Protection of Freedoms Bill

Julian Huppert Excerpts

Tuesday 11th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hanson]

Indeed. I strongly appreciate my hon. Friend’s support in dealing with the proposals before the House.

I will move on to the meat of the issue, because that is important for the House. Part 2 of the Bill proposes the introduction of a surveillance code covering the operation of CCTV by public authorities in England and Wales, and the creation of a commissioner to promote compliance with the code. The code will operate as a mechanism of self-regulation and will be set by the Secretary of State. Our new clause and amendments would do several things which we want to explore with the Minister to get a feel for the approach he is taking. These matters were considered heavily in Committee. Perhaps fortunately, on some levels, I was not there, so we may need to revisit some of them today. It is important that we examine the concerns about CCTV; the amendments are designed to get a flavour at least of the Government’s thinking and to place on record the Opposition’s views.

Labour Members want to ensure that the role of CCTV is strengthened and its importance is recognised. We want to ensure that the code operates in an effective way and does not hamper the development of CCTV. We want to have a presumption in favour of the police being able to set up CCTV in our communities to tackle crime through prevention and through bringing perpetrators to justice. The purpose of new clause 16 is to put in place a review by Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary to ensure that we examine, quantify and agree on the definitive benefits of CCTV so that we know exactly the baseline.

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way and welcome him to his post. Shortly before the last general election, I heard a police officer from my region say on TV that his vision was to have CCTV cameras on one in three houses. He said that that would really give us a good eye on what was happening. Is that the sort of vision that the right hon. Gentleman has?

[Mr Hanson]

I have a vision of CCTV playing a role in stopping crime and catching criminals. Communities in constituencies such as Ashfield and mine in north Wales should have confidence that if a crime is committed, people can be caught using CCTV. It might also have a deterrent effect. We should have a proportionate response with CCTV in appropriate places where police, local authorities and, as we have discussed and will discuss, the private sector feel there is a need to provide such reassurance and support.

[Dr Huppert]

I apologise if I was not quite clear. Would the right hon. Gentleman be comfortable with seeing CCTV cameras on one in three houses?

[Mr Hanson]

I would be comfortable with a reduction in crime like that under the previous Labour Government. I think that CCTV plays an important role. I will come on to that in a moment and we will test whether the hon. Gentleman would support the examples that I give.

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[Dr Huppert]

indicated dissent.

[Mr Hanson]

I may be doing the hon. Gentleman a disservice, but I did not get the flavour that he was keen on CCTV. I am happy to allow the Liberals to place on the record their full support for CCTV.

[Dr Huppert]

CCTV clearly has a role, which is why the Bill does not make having it illegal and merely tries to regulate it. CCTV is very useful in some cases. To answer the question that the right hon. Gentleman refused to answer, I am deeply uncomfortable with the idea of having CCTV cameras on one in three houses. I think that that would be a horrible, Big Brother state and it slightly alarms me that he is keen on it.

[Mr Hanson]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, but he should not put words in other Members’ mouths. What I have said is that CCTV should play a role. I do not expect ever to see one in three houses in my street or in his street with CCTV cameras, but there is no strategic need for us to put obstacles in the way of CCTV being put in place if there is a need for it.

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[Mr Hanson]

As ever, my hon. Friend speaks common sense. Perhaps part of the guidance to be issued in due course could be about such consultation. I have not yet, in nearly 20 years as a Member of this House, had anybody come to me to say, “Mr Hanson, please do not put a CCTV camera in our street.”

[Dr Huppert]

I have.

[Mr Hanson]

It may happen in Cambridge, but it does not happen in my constituency in north Wales. In fact, most people in my constituency argue for more CCTV cameras, not fewer. I have digressed, but I repeat that new clause 16 asks for HMIC to make a case for the crime fighting capability of CCTV.

The second objective of our amendments is to strip away some of the bureaucracy that we believe could act as an obstacle to the police doing their job of tackling crime and making communities safer. I would welcome the Minister giving his view on why there has been no mention yet of the private sector’s role in relation to the further regulation of CCTV.

