tipping or waste-tipping, extensive criminal damage and serious or serial benefit fraud cases.

In response to representations received during the review, we have decided to make an exception to the seriousness threshold for offences relating to the underage sales of tobacco and alcohol. The investigation of those offences relies heavily on the use of directed surveillance and so in these circumstances the review concluded that it was appropriate to have a limited carve-out so that trading standards officers could continue to take effective action against businesses which seek to flout the law on age-related sales.

The conclusions of the counter-terrorism review were endorsed by my noble friend Lord Macdonald, who provided independent oversight of the conduct of the review. However, the amendment seeks a rather wider review of RIPA. I will say straightaway that, although the Government agree that it is essential that people’s privacy is protected from any unnecessary or disproportionate access by public bodies discharging their duties, this is precisely why RIPA was introduced, debated and passed by Parliament. And it is precisely why the way it is working is kept under constant review—not just by the Home Office but by the independent commissioners who report to the Prime Minister and publish annual reports which are laid before Parliament.

In bringing forward the current proposals to limit local authority use of RIPA, we are responding to public concern about a specific area in which the law operates. The measures are intended to restore confidence and ensure that any fears of future misuse are unfounded. But there is no well-founded indication that there is a need for much more fundamental reform of RIPA. Indeed, any regulatory regime would need to be built on precisely the same principles and contain the same human rights safeguards as RIPA is built on.

No one should be complacent about how our right to privacy is safeguarded. The measures before us come from one review and were endorsed by a public consultation. We need to get on and deliver them, but I put it to the noble Lord that another review before we have delivered the recommendations of the first would be premature and no doubt expensive—I do not know how many other reviews he will propose during the passage of the Bill. We will continue to monitor how the new arrangements are working in practice and adjust our approach if necessary. The developments will be reported on also by the independent RIPA commissioner, whose published reports, as the noble Lord will be aware, are laid before Parliament each year. We are confident that the measures in the Bill, together with the associated secondary legislation introducing the seriousness threshold, will prevent local authorities using RIPA in a way that undermines public confidence. Therefore, I hope that the noble Lord will feel able withdraw his amendment.

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Moved by

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer]

115: Clause 37, page 27, line 8, leave out “relevant”

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer]

My Lords, the first seven amendments in this group would enable the Committee to examine a little further the existing complicated system for administrative authorisation. Where the Bill refers to judicial authorisation, one imagines that somebody from the judiciary will authorise whichever investigatory power is being used. However, in the section in the Bill to which my amendments apply, the administrative officer and his superior agree that surveillance is necessary, and the initial authorisation remains an administrative decision that does not come into effect until the approval of a magistrate is given. However, the magistrate will not examine why authorisation is being applied for or anything about the individual concerned; it will be just a review to make sure that the process has been reasonable.

The amendments examine whether the Bill will make the system any more transparent and whether it will be any easier to challenge unfair applications through the Investigatory Powers Tribunal. They examine also whether the system will become more efficient or cheaper. I welcome the Government’s desire to bring judicial authorisation more into the system, but I wonder whether it is sufficient.

Amendment 128 is much wider. I heard the Minister reply to the previous amendment to the effect that the misuse of the Act has been sufficiently addressed, but Amendment 128 has been tabled to probe the Committee’s view on the urgency of reviewing the whole RIPA fabric. This is for several reasons. First, since RIPA was conceived back in the late 1990s, technology has moved on enormously and things are able to be done now which were unimaginable then. It has nothing to do with phone hacking and the News of the World issue—which is still illegal—but with technical and storage capacity. In the 11 years since RIPA was passed, both of those areas have changed out of all recognition.

On re-reading that Act, there appears to be an enormous patchwork of different authorisation schemes, of which this is just one example. That does not seem an efficient way to proceed. The Minister referred to the expense of reviewing. There may be an expense in the inefficiency and patchwork of systems, but what concerns me most is that there are sufficient safeguards against unnecessary and disproportionate use of the surveillance powers.

As to the sheer scale of the use of the powers, we have come to accept that their use is necessary for serious crime and terrorism issues. However, since the Bill was passed, there have been some 3 million decisions made under it by public bodies; 20,000 warrants; 4,000 authorisations for intrusive surveillance and 30,000 for directed surveillance—and that does not include the intelligence services because those figures are not made public. So there is an issue with the scale of what is happening.

The Minister may feel that an inquiry will be expensive and he may be correct—obviously it will incur some expense—but there may be savings to be made if we consider whether the kind of umbrella that RIPA provides is adequate for purpose. It seems to be an umbrella that is full of holes, not only in the authorisation process but in its classification of the different kinds of intrusions—for the sake of the Committee’s time I shall not go into them—which are immense. For example, a phone call that is listened to from outside a house and one that is listened to from inside a house with a bug are different kinds of intrusions and carry different authorisations. As far as the public are concerned, that is a complicated regime—it may be necessarily complicated—and it can pose enormous problems in the complaints procedure if an individual has been subject to that intrusion.

If, as a member of the public, you want to complain about unfair investigatory powers, it is obviously extremely difficult. I have mentioned the figure of 3 million. Out of that, 1,100 complaints have been heard by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, of which only 10 have been upheld. That tends to suggest that there is a problem.

I am sure that many Members of the Committee have seen the thorough Justice report, Freedom from Suspicion: Surveillance Reform for a Digital Age, which lays out the issues in a detailed manner and gives all the references. Given the evidence that is presented in that report alone, Parliament has a duty to hold the kind of inquiry that Amendment 128 seeks. I beg to move.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Haskel)]

Perhaps it will be for the convenience of the Committee if I explain that in an earlier edition of the groupings all the Amendments 115 to 128 were grouped. In a later edition there are two groups: first, Amendments 115 and 120 to 128; and then a second group with Amendments 116, 117, 118, 119 and 122. So there are two groups.

--- Later in debate ---

I hope that the assurances and explanations that I have given to my noble friend Lady Miller are sufficient and that she might therefore feel able to withdraw her amendment. If that was the case, and with the agreement of other Members of the Committee, it might then be a suitable point at which to adjourn the Committee and continue with it on another occasion.

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer]

My Lords, I must congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Selsdon, on his success in having his amendment taken forward to the next stage. Every small move in this direction is very important, because, as my noble friend Lord Phillips of Sudbury said, this is a matter of civic trust. I thank the Minister for his reply. The issue of civic trust comes up because of the inability of current legislation to deal with the scale of interference in areas such as internet use. The intelligence agencies and the police have better systems in place; I have in mind instances where people do not know about the interference, such as in the BT and Phorm case. A natural tension exists: it is the duty of government to consent to intrusion in the interests of security and crime prevention, but it is the duty of Parliament to make sure that those intrusions are proportionate. Although I shall on this occasion withdraw the amendment, I hope that we will return to it. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 115 withdrawn.