Examination of Witness (Questions 900-921)
Professor Janice Morphet
18 JUNE 2008
Q900 Lord Rowlands: This is very
much in the air or is very much being promoted as a concept, the
idea of using these databases to try and, as it were, forecast
almost people's behaviour. If this goes on from your experience,
what sort of safeguards should be built into it?
Professor Morphet: I think it rather
depends on the purpose of its use. If you are looking at people
at risk, by which I mean that certain families ... I am thinking
of the case of one particular council in the Midlands that identified
that certain families had a cluster of problems when they looked
at issues, and compared some information across agencies. These
families were clustered on an estate, and there were high levels
of truancy, crime, debt, poor health and so on. They had at least
some triggers to look at that and when they did, they found there
was quite a strong clustering, and they have been in and targeted
that area for a range of initiatives to improve the situation.
From that point of view, it is justified, but I do not think you
are talking about that. I think what you are talking about is
profiling to identify people and pull them out. I think that is
a much more difficult approach, unless you have at least two or
three good indicators. For fraud I think it is more justified
perhaps than anything else.
Q901 Lord Peston: Could you clarify
something in your answers to Lord Lyell to some extent to me?
Is it an absolute rule that, if data about an individual is to
be shared, that individual is always told?
Professor Morphet: There are circumstances
when you can share data without telling individuals, and that
is when you have concerns about fraud. That has been the case
for some time; that is not new. If you have established that somebody
has been in a fraud situation, you can then search to see their
other transactions with you to see if those have been fraudulent,
and already local authorities are enabled to share that information
with surrounding local authorities and indeed are asked about
it.
Q902 Lord Peston: Is fraud the only
example?
Professor Morphet: I think where a child
or an individual is in danger is the other key area where you
do not necessarily have to ask.
Q903 Lord Peston: The fact is, is
it not, particularly if we have these multi-agency partnerships
which Lord Lyell asked you about that I may not apply for a benefit
or something that I am perfectly entitled to simply on the grounds
that I do not want you to tell anybody else about it? Then what
you will have done as a matter of social policy is stopped me
having a benefit to which I am entitled because I also believe
in my individual privacy. Is that not a very bad thing, no matter
what you argue the positive side is? I as an individual am entitled
to protection as an individual. Why is that not overwhelming?
Take an example: I cannot walk even a yard without being in pain,
therefore I have a blue badge; I meet every one of the criteria,
but I might take a very dim view if anybody else was told that
that was my condition. Equally, I might take a very dim view,
since I cannot walk without pain, if I could not have a blue badge.
I think my rights here are absolute. I would find it hard to put
up a philosophical case even to do with fraud where you should
be able to override my rights.
Professor Morphet: I think the kind of
instance you cite, travelling on from the points I made, I do
not think those points are connected. If you do not wish to apply
for benefit or you do want do not want any information shared
about any benefit information you have provided, financial data
is not shared unless you explicitly agree to that. However, by
the same token, if you look at fraud, Trading Standards will be
another area where people behave fraudulently and you could share
information between Trading Standards authorities, but I think
you are looking at a proportionate risk there because with risk
to the public, whether it is the public purse or the public as
an individual, that is the line that is taken. That is not new
legislation; that legislation has been in existence for many years
to enable that to occur.
Q904 Lord Peston: The point I am
trying to get over to you is that part of our inquiry is not whether
it exists but whether it is getting worse, and the more I listen
to our evidence, it seems to me it is getting a lot worse, that
people are putting data together on broad grounds, which I can
see the efficiency grounds for, yet I remain slightly unconvinced
that the right to things like privacy in all this should not be
overwhelming.
