Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Lord Hain Excerpts

Lords Hansard - part two & Committee stage
Wednesday 3rd November 2021 Lords Chamber

This is not to say that any particular technology is offensive per se—some of it may be very useful to criminal investigations and crime prevention in the public interest, but, goodness me, it needs to be on a statutory footing. Look at the way in which the extraction of mobile phone data developed and was not, for a considerable periods of time, on a statutory footing, what happened and how the Government then had to respond, even in this Bill. I am asking for a broader response to all of this kit—all of this technology. I beg to move.

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

I speak in support of Amendment 132B, in the name of my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti, to which I have added my name, and which provides for a new clause in the Bill. I ask the Minister to listen quite carefully and consider bringing back a government amendment on Report to address the issues that we have raised. There is a really important issue about the accountability and scrutiny of these developing technologies of surveillance and weapons.

The purpose of the proposed new clause is to ensure that drones and other new surveillance or weapons technology can be deployed by the police only within parameters and regulations set by the Secretary of State; in other words, it seeks to ensure proper parliamentary accountability and scrutiny rather than leaving it as a matter of exclusive police discretion. As my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti has pointed out, when, in the past, other forms of technological surveillance, and indeed digital technology, were not properly regulated, they started to encroach on privacy in a major way. We have all seen examples of that or experienced it ourselves.

Police in England and Wales are considering using drone-mounted cameras that could film high-quality live footage from 1,500 feet—457 metres—away, which raises concerns among civil liberties campaigners. The National Police Air Service—NPAS—which provides air support to 46 police forces, has asked private companies for information about systems that offer both airborne imaging and air-to-ground communication. A government website stated on 21 September:

“The imaging systems are intended for use on BVLOS (Beyond Visual Line of Sight) remotely-piloted aircraft systems: ‘Drones’.”


The NPAS told potential bidders that the systems should be capable of transmitting live, high-quality images even in low light, using electro-optical or infra-red systems. It said that this would enable officers to pick out detail such as facial features, as well as clothing and vehicle registration plates, at a distance of between 500 feet and 1,500 feet. The NPAS added that the cameras should be able to operate on a drone that stays in the air for up to four hours and flies up to 30 miles from the base station from which it is controlled.

Drones have been used by various English and Welsh police forces, including the Metropolitan Police, which has explained that they have been deployed to survey crime scenes and provide live footage of operations. That is all to the good as a response to serious crime. It seems, however, that the NPAS may plan a national rollout of drone technology, which raises all manner of civil liberty issues, including privacy, how much autonomy will be granted to private companies operating such drone technology for surveillance by the state, and whether it will target legitimate protesters as opposed to criminals and terrorists.

I ask these questions because these important issues cannot simply be a matter for operational police decision-making. They should be placed within an accountable regulatory environment that can be scrutinised by Parliament. CCTV is already ubiquitous and operated by private companies able to watch whatever we do, certainly in urban areas. Surveillance of the vehicles we drive is also universal. Big tech companies are increasingly monitoring almost our every move.

Deployment of police drones with algorithmic and facial recognition technology should be properly regulated. This is the essence of what I am asking the Minister to respond to. Drone surveillance has even been used to stalk dog walkers during lockdown. It is not acceptable for a Home Office spokesperson simply to say, recently:

“Use of drones is an operational matter for police forces.”


Nor is it sufficient for Ministers to say that the police are already subject to the Air Navigation Order and the general data protection regulation. Although it was reported in the Guardian that the Home Office says increased use of drones would allow police forces to replace helicopters, reducing noise and carbon emissions, that should not be a reason to duck the necessity for proper accountability and scrutiny. I stress, to the Minister and to your Lordships’ House, that this amendment does not seek to block police deployment of drones for legitimate purposes such as to tackle criminals, drug or people traffickers, terrorists, or racist or fascist demonstrations targeting black, Jewish or Muslims citizens.

The Undercover Policing Inquiry, to which I gave evidence earlier this year, has already revealed stark injustices and abuses of liberty and privacy. The High Court has recognised this in its recent judgment finding against the Metropolitan Police in a case brought by environmental protestor Kate Wilson, who was intimately and improperly befriended by undercover police officer Mark Kennedy. Other example like this were revealed by the Undercover Policing Inquiry. I mention these because they relate to accountability, scrutiny and proper regulation. One undercover police officer told the inquiry that she did not know why she was infiltrating one feminist group, as only four people attended a meeting she went to. But she was deployed in this way, instead of on serious undercover police work, such as what I saw and approved as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. That was legitimate undercover police work.

