Lord Naseby had the second oral question in the House of Lords this afternoon.  His question was:

“To ask Her Majesty’s Government how they ensure that requests arising from the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 are proportionate.”

Helpfully he had already told us on ePolitix.com what he was getting at.  The trouble was that he was blurring the issues and muddling a whole number of topics.  The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act – for the first time in many areas – placed a regulatory framework around all of the surveillance and investigatory techniques that can be used by the different public bodies, provided an external scrutiny process on how public bodies used the techniques and a means of pursuing complaints.

The answer from Admiral Lord Alan West and the ensuing exchanges (including my own modest intervention) is below:

“The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord West of Spithead): My Lords, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 provides a number of safeguards. Proportionality is explained in statutory guidance in the form of codes of practice and is subject to inspection by independent commissioners whose annual reports to the Prime Minister are laid before Parliament. In addition, anyone who believes that they have been subject to any unlawful action under RIPA may complain to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal.

Lord Naseby: My Lords, how can more than 500,000 such requests be proportionate? One of them was the keeping of petrol without a licence. Secondly, is it really proportionate for the Government to announce on 9 November that the provisions are to be extended to every single e-mail, telephone call, text or website posting? If the threat is so great to require that, surely it should be done only with legal sanction and not just by some council official, senior policeman or senior government manager?

Lord West of Spithead: My Lords, there are a number of issues there that need to be unpacked. It is important to note that RIPA is not anti-terrorist legislation: it regulates covert techniques. Before the 2000 Act, none of these things was regulated at all and no check was kept on how local councils might have carried out intrusive investigations that now, post RIPA, they are not allowed to do at all. To be absolutely clear, the Government accept that minor offences such as dog fouling or littering were never intended to be subject to these techniques, and RIPA was not what put them in place. That is using powers incorrectly and that is why we have now had a long period of consultation through the summer looking at these issues and will come out with a number of proposals in January that I hope will make this even clearer than it is at the moment.

Baroness Hamwee: My Lords, does the Minister agree that some of the local issues for which RIPA has been used, such as rogue traders selling knives to children, are serious matters and that it is right that local authorities should use the powers available to crack down on them? Does he also agree that what is really important is that the orders are made at a sufficiently senior level; that there is a framework within which the powers are used; and that they are used accountably and transparently?

Lord West of Spithead: My Lords, the noble Baroness is absolutely right. Following our consultation we will certainly raise the level of authorisation. We will also make sure that elected councillors are involved, so that they are privy and party to all of this. We will put this in statutory instruments in January.

Baroness Neville-Jones: My Lords, can the Minister be specific on this point: following the consultation that the Government are conducting, will local authorities still be able to use covert investigation techniques?

Lord West of Spithead: My Lords, yes, they will be able to use them, as they have always been able to use them. There are restrictions because of RIPA. Before the Act local authorities were not so restricted. For example, in communications data, because of RIPA, they are not allowed to use traffic data because that is the most intrusive. They are not allowed to use intrusive surveillance. However, there are a number of powers that they have always been able to use, and they use them. Some of these are rather important.

I have many examples but a good one is that of North Yorkshire council’s trading standards people. They prosecuted three roofers who had ripped off 11 elderly victims, two of whom had lost their entire life’s savings. It was quite appropriate that there should have been some form of covert investigation of that. It came out with a very good result. Those people ended up in prison, one of them for six years, one for five and one for three. It is appropriate that that should be done. Equally, it is totally inappropriate that a council should use this for matters that are not proportionate. That is what the consultation has come out with and that is what we are now trying to make even more certain. It would be wrong to use these powers over matters such as dog fouling, littering and so on. It is not proportionate.

Lord Harris of Haringey: My Lords, given that there was no oversight of the use of investigatory powers by local government until RIPA in 2000 and that there is now a complaints system and scrutiny of what happens, is it not the case that it is this Government who have protected citizens from improper intrusion by local authorities into their lives and are now increasing the level of protection by the new regulations which are being consulted on?

