Crime: Home Protection

Lord Selsdon Excerpts

Thursday 20th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Selsdon]

My Lords, one of the great privileges of being in your Lordships’ House is the free advice you get from time to time. I am most grateful to my noble friends Lord Blencathra and—I can now call him my noble friend—Lord Thomas of Gresford, because it makes me feel as if I am some form of pacifist. I suffer from a temper which very seldom rises but, if anyone did come into my house and threaten me, being in the agricultural sector I naturally have a pickaxe handle and a very large knife for pruning the vines; I can throw it into a dart board and get a double top. I also did a bit of unarmed combat; I spent time sharpening the back of my hand so that I could slash it across someone’s throat.

My intervention today, however, is entirely one of pacifism. I am going to concentrate on intrusion—“an Englishman’s home is his castle”, or matters of that sort. I will refer to a Private Member’s Bill that I got through the House some years ago. To begin with, I would like to take as my text the words of Patricia Hewitt when she was head of Liberty. She pointed out that people should not be allowed to go into a person’s home without permission.

When I was in the banking world we became very concerned about fraud. I was in the Midland Bank, which was the largest bank in the world—and the world’s largest bureaucracy. It was the same size as the British Navy. We had a rule of duty of care to our customers—although I was on the merchant banking side and we called them clients. We had a duty of care to look after their money. We were therefore concerned when it became apparent that officials could go into people’s homes without permission and without a court order and search and seize papers, including financial papers. I am not just speaking about the dreaded Revenue or the receiver of rates or the bee inspector.

This was a fear, so we set out to ask Government, as any good bureaucracy would, whether they could do something about it. We did a lot of research and found out in those days that there were innumerable Acts of Parliament and secondary legislation that enabled people to invade someone’s property without permission or without a court order. The answer was to turn to Parliament. I was a relatively young Peer—I came here in 1963—and in 1976 we started to ask the Government questions. Which department had what authority to do what, when and where? The answers did not come back. We asked again and again. Finally, many years later, I asked a Parliamentary Question about which powers a Minister’s department had to enter a property and search and seize. Each ministry wrote back to say that the information was not centrally available. The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland, who was pretty important, wrote to say that the information would be too expensive to obtain.

As noble Lords know, in your Lordships’ House a Question is deemed too expensive to answer if doing so would cost more than £800. However, into the breach came the noble Lord, Lord Bach. As he will remember well, on 9 December 2005 I asked him a Question about what powers Defra had to go on to land to search and seize. He wrote back an extremely nice letter, which said that the main source of information was very difficult to find but that there was a book in the Library called The Law of Entry, Search and Seizure by a professor from Lincoln University. What the noble Lord did not know was that I had arranged for that book to be placed in the Library; we told his officials that this was the answer that should be given.

Over several years I introduced a Bill to say that people should not be allowed to go into people’s houses or search their property without permission or a court order. I got the support of the officials. The noble Lord, Lord West—I call him the noble and gallant Lord but Hansard strikes that out because “gallant” is not strictly correct—went slightly against the grain so we agreed to co-operate with his officials and formed a joint public-private sector Bill team. After a period of considerable research with the Home Office, which was very helpful, we found 1,200 powers of entry, which are now drawn up into the freedoms Bill.

At first, I managed to get my Bill half way through the House. It went through on the second attempt. It should have done a lot of work for the Government but, of course, the Government are never grateful in these areas of activity. Some of the stories that we heard were fascinating. Stuck in the back of my mind is who is allowed to do what, when and where. The important thing about the Bill was that it said that you cannot go into property or a house without permission or a court order. That was exactly what Patricia Hewitt had originally said in her paper in the 1970s. The question is: how do we proceed from here? I hope that the Government will be prepared to introduce these rules and regulations and make them clear to people.

There are other areas in this matter. What is reasonable force and what is intrusion? The noble Lord, Lord Bach, pointed out in his reply to me that you could use reasonable force to enter or search a property. To me, intrusion—if I may take the word from the title of my noble friend’s debate—is the invasion of privacy, but it can be all sorts of things. It can be surveillance. Therefore, I added questions about television cameras. We got the answer that there were 42,000 CCTV cameras in the United Kingdom. I wanted to know whether it was an invasion of privacy if people had a private camera, maybe for security purposes, that could survey someone else’s property. It was pointed out that a gentleman could be seen leaving a property where there was a lady to whom he was not married. In that case, could the pictures suitably be used if there were to be some form of divorce case or matters of that sort?

We all know that there are many such cameras. I asked the noble and learned Baroness who authorised the private cameras. She said that they must be registered with the Information Commissioner. Therefore, we asked the Information Commissioner a private question about how many privately-owned CCTV cameras there were. He said that there were none at that time. In replying to this debate, could the Minister tell us how many surveillance mechanisms there are? That is one form of intrusion.

Another form of intrusion takes me back to my youth. As a small boy I always went to welcome the postman and undo the catch on the gate, and on the gate was written, “No Hawkers or Circulars”. To me, a circular which is shoved through one’s letterbox is an invasion of privacy or is intrusive. Direct selling is similar. If you have an ex-directory telephone line to protect yourself, before you know it you will be receiving phone calls from call centres that dial one number after another. Or, if you wish to make a transfer of money from a bank account, before you know it someone will ring you and say, “Who are you? We wish to test you”. The transfer might be for small amounts, and you say, “Why should I tell you who I am? Who are you?”. You then find that the call centre is located in Calcutta—where I have been on many occasions—so you ask the young girl at the end of the line, “Could you please tell me the name of the club that plays rugby and cricket?”. She replies, “Oh, the Ballygunge Cricket Club”. You then ask, “What is the name of the Writers’ Building, where the head man lives?”, and then you ask for her name. You find that the name she gives is not her real name; it is Elspeth, or whatever. In order that girls should not be courted on the telephone, I suppose, they have odd names. To me, it is an intrusive matter when your financial details are raised and mentioned overseas. I am concerned about the term “intrusion.”

When one comes to other issues, people can become violent. We now have 120,000 Acts of Parliament, published and available on the net. We need, perhaps with various local advice bodies, to provide some advice for people as to who they can stop coming into their houses. When certain clever fraudsters pretend they are from a particular ministry or department, people may open the door. Once the foot is in the door and where a woman is on her own, the quick ransacking of odd equipment, often televisions, is possible. I have a certain anxiety about this and would like to know what the Government plan to do with the freedoms Bill. All this brings with it other international things under EU law.

In our peasant farm in France where we were for the fin des vendanges two weeks ago we experienced a real invasion of privacy. It was very frightening and extraordinarily aggressive, but at two o’clock in the morning, with two shots, it was put down. It was a 136-kilogram wild boar. That is twice the weight of my noble friend who introduced this debate. So in some rural areas it is apparent that people may often defend themselves against certain predators with weapons. To me, an intruder is also a predator.

In my deliverance today I am saying that it would be extremely helpful if citizens knew who could enter their property without either permission or a court order. That would provide a certain degree of security. My noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford has given me tremendous comfort, because I shall have no problem at all putting my defence weapons on the wall rather than under the bed. Sometimes the weapon was deemed to be a baseball bat, because that was considered not be an aggressive weapon. Having played baseball, I know that it can be. I sit down with great gratitude to my noble friend Lord Blencathra for what he has done today. I had not realised it was going to be such an aggressive Motion; I was on the peaceful side of wanting to know who could enter one’s home, when, where and how.