Protection of Freedoms Bill

Earl of Erroll Excerpts

Monday 6th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Selsdon]

My Lords, I hope that I may be able to help the House. This has been a 10-year journey for me. Three Private Member’s Bills have gone through the House. I have thoroughly enjoyed myself. Having worked in one of the biggest bureaucracies in the world—Midland Bank—I enjoy the relationship with bureaucrats.

Those who work in trading standards are great people. I have written to them many times. A few days ago they sent me an e-mail at 4.13 pm. When I rang back at 4.30 pm they had gone home. However, we are good friends now and I am inviting them all to tea. If a trading standards officer goes into a restaurant or food shop, they go in either as themselves to buy something or, if they are going in to inspect, they have to be completely schizophrenic.

I wanted to see if I could help. As a Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Henley, knows well, and will probably let us know in his response, exactly how many powers of entry his department has at this time. There was a problem when Ministers did not know what their powers of entry were and numerous Parliamentary Questions failed to get an answer. Finally, with the great help of the party opposite, we got the final part of the Bill through. It was difficult because no one really knew what it was about. I then thought we should have a period of consultation. I had not raised the matter before. I wrote to the LGA, every local authority in the land, every bishop and vicar and everybody at a local level, saying that we had a new private website and that if they wanted to know what the powers were they could contact the website. We did that with considerable difficulty. I also got in touch with Citizens Advice.

I kept coming back to try to give advice to people. The noble Lord, Lord Henley, does not accept advice willingly because he sees the end game very quickly. He has a very quick mind and found me rather a nuisance. Therefore, I introduced a few amendments in Grand Committee but have decided not to introduce any now.

The main objective of the three Bills was to promote the introduction of legislation after the election that would prevent officials from entering people's homes, land or places of work without permission or a warrant, and would introduce a suitable code of practice. We drafted such a code; the noble and learned Lord, Lord Scott, will remember it. The Minister does not seem to want a code of practice at the moment. He just says, “We’ll put one in”. If we do not have a code of practice now, we will have a problem with powers of entry.

The second thing I asked for was a list. The Home Office stated that it could not put this into the Bill because by the time it was put in, a piece of secondary legislation might have changed it. I said, “Can we not have a list?”. We could not really have a list, so I thought of another solution. In preparing the Bills I had great help from a professor at Lincoln University. With Oxford University Press, he regularly publishes the laws of search, seizure and entry. A new edition is coming out. They have agreed to co-operate with the Home Office, which has already been in touch with them. Naturally, I am not necessary in the loop. However, we will have an official publication that will be updated from time to time, and a website. I would like to be able to put that in the Library. It is, however, extraordinarily difficult, as a Back-Bencher is not allowed to put anything in the Library. The only person who can do so is the Minister. If I do get these things together, could the Minister arrange for me to have permission to put it in the Library? Could he also agree that there will be a code of conduct and that he will produce it before this Bill is finished?

This has been a most interesting time. I have bored to death not everyone—because there were not a lot of people around—but I have certainly bored Hansard. Again and again one has to re-type every Bill. Being on the Information Committee, I have the benefit of PICT. In the latest list I managed to transpose three Bills, but the Home Office has not picked up which ones they were.

I am very grateful to all those who have helped on this. I support my noble friend Lord Marlesford because I support him on almost everything he does. I am extraordinarily grateful to the party opposite for raising some serious problems. They looked at me with a certain cynicism to begin with, but I think we are good friends.

[The Earl of Erroll]

The point about passing at least two of these amendments is that at least we can come back and tidy them up at Third Reading, because certain people have criticised their wording. If you do not pass them now there is no pressure to put anything in at Third Reading. This happens quite frequently and stalls the whole thing.

The whole point is that householders need to know what their rights are. They cannot possibly begin to know if there are thousands of different powers of entry, so there need to be some very simple rules that apply universally, which is what we have to come up with eventually. I support the first two amendments in particular.

The first amendment is about giving permission for entry, which I fear slightly because there is always a danger of people being bamboozled on the doorstep or being threatened by “If you don’t let us in we know you are guilty” and letting them in out of fear. Amendment 37ZB is therefore particularly important. It states what we understand the position to be in common law and in other things, but why not restate it? These are the things that must be taken into account when powers of entry are being examined and there is no harm in restating something when people have clearly forgotten. People expect a warrant unless there is a very good reason why not. To my mind that is quite reasonable and I cannot see why it is a problem.

I was most intrigued by the third amendment because it reserves certain powers and I could not understand why the noble Baroness started off by saying that trading standards officers did not exist, then said what a good job they did and then said that she disapproved of this amendment as it reserved powers to these non-existent people. I could not understand why the amendment was not a good idea because it would keep the powers of these people—whoever they might be—as they were. Although the amendments have defects, we should pass them and the Government can tidy them up at Third Reading.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Selsdon, who raises a very important issue in relation to the use of these powers. I note what he has said and his excellent work leading to the very welcome safeguards that are already in the Bill but would certainly not be there without his work. However, I must tell him that I think he is being a little tough on the excellent people from the Trading Standards Institute. I am sure that, while one person was at tea at 4.30 pm, the majority of them were out doing their business at that time.