Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Bill

Debate between Lord Marlesford and Lord Rooker

3rd reading & 3rd reading (Hansard) & 3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 21st January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marlesford (Con) [V]]

My Lords, in nearly 30 years in your Lordships’ House, I have never seen a piece of legislation that has made me more uneasy than this Bill. To me it is counterintuitive to give anyone the power to pre-empt the application of the criminal law .

I of course support the need to do all that is necessary to protect our national security and to detect and prevent serious crime, but it should have been possible to find other means. To choose this moment to extend in legislation the legality of law-breaking seems most unwise. This, after all, is a time when Russia is without compunction using, both at home and abroad, deadly poisons to eliminate its enemies. When it succeeds, it denies it. When it fails, its leader blithely explains that when it wants to kill, it succeeds.

I give one simple and deliberately irrelevant example. If a burglar is killed by a householder protecting himself or his family, it is unlikely that a jury will convict him of murder or even manslaughter. That does not mean, however, that we should legislate to give ex-ante immunity to householders who kill burglars.

I have one more word on journalists. I tried to persuade your Lordships to require judicial authorisation for any requirement to force journalists to reveal their sources in cases covered by the Bill. The amendment was defeated by seven votes but I was comforted by the fact that three former Cabinet Secretaries voted for it.

The Bill will now pass, and I shall vote for it, but let us agree, at least informally, that its implementation should be monitored with rigour. All societies must defend their security but open societies must take especial care of how they do so. Yesterday, President Biden told the American people that

“we’ll lead not merely by the example of our power but the power of our example.”

[Lord Rooker (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, is absolutely right to bring forward her amendment to the Motion. I might want to criticise the details, which I do not intend to do, but she is right to do so. In fact, it would have been inconsistent with her rigid approach to the Bill for her not to do so. So, to that extent, I support her right to table the amendment; there is no question whatever about that. It gives me an opportunity to further vote for the Bill because I will not support the amendment to the Motion.

The noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, just made a point about the open society. This is a problem and there is a disquiet here. As an open society, we need to protect our openness. However, when that openness is the very thing used to undermine and smash our open society, we have to say no. We have to have a process that defends our open society and is consistent with the rule of law. The Bill is perfect for that. I have no doubt that in future the Bill will be amended, but the language that has been used about it is extravagant and misleading.

I see that on Twitter it is described as the “Spy Cops Bill”. It has nothing to do with spy cops. It is completely different and that can be misleading. If I was a CHIS in Scotland, I would be a bit concerned at the moment about becoming a whistleblower because I am not sure whether the Scottish Government are fully behind the process.

Perhaps I may briefly also express thanks. I have not been involved in the detail but I took up the Minister’s opportunity for a discussion with the Bill team and some of the advisers, which I found useful. Indeed, as a result, they published more information. The case studies, which I used extensively on Report, should have been deployed even more. There has been a communication issue regarding the Bill, which I find a fault because the Government have not defended and promoted some of its practical aspects as much as they could have.

The Bill protects covert human intelligence sources. It makes sure that they are not put at risk by being tested by the criminal gangs they may have been sucked into involuntarily, as mentioned in some of the examples used in the case studies. It is not the case that all people knowingly go down that route; they get sucked in by their employers. As a non-expert in this area, I found the newly published guidance incredibly helpful.

My final point is on the pejorative language used, such as when quangos are dismissed as not important. Most of the quangos listed in the Bill are non-ministerial government departments and should not be dismissed by saying, “Oh, it doesn’t matter”. I find that kind of language unacceptable among parliamentarians because it deliberately seeks to mislead the public regarding what the Bill is about. It should stop.

Agriculture Bill

Debate between Lord Marlesford and Lord Rooker

Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 9th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marlesford [V]]

My Lords, I have no problem at all in supporting this amendment; I have for a long while campaigned on this issue. In fact, in July 2013 I introduced a Private Member’s Bill on littering from vehicles. It did not get anywhere at the time but, as quite often happens with Private Members’ Bills, the idea was incorporated into subsequent legislation, and it is now possible to fine the owner of a vehicle from which litter is dropped without identifying the person who dropped it. Previously, anonymity or a dispute as to who dropped the litter meant nothing ever happened.