Professor Morphet: I do not think I would
share that view. I think information can be brought together but
under the very special circumstances that I have described. The
other side is, say, for example, you are in receipt of Attendance
Allowance, or you have applied for a free school meal, the question
that is properly asked, if your financial circumstances are such
that you have just become eligible for a free school meal, the
approach would be "Would you like us to see based on your
circumstances whether, firstly, you might be eligible for any
other benefit?" but even then, at that point it can be the
individual's responsibility to make those applications. Some authorities
would say "Would you like us to prepare the forms for you
based on the information and then you can sign them?" but
I think at each stage there is a break point so the citizen is
in charge of that. The only circumstances where really you would
be looking at information is where there is a very considerable
risk either around money or about people, so I do not think that
has changed.
Q905 Lord Morris of Aberavon: Could
I ask how Lord Peston's privacy is enshrined if he does not want
information about his blue badge to be circulated in case he may
be claiming Housing Benefit as well? Is it in a code of practice?
Professor Morphet: Any member of staff
at a local authority who is entrusted with taking that information
is covered by the same verification framework that I was mentioning
before, and the processes for taking that information, ensuring
its quality, that it is actually correct, how it is used and how
it is stored, is all subject to the same audit process that I
described earlier.
Q906 Lord Morris of Aberavon: What
is the audit process enshrined in?
Professor Morphet: It is enshrined in
the DWP's verification framework and the audit process run by
the Audit Commission.
Q907 Baroness Quin: I think my question
has been largely eaten up, but there were a couple of things I
would like to pick up on. In your answer to Lord Peston just a
minute ago, would I be right in saying that actually the only
occasions where data is shared without the subject's permission
is when some criminal activity is suspected. Is that right?
Professor Morphet: Or where there is
a suspected risk to, say, a child.
Q908 Baroness Quin: That would also
probably be, if there was a risk involved, something that was
against the law.
Professor Morphet: Yes.
Q909 Baroness Quin: Secondly, in
the earlier answer you gave to our Chairman you said that you
felt that the culture was against sharing of information between
agencies. Am I right in thinking that, despite the Government's
attempts over recent years to promote crime and disorder partnerships
and inter-agency working, with laudable aims, actually, that has
not been enough to overcome the cultural barrier to sharing of
information?
Professor Morphet: That would be correct
in my view. If you think about each government department that
has responsibility appropriate to this area, they provide advice
on information sharing directly to their own staff, so if you
think about advice in terms of working with children, then DCSF
will have advice, but I think from a local authority's point of
view, it would be more helpful if that advice were enshrined in
the code for the whole organisation. At the moment the advice,
say, about children speaks from one government department, one
set of officers or officials, so although if you look at the Information
Commissioner's advice on a sharing code and you look at the advice
from the DCSF, you probably would not see much difference if you
were looking at a general level. For those who do not want to
share information, they will pull out any nuance or phrase to
argue sometimes, I am sad to say, that information cannot be shared.
So I think there is quite a long way to go in changing the culture,
as Lord Laming frequently points out. I do not think we have moved
that far actually.
Q910 Lord Smith of Clifton: Professor
Morphet, if you could now turn more to aspects of planning, on
which you are an expert as well, has the planning profession formed
a view that CCTV can play a positive role in the planning and
design process for urban environments? Is there a search for less
obtrusive ways of achieving safe and orderly public places?
Professor Morphet: I do not think the
planning profession has ever particularly promoted CCTV. It has
come from a range of sources, so obviously the public through
their crime and disorder reduction partnerships and also colleagues
in regeneration who want a secure environment for leisure or for
retail environments in what might have been difficult town centres.
Clearly, what we know is that CCTV does not seem to act as much
of a deterrent, although it does help in catching perpetrators.
From that point of view, planning has not particularly promoted
CCTV. Planning has promoted good practice in safe and secure design.
For example, I sit on the Olympic town planning committee and
all the planning applications—not just because it is the
Olympics; it would be the case elsewhere—go forward to the
police for consideration on those issues, to make sure that a
secure environment is being created. We try to ensure that the
design is there at the outset, and we also ask specialists in
particular cases to double-check that. I do not think the planning
profession has been particularly promotive of that but it would
be promotive of safe design.
Q911 Lord Smith of Clifton: It has
learned from the walkways on various council estates and so on
as a result of this.
Professor Morphet: Indeed, that is right.
