Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Bill

Debate between Lord Dubs and Baroness Kennedy of Shaws

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 24th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dubs (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I remind the Committee again of my membership of the Joint Committee on Human Rights and the fact that the amendments in this group stem from the committee’s report, published some time ago, looking into the overall workings of the Bill.

There is widespread agreement that there should be oversight of criminal conduct authorisations. However, there is a dispute over whether that oversight should take place after or before the event. The point of the amendment is that there should be a requirement for prior judicial approval of such authorisations, with a possible provision for urgent cases in exceptional circumstances. The Bill does not provide for any independent scrutiny of criminal conduct authorisations before they are made and acted upon. There is the possibility of a review of such authorisations through the Investigatory Powers Commissioner but that would be after the event, by which time it is too late to influence whether an authorisation should have been granted. Nor does the Bill provide for the IPC to be informed of authorisations at the time they are made so that proper scrutiny can take place. That is surely the nub of the matter. Under the Bill, there would be no chance to look at authorisations until some time after the event.

The Joint Committee on Human Rights report stated that the lack of prior independent scrutiny for CCAs under the Bill stands in marked contrast to the procedures in place for other investigative functions such as police search warrants and phone tapping. That was mentioned at Second Reading. The noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, a former Director of Public Prosecutions, has stated:

“Under this bill it will be easier for a police officer to commit a serious crime than to tap a phone or search a shed.”


That is a pretty powerful statement. The powers of oversight are not proportionate to what is at stake, which is much more crucial than deciding whether the police can tap a phone or search a shed, important as those things are.

I should like to give a number of examples. If we had had oversight before the event, certain procedures would not have been followed. The most obvious was in Northern Ireland in relation to the death of Patrick Finucane and looked at in a report by Sir Desmond de Silva QC. He made a number of important points about the need for proper scrutiny of the powers being exercised, which would be exercised more freely, I contend, under the Bill. He said in his report:

“It is essential that the involvement of agents in serious criminal offences can always be reviewed and investigated and that allegations of collusion with terrorist groups are rigorously pursued.”


He did not quite say that that should happen before the event, but I contend that if it had been possible to do so, the tragic death of Patrick Finucane might not have happened and things would have been stopped in their tracks. Sir Desmond made some powerful conclusions that are entirely consistent with the requirements of human rights law. I will not quote all his comments, but the key question asked by the JCHR report is:

“Does the Bill provide the rigorous framework of oversight and accountability necessary to safeguard against abuse of the exceptional power to authorise criminal conduct?”


The committee also received evidence from the human rights organisation, Justice, which described the Bill as being,

“extremely limited in its oversight mechanisms”

and summarised its safeguards as “woefully inadequate”.

We all know about the tragic racist murder of Stephen Lawrence. The Lawrence family was apparently kept under surveillance afterwards. I contend that if there had been a proper system of oversight before that type of surveillance was exercised, it would not have been allowed and would have been stopped in its tracks, yet it went unheeded. I fear that anything similar would not be stopped by the safeguards in the Bill because they are woefully inadequate, as Justice said.

The third group of surveillance victims would be trade unions and other active organisations. We know that trade unions and environmental groups have been kept under surveillance. Those things would not have happened if such an amendment had been in place. It seems perfectly reasonable to require the tightest oversight of such extreme powers in a democracy—they are not minor powers—before the event. If something is being authorised that should not be, we would have at least one layer of safeguard to stop it going any further.

Amendment 59 is a let-out, providing that urgent CCAs can be granted without prior approval but must be confirmed by a judicial commissioner within 48 hours of being granted or they will cease to be valid. These powers would be applied only when there is an urgent case.

It is clear that whereas we all agree on oversight, what really matters is oversight before the event. The Bill must be amended to include a mechanism for prior judicial approval of CCAs in order to safeguard the human rights that we all believe in. I beg to move.

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, by and large, I endorse what my noble friend Lord Dubs said. It is right that there need to be greater safeguards than there are in the Bill, which are not sufficient. Having public bodies essentially authorise themselves to conduct surveillance and undercover operations is unsatisfactory.

Criminal conduct authorisations are particularly invasive and warrant more scrutiny. The lack of scrutiny could be remedied by introducing approval from a judicial commissioner. This is where I am refining what my noble friend is asking for. I should declare that I am the president of Justice, which has carried out a significant amount of work on this issue and is the organisation that brings the legal profession’s expertise to it. It is suggested that there is already a cohort of very experienced judges who are used to dealing with difficult, sensitive material, as there would be in these cases.

We recommend that there should be judicial commissioners who are expert judges, senior in the profession, experienced in making quick decisions on sensitive material and—I say this in relation to the urgency issues so that my noble friend Lord Dubs can take that off the table—are available 24/7 when necessary. It is a bit like the need for judges to be on call for injunctions: if something comes up and there is a need for urgency they can deal with that because they have the expertise to sift difficult material and make complex decisions. It is important to emphasise that they are already part of the Investigatory Powers Commissioner’s Office. There is no reason why they cannot adapt. Judges are eminently adaptable, especially when they are of this seniority and experience, where they can do it as a prior scrutiny operation. They are used to dealing with these types of difficult operations and they are not junior members of the judiciary. I am anxious that my noble friend’s suggestions might lead to rather low-level judges overseeing this. They tend to be more inclined to accept things that the police and security services say to them.

For those reasons, I make the plea that the Government look at judicial commissioners as the appropriate place for creating some kind of proper scrutiny. Unfortunately, the Government are currently saying that there is no need for authorisation from a judge or judicial commissioner by way of a warrant, nor approval by the Secretary of State. The flaw in all this is that they are saying that it is enough, as the main safeguard against a public body carrying out unjustified surveillance or inappropriate undercover operations, for a senior official in their own organisation to authorise it. I am afraid that is marking your own homework. Even the most diligent official can struggle to be objective under pressure, particularly if their organisation has to meet targets or achieve certain results because of public demand at a particular time. We sometimes see that in relation to things such as terrorism.

The pre-existing safeguards in the present RIPA regime are already insufficient for the creation of undercover agent operations. Judicial approval is all the more necessary for the exercise of this new power. The Government claim that prior judicial authorisation is not necessary. James Brokenshire MP, the Minister for Security, only last month said in the House of Commons:

“The use of CHIS requires deep expertise and close consideration of the personal qualities”


of that particular undercover operation,

“which then enables very precise and safe tasking.”—[Official Report, Commons, 5/10/20; col. 662.]

I am sure that that is true, but this argument, which prioritises operational need over independent assessment, is not convincing. There is a significant difference between authorising passive undercover observation and proactive criminal conduct.

Our former Director of Public Prosecutions, the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, has been quoted already. He agrees with me and my noble friend Lord Dubs that there has to be much better scrutiny. He would actually go further than my noble friend and thinks that it has to be at a high level. He says:

“There is no comfort in allowing senior figures in the police or the intelligence agencies the power to sanction lawbreaking, without the need to first obtain independent warrants from judges or some other”


judicial “authority”.

The benefits of judicial authorisation are further detailed in the case of Szabó and Vissy v Hungary, where the court held that it offers the best guarantees of independence, impartiality and a proper procedure. It is particularly pertinent in the case of surveillance, which is, to quote from that case,

“a field where abuse is potentially so easy in individual cases and could have such harmful consequences for democratic society”.

The quote concludes that

“it is in principle desirable to entrust supervisory control to a judge”.

Such scrutiny could be highly compelling for the potential use of CCAs.