Protection of Freedoms Bill

Debate between Lord Marlesford and Lord Selsdon

Monday 12th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Selsdon]

My Lords, Amendment 1 is grouped on its own. As I am on my own, I will wait for the House to evacuate before I continue.

The amendment follows on from the Private Member’s Bill which I introduced into your Lordships' House and which was passed, which said that people should not be able to go into other people’s homes and property without permission or a court order. At that time we also looked at loitering and the nervousness that was caused by people loitering outside properties, surveillance by television cameras, observance from afar and spying in general, but that was left out.

When we recently dealt with the Bill in Grand Committee, it was suggested to me that certain other areas needed to be dealt with. One related to the amendments to RIPA proposed in the Protection of Freedoms Bill which are designed to address the concern about the use of RIPA powers by public authorities to investigate minor offences. The Minister—the noble Lord, Lord Henley, whom I sometimes regard as being a little bit like “Stonewall” Jackson or Cool Hand Luke, who plays a bat and will not let things go past him—confirmed at that time that he accepted the proposals in the Bill would ban the use of covert surveillance by public bodies to gather evidence of non-serious offences and should be amended to ensure that those public bodies could not then get round the law by adopting evidence obtained by covert means by third parties.

When I introduced an amendment to deal with this loophole in Committee on 13 December, I was encouraged at the time by the words of my noble friend Lord Henley, who agreed to look at this issue to,

“see whether we might come forward with some suitable change”.—[Official Report, 13/12/11; col. GC 329.]

He has not come forward with any suitable change, but I gather that he has it still in the back of his mind. The great thing with my noble friend is to take things from the back of the mind and try to get them as near the front as possible.

It seems that my amendment was what the “pros” call too widely drawn. When it was suggested that I put down another one, I went, as always, to the Public Bill Office. I learnt that you do not put down amendments at Third Reading unless you can demonstrate that the Minister had undertaken to do something and had not done it. I had forgotten about that. We checked the matter very carefully and this amendment was the result. I hope that it can be accepted.

I would like to ask my noble friend about other issues that I raised in Committee. I asked whether, since we had the Powers of Entry Bill, he would be kind enough to take the 1,200 powers of entry that we had identified, print them and put them in the Library. He said that that was not necessary because everything could be done electronically. I have a slight conflict of interest here in that, as a member of the Information Committee, I can tell noble Lords that half your Lordships are not electronically enabled, if that is the phrase. Therefore, they like to think back to:

“Abstract nouns in -io call

Feminina one and all;

Masculine will only be

Things that you can touch or see”.

Your Lordships like to feel pieces of paper from time to time. Therefore, I asked my noble friend whether he would agree to put the list of powers of entry in the Library. He said that he might think about it.

Other matters came up. One of the difficulties with Private Members’ Bills is that Ministers are here today, gone tomorrow and back the next day. A code of conduct was proposed. The Minister said that the Bill would induce a code of conduct. I asked him why it could not be stated. I do not think that he said he would think about that. I understand fully that matters such as powers of entry were tacked on to the Protection of Freedoms Bill. However, some aspects of it seem to me that they might even reduce people’s freedom. We should debate this matter further. I beg to move.

[Lord Marlesford]

My Lords, I strongly support my noble friend. He is absolutely right to bring back points that have not been answered by the Home Office. The purpose of Parliament in general and your Lordships’ House in particular is to scrutinise legislation and ask questions—and to ask for answers to questions. It is the obligation of the Government to come back with suitable answers that give details as to why particular proposals should not be agreed, rather than to give just a blanket refusal. I am very glad that your Lordships’ House decided to pass my amendment that is now part of Clause 40 and that we now have a much better understanding of the need to constrain powers of entry.

However, my noble friend referred to RIPA, which extended the powers of the police to enter without warrant. That is probably justified in terrorist matters. I accepted that, which is why, in my amendment that the House has accepted, I excluded from the need to have a warrant those powers that RIPA had recently given to the police under subsection (5)(b). On the other hand, it is important that we should be absolutely clear and precise on the extent to which powers of entry or surveillance are used. It is not at all desirable that general powers of surveillance, particularly by non-government bodies, could be used to provide evidence, because the way in which the surveillance is constructed is quite likely not to have been properly supervised and defined.

We must realise that the object of the Bill is to extend the freedoms of this country. It is high time to do that, and I therefore hope the Minister will give a good reply to my noble friend, particularly on the code of conduct, and publish—more clearly than the information that has been published only on computers—the huge list of existing powers of entry.

Protection of Freedoms Bill

Debate between Lord Marlesford and Lord Selsdon

Tuesday 13th December 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Selsdon]

My Lords, I have asked more questions on CCTV cameras in your Lordships’ House than anybody, I think, and I have been confused. The figure of 4.2 million was introduced twice by Labour Ministers in the past; there was also a code of good practice. It was estimated that there were 400,000 cameras in the London area alone. Some of the other estimates which led to private television cameras said that there was one for every three office buildings. I therefore support in principle the proposal that we should have more information. By my own knowledge from throughout the continent of Europe, we are the only country that has no knowledge of how many CCTV cameras we have, or of the latest technology that comes with them.

I will give your Lordships only one example. French policemen now have wonderful helmets, partly British designed, which have two cameras in the front and two in the back. As the French do not charge you for having a licence for a car, they make quite a lot of money out of some speeding offences but that technology is quite remarkable. I find it strange that we have not yet embarked on any programme to determine how many cameras there are and who they might belong to.

[Lord Marlesford]

My Lords, I should first declare an interest as I have CCTV cameras around my house. My main point is that the emphasis has perhaps very much been on what is to some extent a sort of fear and constraint: “Let’s find out how much”. I can see that, absolutely. However, CCTV is actually one of the great advances in protection, liberty and freedom and in having a safer society. I would always caution against standing against it. I recollect very well that many years ago when Citizens’ Band radio first came out, the Home Office in those days was very opposed to it. It reckoned that radio communications were for the broadcasting authorities, the military, the emergency services and itself. For a long while, people were illegally using CB radios but eventually the Home Office came round to recognising that CB radios, and any other intercom system by wireless, was a perfectly legitimate method of life. It is now in the ultimate in the mobile phone.

I can see that information is always interesting to get, but sometimes a survey such as this can be very expensive. There could be a commercial interest; no doubt, companies who supply mobile phone networks and, indeed, the hardware for mobile phones do a great deal of market research in order to maximise their sales all over the world. However, one wants to be quite careful before one takes something which has become an absolutely standard method of life and starts to spend a lot of money—public money in particular—in making great inquiries into it. I am happy for the commercial people to spend their money.

The example of the police in France was fascinating, and I had not heard about that. I do not think that we must do anything which stands in the path of progress in using modern technology. CCTV is not a particularly modern technology but it is an absolutely everyday technology. All of that said, there must of course be constraints on abuse or misuse of a technology. That is all I would like to say.