Supplementary memorandum submitted by
the Law Society
We are writing to you in the light of the announcement
that the Committee will be considering the implications of the
Rose Report dealing with surveillance issues at HM Woodhill prison
as part of your Surveillance Society Inquiry.
The Government inquiry by Sir Christopher Rose
will deal with the issue of the bugging of MPs. As you know, since
the announcement of this inquiry there have been allegations of
systematic bugging of solicitors and their clients at Woodhill.
These latter allegations would appear to be outside the terms
of reference of Sir Christopher's inquiry as announced by the
Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, the Rt. Hon
Jack Straw MP, in the House on 4 February. They are, in our view,
equally serious.
The President of the Law Society, Andrew Holroyd,
has now written to Jack Straw (with copies to the Home Secretary
and the Attorney General) to explain that if these allegations
prove to be true the practice is completely unacceptable and an
affront to the rule of law. We have asked for assurance that such
monitoring has not taken place or that if it has, it has now ceased.
Should it have occurred, we have asked for information about its
prevalence.
We have also raised a wider issue that we believe
will be of concern to the Committee in its inquiry into the Surveillance
Society—the unsatisfactory nature of the current legislative
framework. Our concern is not only the absence of explicit statutory
safeguards for legal professional privilege under the Regulation
of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 but the overall complexity of
the Act and its interaction with other legislation, including
the Anti-Terrorism Crime and Security Act 2001. This latter point
was the subject of our Memorandum of Evidence to the Privy Council
in 2003. As well as enlarging the scope for deliberate abuse it
may well be that such complexity creates operational difficulties
and could lead to genuine but serious mistakes. The consequences
of deliberate abuse or serious mistake can be severe. In 2005
for example, the Court of Appeal overturned a conviction for murder
on the grounds that bugging privileged conversations between a
solicitor and their client undermined the rule of law.
Our view is that a confused and complex legislative
framework for surveillance, along with equally complex and overlapping
oversight arrangements, are significant and dangerous components
of a Surveillance Society. Clear laws and the right to unmonitored
and privileged legal advice are fundamental to any free society.
20 February 2008
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