Lord West of Spithead: My Lords, my noble friend is absolutely right. I have to admit that I had not realised that, until 2000, none of these things was regulated at all. It is very interesting that the Chief Surveillance Commissioner said in his report for 2008–09:

“I am satisfied in general that the use made”—

of RIPA—

“is proper and of a good standard. This applies to all types of public authority. Error is usually due”—

and this is talking about the minor things—

“to inexperience resulting from lack of use. The lack of use is because most public authorities use the power as the last resort. This is what the law requires”.

Baroness Manningham-Buller: Would the Minister mind correcting the point that there was no authorisation for these methods before RIPA? There was not for local authorities but, of course, the Interception of Communications Act 1985 and the Intelligence Services Act 1994 authorised the most intrusive methods. Secondly, would the Minister agree that the way to approach this sensitive and difficult issue is to regard the powers authorised by RIPA as a hierarchy; that the most intrusive powers should be used only in the most serious cases, when all other approaches to investigation have failed; and that the least intrusive should also be used infrequently and with great care and caution? There should be a hierarchy of both authorisation and intrusion.

Lord West of Spithead: My Lords, the noble Baroness touches on two points. The first is to do with interception. Interception was different and that is why I did not specifically mention communications data. Interception was covered by a specific Act before 2000. Of course, that is still not allowed to be used by local authorities. It is restricted to a small number of law enforcement and intelligence agencies. It is right that none of these powers should be used unless it is used proportionately. What they need to take into account is the severity of the offence and how useful these powers will be to the investigation. I gave a good example of where I thought it was proportionate to use them. However, we must not get this out of context. For example, the number of requests to use communications data of the type that local councils can use—they cannot use all of them—was only 0.3 per cent of all the demands for communications data. The bulk of them came from the intelligence agencies and the police. That is the way it should be, but that does not mean we should not do even better. That is why we have had the consultation and will bring in statutory instruments in January next year.”

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I have already commented about the accuracy (or lack of it to be more precise) of the autobiography produced by former Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair.  However, a review in the Observer by Andrew Anthony should hasten the remaining stocks of the book to the discount shelves.

Apparently, the book is “plodding and pompous”:

“Blair does not fit the traditional mould of a policeman. He sees himself as a bit of a Guardian-reading liberal and he studied English at Oxford. A pity, then, that he didn’t come up with a more dynamic title for his book than Policing Controversy. But it points to a prose style, by turns plodding and pompous, that defeats casual interest. The reader is required to care as much as the author, and the author, like anyone who feels they were unfairly dismissed, cares a great deal.”

According to the Observer, the writing is “prone to incoherence” and there is too much self-justification:

“Blair never reconciles these contradictions, but he does conclude with a spirited defence of police independence in the face of Tory plans to make constabulary chiefs answerable to elected mayors. He envisages a future in which wealthy communities become increasingly well policed, while the poor and powerless are neglected. “The security of the citizen,” he writes, “should not be a commodity.” It’s noticeable that when articulating a belief, Blair can be spare and precise, but when explaining an action, he is prone to incoherence. It’s a shame that he didn’t concentrate more on justice and less on self-justification.”

However, even the self-justification is unconvincing in the sections dealing with the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes:

“The pall of suspicion stemming from that incident hung over Blair for the rest of his time as commissioner and almost certainly helped bring his term to a premature end. It wasn’t the errors resulting in Menezes’s death that undermined him so much as the belief that he played a part in trying to cover them up. In this memoir, Blair makes a detailed but not always convincing attempt to answer his critics. Essentially there are two charges against him, the first being that he denied and then delayed the Independent Police Complaints Commission access to the scene of the crime at Stockwell.

Blair maintains that this was necessary to prevent further lives from being placed at risk. It’s easy to make rational judgments in hindsight, but this seems dubious. Far more likely is that he didn’t want to upset his armed response teams with an investigation while the terrorists were still at large.

