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Sir Ivan Lawrence: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Straw: I give way to a man whom I know to be an even greater expert than me on the sus law.
Sir Ivan Lawrence: I deny that, but what I do not deny, and perhaps the hon. Gentleman will not deny,
is that a Conservative Government abolished the Vagrancy Act after it had been on the statute book through years of the Labour Government.
Mr. Corbyn: The Tories introduced it.
Mr. Straw: I cast my mind back to who was in power in 1824. I was expecting some parallel to be drawn not only with the sus law but with the six Acts introduced in 1819 to suppress all kinds of political activity. I am glad that such a parallel has not been drawn. The hon. and learned Member for Burton (Sir I. Lawrence) is right that the change was made in the Criminal Justice Act 1980. We supported that Act. It was deeply liberal, and I am glad to have it on record that he supported it, as did the liberal Home Secretary. We will ensure that it is well known to the electors of Folkestone and any other constituency in which the right hon. and learned Gentleman appears during the general election campaign that he is guilty of replacing the sus law with something more liberal.
Mr. Howard: I am very sorry to disappoint the hon. Gentleman. I dare say that I would have supported the Bill if I had been in the House at the time, but I was not.
Mr. Straw: The hon. and learned Member for Burton, who usually speaks for the Home Secretary, was, I think, in the House, and is certainly guilty of that piece of liberality--soft on suspected persons.
Mr. Madden: I regret to interrupt the jovial encounter, but may I ask my hon. Friend to consider the realities of someone who, say, late on a Saturday night when the pubs and clubs are spilling out, has the misfortune to find himself or herself in a designated area and is stopped and searched by a police officer in the circumstances described by my hon. Friend the Member for Preston (Mrs. Wise)? That person would be stopped for no good reason, according to him or her. If they refused, they could find themselves imprisoned for six months or fined £5,000. There is very little difference in practice between what we are discussing and the sus law, which we are all glad ended some time ago. Will my hon. Friend reflect on the practice of the police and the security services in recent years to keep known terrorists who are in possession of explosives under surveillance while they drive for hundreds of miles around the motorway network in this country? There was of course the famous case of someone--
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Interventions are traditionally reasonably short. The hon. Member's has gone on for well over a minute.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman has already asked two or three questions. Perhaps the hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) could answer them.
Mr. Madden: I was merely asking my hon. Friend to contrast that practice with what is mere guesswork.
Mr. Straw: Let me try again. On any analysis, there is no parallel between this power and the sus law. The sus
law made it an offence to be a suspected person loitering with intent. A person did not have to be searched for anything; he just had to be there. If the police suspected somebody, a well-known old lag for example, or one who looked dodgy, one had only to do two things, such as brushing against a car door, that in the police officer's view aroused a suspicion and then aroused the view that one was a suspicious person. Those were the two limbs of the offence. The police officer did not have to know necessarily about a person's previous convictions, but when the case went to court, those previous convictions could be brought up, just to bang home the point that the person was suspicious and was loitering with intent. The result was that the person would be fined or imprisoned. I cannot begin to understand how that offence has any parallel with a situation in which for their own good reasons--
Mr. McNamara: For no good reason.
Mr. Straw: For good reasons that are related to the suppression of terrorism, the police decide to stop and search a number of members of the public and to conduct rub-down body searches. My hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull, North (Mr. McNamara) said, "No good reason." Of course we examined carefully the provision that a police officer in such limited circumstances, operating for a limited time, and within a designated area, does not have to show reasonable cause in order to stop someone and search them. I work on the basis, however, that the police do not search people randomly. They will have an operational reason--they might not have to justify that reason in court--to use the power. That is obvious, and that operational reason is related to the suppression of terrorism.
Mr. Bennett: My hon. Friend has been talking about the power's selective use and the Home Secretary has talked of its limited use. Will my hon. Friend confirm that, under the Bill as it stands, it would be possible to stop and search everyone coming across Westminster bridge, for instance, if Westminster were a designated area?
Mr. Straw: In legal theory, that is true. The police could stop and search everybody coming over the bridge, but there is an issue of proportion and practicality. Police resources are not unlimited. They have plenty of other things to do.
I return to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull, North. One has to work on the basis that the police are making their judgments about how best to deploy their resources in order, in this case, to suppress terrorism. They will not randomly scatter their resources, and will make their own judgments about where they think searches are best held.
A number of my hon. Friends wish to speak, so I shall deal rapidly with some of the other points that made us believe that the powers were justified and proportionate. First, the Secretary of State explained that there are closer restrictions on the use of the power related to pedestrians than those relating to vehicle occupants. A senior police officer can activate the power for 48 hours only, before he must get the approval of the Secretary of State. Secondly--this applies to the other power contained in the measure--there can be no prosecution without the
consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions. Thirdly--this is important in relation to monitoring--any person who has been the subject of one of those searches can gain within 12 months a written notice that he has been searched under the powers and not under, for example, the reasonable suspicion powers under other criminal justice measures. Fourthly--a matter to which the House's attention has not been drawn--there is an important limit on the physical extent of the searches that can be made. The Bill states:
Mr. Harry Barnes (North-East Derbyshire):
There are four women Members in the House. How would the measure apply to them in connection with the wearing of jackets?
Mr. Straw:
As I read the Bill, somebody wearing an outer jacket--
Mr. Barnes:
How would the measure apply to the four hon. Ladies in the Chamber?
Mr. Straw:
I am sorry, but I am not going to speculate on what the four hon. Ladies are wearing underneath their jackets. I must decline my hon. Friend's invitation. But if he is asking whether it would be reasonable for a police officer to require someone to remove their jacket if they were wearing nothing underneath it, the answer I think would be no. That would mean that the search had become an intimate body search and would have to be dealt with under separate powers.
Mr. Barnes:
It is a serious point. The legislation may be drafted in such a way that it is quite appropriate for men, but it must also apply to women. We can see that the hon. Ladies in the House are not wearing coats that could be removed by an officer under these powers, but are wearing different forms of dress. Would those count as jackets or not? How much clothing can be removed from a woman in those circumstances?
If a woman were wearing a jacket with nothing underneath it, she could justifiably claim that it is unreasonable to expect her to remove that jacket.
"Nothing in this section authorises a constable to require a person to remove any of his clothing in public other than any headgear, footwear, outer coat, jacket or gloves."
"Nothing in this section authorises a constable to require a person to remove any of his clothing in public other than any headgear, footwear, outer coat, jacket or gloves."
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