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Lord Knights: My Lords, it is with some diffidence that I rise to speak in this somewhat august company, but I feel that I ought to add one or two words on the implications, as I see them, of this debate on policing. In so far as the noble Lord, Lord Callaghan, and others were concerned about the number of occasions on which these techniques are used, I share their surprise. I had no idea whatever that this number was in fact taking
place. Indeed, I hope that at some point during the debate the Minister may be able to tell us whether there is any breakdown of the figure of 1,200 or 2,000 or whatever it is, indicating exactly what is taking place. Are we talking about 1,200 or 2,000 dwellings, or are we talking about 50 dwellings and 1,150 motor cars that have had a bug placed on them so that they can be traced? We need to be more precise in terms of what we are actually dealing with.The reason for the increase, if there is one, comes much more from the development of modern techniques rather than that the police have sought to use them more. In the past 10 years or so the technology has been available. It certainly did not exist previously. If it is of any comfort to the noble Lords, Lord Callaghan and Lord Carr, to the best of my knowledge, those techniques were not used, at least in one big police force area before 1985. I am afraid that I am not in a position to speak about what has happened since 1985.
Bearing in mind the complete lack of any control over the use by commercial spies, private detective agencies or investigative journalists of the systems and devices which are at the heart of this debate, it may seem somewhat anomalous that the one organisation over whose activities in this field there is already a large measure of control--not that one would perhaps think so from the debate this afternoon--should now be at risk of having its operational abilities to counter organised crime and serious crime restricted by further bureaucratic controls, more particularly when less than 12 months ago the security services were given exactly similar powers for use when dealing with criminal activities as this Bill originally proposed for the police.
The controls currently existing include, I suggest, not only the Home Office guidelines of 1984, which are persuasive, but also the accountability of chief constables for their operational activities to the Home Secretary and indeed to their police authority, with removal from office as an ultimate sanction if they should act unreasonably in whatever field. Added to that, there is the surveillance of the Police Complaints Authority and the discipline code which embraces all officers from chief constable to constable. Also, and perhaps more important, there is the examination of their activities in this field by the courts when deciding whether or not it is fair that the product of those activities should be admitted in evidence. The case of Kahn decided in this House in July last year is a good example of that.
It seems to me that to move the decision whether or not to utilise intrusive surveillance from the chief constable to the commissioner or to a circuit judge would inevitably also remove that element. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, referred to it earlier. The effect would be to move the operational decision from the chief constable to the judge or the commissioner.
I submit that the knowledge that all those requirements exist and that the decision to deploy such techniques may, in the final analysis, have to be defended and justified to a court--maybe even to your Lordships' House--are powerful influences playing on a chief constable when he is considering what action he
should or should not authorise. However, although no evidence of past abuse of those techniques has been produced during the past weeks and months when this matter has been debated, it has been exposed to so much public examination that I feel that there should be added some check to the present position. During that period or indeed earlier, no one has sought to keep those techniques under wraps. Indeed, they have been clearly exposed, if not during the past few months certainly during the past few weeks.It is also clearly necessary to increase the level of supervision to an extent which is commensurate with the continued ability of the police to operate efficiently in this dangerous, rapidly changing and moving area of police investigative work. Above all, that means that no obstacle should be placed in their way so as to cause delay as and when windows of opportunity arise for those techniques to be usefully and properly deployed.
Another factor which should not be overlooked is the extent to which a chief constable can be briefed on a developing situation, perhaps long before the decision to use intensive techniques falls to be taken. One cannot envisage the commissioner or a circuit judge having that advantage. It is a considerable advantage because it means that when the time comes to take the decision it can be taken very quickly. I believe seriously that the decisions in these matters must continue to rest fairly and squarely with the chief constable of the police whose task it is to deal with crime in all its aspects.