The second charge concerns when exactly Blair learnt that his officers had killed an innocent man.  He insists it was on 23 July, the day after the shooting, which would explain why he issued a press statement late on the 22nd specifying that it wasn’t clear whether the dead man was one of the failed suicide bombers. But several senior officers knew hours before he issued that statement that De Menezes was not one of the wanted men. So why didn’t Blair?

I think it’s probable that Blair didn’t know, yet that in itself is an indictment of his leadership. Surely the top man should have been warned as soon as it became apparent that the wrong man had been shot? Blair struggles to explain the procedural logic of why he wasn’t informed at the earliest opportunity, but in doing so he paints a picture of a divisive, top-heavy management structure steeped in intrigue and resentment.”

Oh dear …..

In his speech to the Association of Police Authorities Annual Conference in Nottingham, Chris Grayling MP,the Shadow Home Secretary, has given some more details about Conservative plans to abolish police authorities and replace them with elected police commissioners.  Predictably, the Evening Standard has got all hot and bothered about the idea that Mayor Boris Johnson will become the Police Commissioner for London, welcoming the principle but getting nervous about whether the London Assembly would really be up to the scrutiny role required.

So what would this mean in practice in the (unlikely) event that there is a Conservative Government after the next General Election?  Elsewhere, the Evening Standard concludes “not a lot”, as Mayor Boris Johnson is already Chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority and has demonstrated the size of his virility/his willingness to flex his muscles by persuading the former Commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, to resign and by keeping his hand on the tiller/setting the strategic direction for the Met.

(One big difference – although it is not spelt out – is that presumably the Mayor of London would take over responsibility for the City of London Police – and I wish the Conservative Party well in the negotiations that that will entail with the Corporation of London.)

My own view is that there is nothing wrong with the principle of having Chairs of Police Authorities directly elected – I would have welcomed the additional authority that direct election to the role would have given me during my four years as Chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority:  I would have been a (very) visible symbol of the accountability of the Met and would myself have been held accountable by the public for whether or not the performance of the Met improved (which of course it did during my stewardship).

However, I do not believe that it is sensible to combine the role of Police Authority Chair with that of Mayor.  The jobs are simply too big.  Mayor Boris Johnson, of course, gets round this by delegating the day-to-day responsiblities of being MPA Chair to his representative on Earth, Uber Vice Chair Deputy Mayor Kit Malthouse AM (the UVCDMKMAM).  There are two separate roles here and I believe that there would be a valuable creative tension between a Mayor and an MPA Chair, both directly elected.

Nor do I believe it is sensible to abolish the other 22 members of the MPA.  There are two main reasons for this.  First, despite being directly-elected, there still need to be some checks and balances on what an elected Commissioner or Chair of a Police Authority can do.  The concerns expressed by Sir Hugh Orde, the President of the Association of Chief Police Officers, about the dangers of politicising the police service are valid.  Such concerns would be lessened if a directly-elected Police Authority Chair had to exercise their powers through an Authority with a mix of members from different political parties and with a leavening of individuals who are not political representatives.

The second reason is the scale of the police service, especially in London.  Effective strategic direction, scrutiny and accountability cannot be managed by a single individual.  You need to have other members who can take an interest in and scrutinise what is happening in each of the Borough command units and each of the other operational and support units within the force.

In practice, I do not believe that this is a role that could be carried out by the London Assembly.  The job of Assembly Member is much broader than just being about policing and many of them would not have either the time or the inclination to devote to the role of substituting for the MPA (I know that many of those AMs who currently sit on the MPA feel they are not able to devote the time and energy they would otherwise wish to their MPA responsibilities because of the other pressures on their time).  It is also not clear what the future of the Assembly would be under any future Conservative Government – Tory policy has been to abolish it and replace it with a Committee of Borough Leaders (who, of course, would have even less time available to fulfil an MPA role and would also be much less likely to take a strategic pan-London view of policing issues).

