Terrorism Act 2000 (Codes of Practice for the Exercise of Stop and Search Powers) Order 2012

Baroness Smith of Basildon Excerpts

Wednesday 13th June 2012 Grand Committee

These codes of practice provide invaluable guidance to both police officers and the public on how the police should use their powers fairly and effectively. Furthermore, the video-recording codes will provide an important safeguard that will enable the post-charge questioning powers provided by the Counter-Terrorism Act 2008 to be commenced. I commend the orders and their attendant codes of practice to the Committee. As I said, I will move the other three orders in due course once we have dealt with this one.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his explanation and for information on the four orders before us today. For most of my research on this matter, I felt at a distinct disadvantage. I hope that the comments that I am about to make do not become a regular feature of our debates in Grand Committee or on the Floor of the House, but I have to say that the Home Office website really is a disgrace. I understand that it has not been accessible since we returned from Recess. I have been unable to access via the website either the codes of practice or the consultation; nor have I been able to respond to the consultation. My questions will therefore have to reflect the paucity of information that I have been able to obtain.

I know that the Minister likes to be helpful and his private office contacted me to say that it would look into this matter, for which I was grateful. I was grateful, too, to the parliamentary adviser at the Home Office, who was able to send some information to us. However, he was unable to access it until today—it came over at 1.55 pm. There were 356 pages. I can read pretty fast, but not that fast. I hope that the Minister can take my comments back, because it would have been helpful to have information on the significant changes being made, albeit in a digested form, and a summary of responses to the consultation. It would be helpful to have that information always made available if it is not going to be available on the website. I hope that some mighty experts will resolve this matter; otherwise, as I have threatened previously, I will phone the Minister on a Sunday afternoon to get the information that I need while I am working on these issues.

We agree with tighter restrictions on stop and search. As I think the Minister knows, and as my colleagues have said in the other place, the powers were being used more widely than originally intended in the legislation. Indeed, former Home Secretary Alan Johnson had already taken some action in that area and provisional data had shown quite a significant drop in the number of stop-and-search cases from 2009 to 2010. We support sensible measures that will bring the legislation more closely into line with the original intention behind stop and search.

I have some specific questions—as I said, I was unable to obtain a copy of the consultation and have only the Explanatory Notes to work from. If the Minister does not have answers to them, I will be very happy for him to write to me with the information. The noble Lord said that there were 11 responses in the Explanatory Notes, of which the majority were in favour. Who were these responses from, since some but obviously not all of them were listed, and which organisations were not in favour or had objections to the changes being made? What issues did they raise with their concerns and what changes were made to the draft order following the consultation responses that came in?

Turning to the other two orders on counterterrorism and video recording, again, can the Minister say something about the issues raised in the consultations? I have the consultation responses on the code of practice on Codes C, G and H but not specifically on video recording, although there is some information in there. There is obviously a crossover. However, if other issues were raised, by whom were they raised and what changes were made to these two specific orders on video recording as a result of the consultation responses?

On the Police and Criminal Evidence Act order, I would like to commend those who were able to get some good information for the shadow Ministers who are looking at these issues. I was pleased to see a number of points being taken on board, particularly when potentially vulnerable people are being questioned and on mental health issues. A lot of the representations that were made in response to the consultation were taken on board. I hope the Minister understands that I feel rather limited, given the lack of information available. If that could be resolved for future orders and if he can answer my questions either now or in writing, that would be appreciated.

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I start with an abject apology on behalf of both myself and the Home Office in response to the noble Baroness’s complaints about the website. I have raised it within the department but I will now go back to it. The first thing I had better do is find out which of us five junior Ministers has responsibility for the website, if any at all, and make sure that one of us looks personally at these problems to ensure that we can sort it out. Obviously, the noble Baroness should not have to wait until 1.55 pm today to get the information that she needs to deal with these matters.

It might also be worth my while offering the noble Baroness my home and mobile numbers so that she can get hold of me in Cumberland on a Sunday afternoon. I will tell her whether I will be available on future Sundays on an ad hoc basis, so that she can occasionally discuss these things. Again, I hope that the noble Baroness will get hold of me in my office whenever she is going to have specific problems because, as she knows from her own extensive experience in government, these matters can very often be resolved by talking about them beforehand. Similarly, if she comes through my office I am always more than happy to arrange a briefing for her to make sure that these things happen. This is a complete apology with my and the department’s mea culpa. We will try to resolve these matters.

Having said that, I was grateful for what I suspect is her and the Official Opposition’s general support for the line down which we are going on these matters. However, I appreciate that she has a number of fairly detailed questions about how we adjusted things as a result of the consultation, who was in favour and who opposed and, on the video recording, the responses to the consultation and what changes we made. On stop and search, the changes were limited as we had previously consulted on a similar remedial code of practice order. These changes related to removing references to random searches, and there was further advice on photography issues.

At this stage, it would probably be better for me to offer to write in greater detail to the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, giving fuller, further and better particulars of these matters so that we can get all this right. I note the Official Opposition’s general support for what we are doing, but obviously we have to resolve many more detailed points. Having said that, I hope the noble Baroness will allow me to move this order, and to offer, first, my apology again and, secondly, the guarantee that I will write to her with fuller and better details on the consultation.