The question of delay is, I believe, at the heart of what will be decided one way or the other. Personally, I would not object and indeed would support the introduction of a judicial element into the decision, if I could be satisfied that alternative arrangements exist to enable decisions to be taken urgently in urgent cases. There are occasions when it is urgent. It can be a matter of only hours between the information becoming available and the opportunity being lost. There have been cases in kidnapping, for example, where decisions have had to be taken within a matter of 10 or 12 hours which, if not taken, might have led to loss of life of the kidnapped person. I do not wish to over-dramatise but merely to illustrate the fact that urgency and quickness of movement is of the essence.
For all those reasons I would, at this stage, support the Government's amendments rather than those of the Opposition. But I could be persuaded to change my mind, if the business of urgency could indeed be dealt with.
6.15 p.m.
Lord Spens: My Lords, I thank the Minister for sitting down again with such courtesy. I shall be very brief and put forward a point of view which has not been heard so far in this debate; namely, that of the intruded upon individual.
As noble Lords will know, during the Guinness affair there was considerable surveillance of this type. A Home Office warrant was issued with instructions to intercept 384 telephones. Quite why it was needed to intercept so many telephones has never been fully
understood. Quite why colleagues should have their telephone numbers on the list is perhaps a little understandable. Quite why my gamekeepers should have their telephone numbers on the list has never been fully understood.During the course of a nine-month period, my house was burgled, my office was burgled three times and my London flat was burgled. None of them has ever been burgled before nor since. From the house were taken, we think, papers. From the office, papers were copied, I believe, and from my London flat were taken photographs, which were handed to a London newspaper the day after I was arrested, in order presumably to blacken my name. When we went more deeply into those interferences, we discovered that our offices were not being bugged by the police as such but that one of my secretaries was being paid to hand over information.
Bugging, in those days, was an analogue system with mechanical arms and it was done on a key-word system, which meant that one had to say "Guinness" or "Saunders" or something else to trigger a huge squawk on the telephone. Everyone went into it, because they so enjoyed it but it cannot have been much fun to those who were listening. My children managed to discover 14 such key words.
I went to a colleague's house. He had a telephone van at the bottom of his drive for eight months. I suggested to him that we should go to our local pub and see if those people turned up for a drink, which they duly did being sensible yeomen. We got into talk with them and they apologised for what they were doing but said that orders were orders. They said that the only information that they had had of any consequence was the winner of the Grand National.
Authorisation is badly needed. We discovered--it was certainly to my satisfaction--that not only were the police doing this but also a department of the Home Office, under the direct supervision of a deputy secretary, which ran a team of denials that it paid, presumably in cash, to do its burglary. We have never been able fully to establish the member of the committee who ran this team, but we know some of the names. If in future those actions have to be authorised or investigated, extreme good will come from what has been an absurd abuse of the system for some time.
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, we have listened carefully to the arguments which have been advanced. I am conscious that there are some misunderstandings about what is proposed in the Bill, and clearly differences of view as to how serious crime is pursued in this country. It may therefore be helpful if I set out our proposals and the reasons underlying them.
There is much common ground that the threat to this country from serious and organised crime must be dealt with effectively and that the police and Customs must have authority to mount intrusive surveillance operations against those involved in crime. They have been carrying out these operations successfully and with a good deal of restraint for many years. The police are concerned about the invasion of a person's privacy and therefore do not take decisions to act in this way lightly.
I was somewhat surprised at the confession, if I can call it that, of the noble Lord, Lord Callaghan. I understood how his memory does not remind him today of what happened when he was in the Home Office and was Home Secretary, or indeed the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, my noble friend Lord Carr and others. But there were submissions to the department in those days about these activities. Indeed, when the noble Lord, Lord Callaghan, was Prime Minister there were submissions--which I have not seen because I am not privy to them--to the noble Lord, and the noble Lord, Lord Merlyn-Rees, who was the Home Secretary of the day. There was certainly knowledge that circulars were going out in the name of the police to put guidelines in place to ensure that those activities were carried out properly. Those guidelines were strengthened in the early 1980s. It is the police who have pressed Government over some years now to put these activities on a statutory basis.
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