Q912 Lord Smith of Clifton: The Olympic
committee will not require you to run hell for leather in spiked
shoes to avoid being mugged! You make this point that the extensive
use of CCTV in public places is justified, even though there is
little evidence of its effectiveness in crime reduction and public
order. It seems to be a sort of comfort blanket.
Professor Morphet: I am sorry. I do not
think I said it was justified. I said if you are asking where
the push has come from, and yes, I think for some people it is
seen as a comfort blanket, and they do feel more secure if they
believe that if anything happens to them, the perpetrator could
be caught, but I do not think anyone now particularly believes
that CCTV acts as a deterrent.
Q913 Lord Rowlands: When we went
to Canada and the United States, our interlocutors were bemused
by the way in which in Britain CCTV cameras have been spawned
in such numbers. They could not believe they would have got away
with it in Canadian or American society. Do you not think there
is a need for a tighter process than this? Local authorities just
do them off their own bat, do they not? They get a request or
a demand, and up they go. We have had evidence saying the Information
Commissioner should be involved. What do you think? You said planners
are not involved. Do you think somebody should be more involved
in this process?
Professor Morphet: Every time you place
a camera there is an expectation that someone is looking at what
is happening, and there is a cost involved, and I think it would
be worthwhile to have a more strategic approach at, say, local
authority level to how they are used and why, and the costs of
managing them. Clearly, there may be cases where the police may
have particular views in some circumstances about this, but I
think it would be more worthwhile to have a more integrated approach
to thinking about on-street safety, which would include design,
CCTV, and the presence of police and other officials. I would
certainly be in favour of local authority on-street inspectors
who were looking at, say, parking or other enforcement activities
on the street.
Q914 Lord Rowlands: Street lighting,
for example, might be a better bet.
Professor Morphet: Indeed. I would be
in favour of them perhaps being in uniform so that they demonstrated
some kind of public presence for the local authority, and so that
they would be ambassadors and people would feel more secure when
they realised how many publicly paid employees there are on the
streets. That could be done through a uniform or wearing a tabard
for a street cleaner or an inspector. So there are ways in which
that could be done which would give people more security. When
I worked in Rutland, we had the highest fear of crime of any local
authority area in the country as measured by Mori, but we also
had the lowest incidence of crime. We did not have much CCTV either.
Q915 Lord Rowlands: I do not imagine
Rutland as being a centre of crime.
Professor Morphet: Well, it was not.
I think if people have no experience at all, their fear levels
are much greater.
Q916 Lord Lyell of Markyate: A search
for less obtrusive ways of achieving safe and orderly public places:
you made the point about public officials wearing tabards. That
seems very sensible. Many of us were brought up on a book called
The Territorial Imperative and that spawned hundreds of
closes with curtains twitching, and that is very effective, but
can you give us a third example of good public space design?
Professor Morphet: If we are trying to
encourage more people to walk and cycle to counter obesity and
depression, clearly, footpaths and the way in which planting is
used by the side of footpaths is very important, and the height
of planting, because women feel unsafe walking by high planting,
feeling that somebody could be lurking behind bushes and so on.
That is just a question of management and maintenance and thinking
about that. There is also an issue that if you can offset some
of the planting away from the edge of the footpath, but as we
are trying to promote this kind of activity, having safe design
for anything for pedestrians or cyclists is important, and perhaps
we have not thought about that enough.
Q917 Baroness Quin: In your experience,
have local authorities ever reviewed the use of CCTV cameras in
their areas and as a result removed or dismantled them?
Professor Morphet: I cannot give you
any direct experience of that, no. I think it is all in the other
direction. I will not say there are no authorities who have done
that but none spring to mind, I am afraid.
Q918 Lord Morris of Aberavon: Professor,
the use by local authorities of covert, targeted surveillance
arises obviously from the Act, to detect crime or to prevent disorder.
I want to ask you in particular about the decisions of senior
local government officials and about the proportionality of the
use of their powers. Where should the line be drawn? We have heard
examples of the use of such machinery for the allocation of schools,
which cannot in any event, in my view, be a question of proportionality.