This amendment is about ensuring drone technology is used to put serious crime under proper surveillance, is accountable and does not get out of control, as undercover police officers did. I have spoken previously in this House, on another Bill, about the improper use of undercover police officers to monitor and put under surveillance anti-Apartheid demonstrators, instead of pursuing the South African security services who were bombing Nelson Mandela’s headquarters in London. I will not go on about this, but my point is that the deployment of undercover police officers should have been more properly regulated. I hope that the current inquiry, headed by Judge Mitting, will produce recommendation to that effect, given that it was set up by the Government, which I welcome. The question is how deployment is regulated and who makes the ultimate decisions. I believe it should be based on a warrant—which I signed hundreds of, as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and when substituting for the Home Secretary or Foreign Secretary—to deal with serious crime.

To give an example of what I think would have been a legitimate deployment of drone technology if it had existed then—I will describe this generally so as not to give away what was really going on—I witnessed graphic video-based surveillance of paramilitary members with guns seeking to attack fellow citizens in Belfast when I was Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in 2005. That was done for entirely legitimate purposes. I will not describe how exactly it was done because I do not think that should be publicly revealed. The operation of a drone in that situation—because drone technology did not exist in the form that it does now—would have been entirely legitimate and I saw at first hand the way it could be legitimately deployed.

However, I can also see how this could be spread, if it is simply an operational decision by police, to target non-violent demonstrators and environmental activists. We may not approve of their methods, but we have already seen members of Extinction Rebellion put on a terrorist list by police forces. When that was revealed they of course said that they should not have been. This is about parliamentary scrutiny and accountability. Without such accountability, how do we know that drone-based surveillance is not being targeted on illegitimate purposes like undercover police officers most certainly were?

If the noble Baroness is willing to look at this, and she might find some technical reasons why our amendment is not acceptable to her, it may be that the same kind of authority should be given as under the warrant procedure for authorising surveillance. As I have just explained, I signed hundreds of those as Northern Ireland Secretary of State and in other capacities. Maybe that is one of the ways in which ultimately the Secretary of State would take the decision and be ultimately accountable under the legislation that Parliament passes. Parliament can therefore scrutinise, if not every decision, then the general pattern of decisions made. We need something similar for drone surveillance and this amendment tabled by my noble friend provides for that. I hope the Government will address this so that we do not have to bring back the same amendment or a similar one on Report, because the Government will have recognised this is an important issue and taken the initiative themselves. I ask her to consider that.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, way back in 2004 I was the Deputy Mayor of London—when there was only one deputy mayor and not a whole host of them. In that role I attended DSEI, the arms fair. What struck me was that there was a terrifying amount of military equipment being sold and repurposed for use by police forces and Governments against their own citizens. That was a few years ago and I imagine the situation has got much worse since.

On another occasion I was outside a kettle in Whitehall chatting to the senior police officer trying to give him some good advice about how to communicate with the crowd. He had a phone call, he stepped away to take it and when he came back, he said “I’ve just been told not to speak to you any more.” I asked, “Who by?” and he pointed at the helicopter that had been flying over us. That was the first time I realised just how powerful the cameras were; they had not only been able to photograph me but also recognise me which, from the top of my head, I would have thought almost impossible.

There is always a great amount of mission creep with this type of technology and people can get carried away with it. Our own Prime Minister infamously wasted hundreds of thousands of pounds of public money buying illegal water cannons when he was Mayor of London. They ended up rotting down in Kent and I am not sure we ever managed to sell them—perhaps we sold them for scrap. As far as I know there is still no oversight or regulation of the facial recognition technology. I would be very interested to hear the Minister tell me about that, because I have been agitating for that for some time.

--- Later in debate ---

I want to address the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, about the Justice and Home Affairs Committee inquiry into the use of new technologies in law enforcement, which I am sure will touch on many of the issues raised today. We look forward to the report that stems from that and will study any recommendations very carefully.

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

Can the Minister say something more about facial recognition technology? She has covered this to some extent, but what is different from the heli-tele era that the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, described, or the incident in Belfast I described, when you did not have facial recognition technology? This is going that way if it is not there already, and does that not raise important regulatory questions, or is this being addressed by the committee she has just described? I would be grateful if she could elucidate.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I have not engaged with the committee. The committee could invite me, but I think it spoke to Home Secretary in the past few days. Live facial recognition is the comparison of images against a watchlist, whereas heli-tele seems to be—from what the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, was describing—aerial CCTV. The two are quite different and are governed under different laws. The LFR is a comparison against a watchlist, and that is why it is different.