I hope it will help the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) if I say that only a few hours ago I looked through news from the past week or so about the impact of CCTV in our communities. I pulled off the internet four examples from just the past week of real instances in which CCTV has made a difference. I worry that the code of practice that the Minister is bringing in might well have an impact on the ability of the police or local authorities to provide the necessary level of CCTV coverage.

I looked first at the Daily Mail, which, as my hon. Friends will know, is an august publication that is required reading for Opposition spokesmen on every occasion. It had a headline that read, “Masked bank robber caught on CCTV holding a sawn-off shotgun to bank customer’s head”. There was a private CCTV camera in the bank, on which the individual was caught, but helpfully for him he had placed on his head a balaclava that covered his face, so he was not recognised. However, the gentleman concerned, a Mr Trevor Hayes, was recognised pulling his balaclava off his head as he walked away from the bank, in Watlington, Oxfordshire, having been caught on a local authority CCTV camera. I should like to discuss the case with the Minister; Mr Hayes is now serving 15 years for the bank robbery, which was caused by his actions but solved by CCTV capturing him on camera. My question to the Minister is whether his code of practice will ultimately lead to less use of CCTV by local authorities.

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[Dr Huppert]

The right hon. Gentleman has given a long list of criteria—he has said that CCTV should be proportionate and respect privacy and so forth—but with which of those criteria does he disagree?

[Mr Hanson]

The Opposition’s new clause 16 simply says that we want Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary to undertake separately an assessment of the importance of CCTV as part of the crime-fighting capability of the police. That mechanism would say, “We recognise the importance of CCTV.” I want a clear statement from the Minister and the Government that CCTV is important and that their proposals will not add to the bureaucracy, time and difficulty of putting CCTV cameras in place.

Let us go back to basics. The Government say that they want to roll back “state intrusion”, but I do not believe that capturing a criminal who has just carried out a bank robbery is state intrusion. However, according to the logic of the hon. Member for Cambridge, CCTV cameras are not necessarily a positive thing in those circumstances. His logic is that “state intrusion” and CCTV cameras, used in a wide range of circumstances and covering different streets, might not be a positive thing.

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[Keith Vaz]

We will talk about this later. What the hon. Gentleman did as a wee lad sounds like a fascinating story.

Back to the point. Let us have a proper debate about this. Let us not let down our constituents, who want to see proper mechanisms for dealing with crime, but let us have in place a proper code that will be looked at carefully, and an organisation or individual to monitor what is going on.

[Dr Huppert]

I will try to be brief as we do not have much time left. It is a great pleasure to follow the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, particularly after he so politely managed to demolish the argument made by the shadow Minister. I congratulate him on the elegance with which he did that. The right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), at least as he described it, seems to live in a slightly bizarre world where CCTV is either all a good thing or all a bad thing, and that people should either support all of it or none of it. He talked having no obstacles to more CCTV. That is the kind of thinking that has led to us having a huge number of CCTV cameras. I hesitate to admit that I have slightly different figures from my Chair. I have seen the figure of something like 4 million CCTV cameras. However, it is a huge proportion.

[Keith Vaz]

The hon. Gentleman’s figures are probably much more up to date. I was quoting the figures in the Home Affairs Committee report from three years ago.

[Dr Huppert]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for the correction.

That is one camera for every 14 people in this country. Let us compare that with other countries that also have interests in law enforcement. Chicago, with a population of 3 million, has something like 10,000 cameras. That is a 20th of what we have. Do we know something that they do not? Across the United States, they use fewer cameras.

The truth about CCTV is that it is not an all-or-none issue. It has its uses and its abuses, which is why we need this code of practice. It has its costs for running and monitoring the systems and it has privacy implications, which is why I absolutely support the Government’s proposals. I hope that the right hon. Member for Delyn will withdraw the new clause.

[Mr Hanson]

Time is pressing because of the programme motion, which we opposed. Rather than explain why I shall support the new clause and why I ask my hon. Friends to support it, I will simply press it to a Division.