It is clearly outside the intention of the Act. Dustbins, whether
they are over-full perhaps what they contain, is pushing it a
bit in any event. What sort of training or guidance do local authorities
officials have in taking decisions regarding covert, targeted
surveillance?
Professor Morphet: There are some traditional
areas where this has been used. Trading Standards, for example,
would be a longstanding example of where officials are trained,
for example, looking at market stalls, looking at dumping, looking
at the way in which items are made or distributed, car repairs,
and that kind of thing. I can think of covert operations, sending
children into off-licences to buy alcohol or cigarettes. Some
authorities do run covert operations of that kind. Those are more
longstanding and I think have public acceptance. The ones that
you have described in terms of schools and refuse are much more
difficult to deal with. I do not think it needs covert surveillance.
Having once been in charge of refuse collection, if I thought
that we had a particular problem in a street or with a household,
I would send an inspector along with the refuse collection team.
I do not think I would make that person covert. I would send them
along each week or during the week as part of the normal inspection,
because you have people out all the time. I do not think that
has to be covert. If I have my staff in uniform, people can see
them walking down the street, but I do think inspection is important
if you have a persistent problem, because some persistent offenders
in these areas can cause a lot of problems for their neighbours,
and the authority gets the complaints, and people feel the authority
is not doing its job if it is not dealing with that offender.
Thinking about schools, I think this is a very emotive issue in
communities. I do not think I myself would go down that line,
although I can understand how exasperated some of my colleagues
may feel about the extent people will go to to get their child
into a particular school. What I would be doing is saying "What
is wrong with the other schools?" and in terms of public
policy, should we be improving the quality of all schools so that
parents do not feel they just have to get their child into a particular
school because it has the best key stage two results or whatever.
So I would be looking at improving the rest, but what we have
to recognise is that at local level this is the kind of issue
that will absolutely fill the chief executive's postbag and that
of the local members. I am not defending it because I think I
would try other things but, nevertheless, I think locally the
pressure in the local press and on councillors can be extraordinarily
high over this kind of issue.
Q919 Lord Morris of Aberavon: I understand
what you say when you say "I think I would try other things."
I know as a former constituency MP for 40 years or more how emotive
these matters can be so I am not quite innocent in this matter.
Should the Act be used at all, is the point I made, for this purpose?
An Act introduced to prevent or detect crime used for minor infractions,
or maybe not infractions at all, of sending children to the wrong
school, emotive or not, or lifting the dustbins or whatever, is
not within the power of the Act at all. It is a nonsense.
Professor Morphet: As I say, I would
be of the same view as you. I would be looking at proportionality
there.
Q920 Lord Morris of Aberavon: I am
sorry. It is not an issue of proportionality; it is not within
the sphere of the Act.
Professor Morphet: I do not know the
Act inside out to give an opinion on that but I generally support
the line that you are taking.
Q921 Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank:
This is an easy one to finish, arising from one of your many roles
in the 2012 Olympics, and maybe this is a rhetorical question:
do you expect that the Games will make widespread use of advanced
surveillance technologies for the purposes of crowd control, prevention
of terrorism and law enforcement? Have there been any discussions
with the Information Commissioner, and do you think what is happening
at Beijing might be the model of what you would like to have in
2012?
Professor Morphet: I should say first
of all I can only speak for the town planning part of the Olympic
effort, because I do not sit on the main committee. We have certainly
looked at crowd modelling and what would happen, clearly the design
of escape routes and so on. Also, we are controlling a perimeter
fence for the duration of the Games as part of the security process.
We have also looked at the access into the site through railway
lines and so on as part of the planning process but I am afraid
to say I do not have any other knowledge around the use of technology
in terms of who is going to buy tickets and how that will operate.
We have certainly looked at security within the site as of part
of the planning consideration.
Chairman: Professor Morphet, can I thank you
very much for the evidence you have given. Thank you very much
indeed.
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