So how would I advise Chris Grayling (and yes, that is a flotilla of pink pigs you can see flying across the sky) to structure police accountability in London?  First, a directly-elected MPA Chair, separate from but elected on the same day as the Mayor of London  (this could be Kit Malthouse’s big moment, if he doesn’t become an MP first).  Second, retain the MPA with a mixed membership of elected members (drawn from both the London Assembly and the London Boroughs with a Party balance proportional to the votes received by each of the major Parties across London) and independent members (appointed after public advertisement on merit).  And third, greater clarity on the role and powers of all concerned.

Human Rights Watch has published a report, Cruel Britannia, which alleges the complicity of “UK officials” in the torture and mistreatment of terrorist suspects in Pakistan.
At today’s meeting of the Metropolitan Police Authority I asked the Commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson, whether he could give an assurance that none of the British officials described in the Human Rights Watch report could have been Metropolitan Police officers (most comments have focused on MI6 officers, but there also will have been Metropolitan Police officers in Pakistan at various times). He undertook to check that his understanding was correct and that he could give such an assurance.

The BBC has picked up on yesterday’s mini-row about the curse of “Reply All”.  What started the problem was an email from Mark Pritchard MP asking, what he no doubt thought was an innocuous question, about who might be interested in joining a new All-Party Group on Cyber-Security.  He had sent it to all MPs and Peers on the Parliamentary email system.  This in itself is not uncommon.

Derek Wyatt MP then responded to say – I paraphrase – that, as one of the handful of Parliamentarians interested in and knowledgeable about cyber issues, he  hadn’t known that Mark Pritchard was also concerned about such matters, that there were a number of other All-Party Groups in existence that looked at cyber questions and, given the extraordinary number of All-Party Groups in general, was an additional one really necessary.  Perhaps in an effort to stifle the fledgling prior to birth he pressed the “Reply All” button and sent his comment to all MPs and Peers.

This then prompted, first, a cascade of MPs and Peers agreeing with him that there were far too many All-Party Groups (all sent using “ReplyAll”) and, second, a torrent of MPs and Peers complaining about the excessive use of the “Reply All” button (some of them were quite intemperate in tone, typed in capitals and used red ink) but also – no doubt to emphasise how irritating it was – sent “Reply All”.

There are, of course, two issues here.

The first is why for so many people is it their default reaction when responding to something to tell an entire mailing list that unfortunately they cannot attend a particular meeting or whatever it might be.  No doubt, it is assumed that their presence or otherwise is so crucial that the response of others will be determined by what they say.   This is sheer arrogance.  If they are that self-important, there are other outlets – they could take up blogging, for example.

Parliamentarians are not, in fact, the worst offenders.  I find members of the London Assembly and their staff are even more profligate with the “Reply All” button.

The second issue is the extraordinary number of All-Party Groups these days.  If you want to count them, look here.  There are so many that it is often impossible for them to find a room, however small, in the Parliamentary Estate for a meeting.  Often there are so many competing Groups meeting simultaneously that most of them are lucky to get more than two or three Parliamentarians even to look in for a few minutes.

And just for the record I responded to Mark Pritchard saying this was a topic I was interested in and in which over the last few years I had been actively involved.  I didn’t press “Reply All” – my reply was just to him – but I also said I had some sympathy with the view that the issue could be pursued ender the umbrella of one of the existing groups.

I intervened in Lords Question Time today on the issue of terrorist websites.

This is my second contribution to Question Time in three days – I am beginning to fear that it may be habit forming …..

For those who are really interested, the full exchanges were as follows:

3.23 pm

Asked By Lord Naseby

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many websites have been closed under the Terrorism Act 2006.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord West of Spithead): My Lords, the police’s preferred route for removing potentially unlawful terrorist content is through informal contact with the internet service provider. They are happy with the impact of this approach to date. As a result, it has not yet been necessary for them to use the formal powers given under the Terrorism Act 2006 to close any websites.