There is a real problem in this, of both littering and, more seriously, fly-tipping. There is a distinction between the two, because littering is one of those anti-social things where people probably do not feel a great moral obligation not to do it; it is often thoughtlessness and they do not feel it is a moral point. Fly-tipping is another matter. It is a criminal activity, often deliberately undertaken by people who, as it were, make a profession of it. They offer to dispose of goods and household waste for people for a fee, and then they ruthlessly and callously fly-tip it.

In answer to both these problems, I am not sure we need new legislation—if the Bill can in some way strengthen existing legislation, so much the better—but we need proper enforcement. If we take the first example, of littering from a vehicle, practically nobody does anything about it. It ought to be possible for wardens to take the number of a vehicle and issue fines on the spot, perfectly happily, rather like a parking offence. It is not a criminal offence, but it is a stiff enough fine that you simply do not do it again—once you have paid £80 or £100 for dropping a pack from your hamburger outside, you will not do it again.

Fly-tipping is much more serious, and I think proper prosecution is needed here. This is basically already the responsibility of local authorities, which in general they do not fulfil for various reasons, one of which is—I am afraid to say—that they sometimes know who is behind it all: criminal elements they fear to upset. Sometimes it is for less obvious reasons.

Where I am from, in Suffolk, we had five examples of fly-tipping one particular moment and we were able, with the help of the local authority, to pick up the litter. The people responsible were foolish enough to identify themselves and exactly where they came from, and there was no doubt about it. When the local authorities approached them, they merely said that they had paid someone, who had paid someone, to do it. When we asked if the authorities would prosecute, we were told it was too sensitive.

That is not good enough. There is a very simple answer to fly-tipping: the size of the fine should be a multiple of the cost of taking litter to an authorised litter dump. At the moment it is less; it is cheaper to pay the fine on the rare occasion that one is issued than to pay for a truck or the cost of going to the dump. The remedy is perfectly simple. It is a community problem; it is for the community to enforce it. It should be enforced primarily through local government, but central government, through Bills such as this, can do something to stiffen up the action taken.

I have talked only about litter. I agree that there are other problems from access, but private littering and criminal littering in the form of fly-tipping are the main problems. They are very serious.

[Lord Rooker (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I agree very much with what was said early on in the debate, but I must say to both noble Earls, Lord Caithness and Lord Shrewsbury, that making the argument requires a positive approach to access. It came across certainly in the first few minutes of the speech of the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, that he would be very happy if there were no access anyway. He then went on to deploy the arguments and consequences of access.

Access is here to stay, whether it is the coastal path or access to the countryside. However, I could not agree more that in a small country it must be managed. Think about this: you go to a countryside car park for a walk. You will probably pay something, but there will also be a sign saying that every month the costs of removing the litter germinated by the car park and its users will be shared by every car parked there, and that by paying to park there you accept that. That might be a salutary warning to those causing the trouble, and to those who see trouble and do nothing about it.

I have been a walker in the Lake District for more than 30 years and I freely admit that I have never seen any seriously bad examples of fly-tipping. On the other hand, I have seen really bad examples elsewhere. I do not accept that it should be the responsibility solely of the landowner. There must be more enforcement, more cameras and more forensic examination of the waste. Given the kind of stuff that is so carelessly piled up in serious fly-tipping, the evidence that people leave can be traced back to where it came from. There is an argument about who actually did it, who was responsible in the end and where the waste came from, but the police should take some responsibility—they do not take rural crime seriously enough, and this is a rural crime. I very much agree with what was said about the broken windows theory, which is fundamental.

I am in favour of a crackdown. We have automatic number plate recognition cameras all over the city and in different areas. We need a bit more of it in the countryside, with some warnings about responsibility. That being the case, I realise that it is very difficult, though not impossible, to provide a proper enforcement system, but to be honest, there is no enforcement system at the moment. We ought to start to generate one.