Lord Naseby: My Lords, is it not extraordinary that—after an Act was passed following the 7/7 bombings, in response particularly to pressure from Prime Minister Blair; and in view of the emphasis that the current Prime Minister puts on terrorism—according to the Answer that the noble Lord has just given, we are still allowing these websites to exist and to be the lungs of publicity for the terrorists, modified only by the judgment of someone in the police force?

Lord West of Spithead: My Lords, my Answer did not say that we are allowing those things to happen; we have a whole raft of measures. We are removing websites on a voluntary basis with the ISPs. We are countering them by putting our own stuff on them. We are talking to local community activists, who put stuff on the websites. We are looking at how we can filter them. We have talked to all the various providers to ensure that we do that filtering, and we have looked at reducing access in areas of search engines and in things like Facebook. We are doing a huge raft of work. Indeed, I would be embarrassed to stand here, having been doing this for two years and pushing it, to find that we had not done that. We are out there in amongst it really trading blows toe-to-toe. We are doing that and we are actually getting somewhere on this. Now, that does not mean that we do not have to keep working—it is very difficult. As we know—and this is part of the Cyber Security Strategy—a lot of this is international. A lot of this is abroad—it is carried on by ISPs abroad. We have to deal with them internationally. However, I can assure this House that we are really working hard in this area. We will jolly well get there, and we will jolly well knock them for six finally.

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer: My Lords, can Minister say a little more about how his department co-operates with other countries which are hosting websites of this nature?

Lord West of Spithead: My Lords, the noble Baroness touches on something that is very difficult. We are in negotiation with a number of countries about this; as I said, the issue impinges on our whole Cyber Security Strategy. Cyberspace is global—that is one of the problems with it—and many of these actors are acting elsewhere. Finding out who has done something, finding out which server the information is on and where it has come from, is very difficult. It takes very detailed and hard work. I am glad to say that we have some of the best people in the world doing this work, but it is highly complicated.

We deal with those countries, negotiate with them and talk about these things. However, some countries are not willing to do this—it is quite difficult—which is when we have to confront the problem and approach it in other ways. But we are working with many countries and trying to get international agreements. We have managed to do that in terms of paedophilia and child pornography and we need to try to do the same in this area, but it is much more complicated. What is violent extremism and what it is allowable for someone to say involve difficult nuances.

Lord Swinfen: My Lords, are some of these websites a source of information in the battle against terrorism?

Lord West of Spithead: My Lords, I do not think that I want to talk about that.

Lord Harris of Haringey: My Lords, my noble friend indicated that it had not been necessary to use the powers under the Terrorism Act 2006 because of the levels of co-operation and work being done with internet service providers to block access to particular sites. Is that co-operation forthcoming from all the internet service providers operating in this country, or are some providers perhaps less co-operative?

Lord West of Spithead: My Lords, so far, the police have not found it necessary to use what they could use from the Act. That means that they have managed to achieve what they want to achieve. It would be wrong to say that everyone is as co-operative, because they are not. There is one area of weakness that I thought someone might ask me about, and that I am not happy with. It is that because police forces are operationally separate, they have probably not recorded formally as well as they should exactly when they have shut down a site. We are in negotiations about that. When we passed the Act in 2006, we laid down a requirement to make such records, but it has not really been done. The Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism is now talking in great detail to the Association of Chief Police Officers, and the requirement will be met. We need to make sure that records are properly kept because we need to have precise facts to work on. The successes of the police forces are not being registered, and that needs to happen.

Baroness Neville-Jones: My Lords, apropos of the Minister’s last remark, did he say how many sites have been recorded as having been shut down?

Lord West of Spithead: My Lords, I would be nervous of giving a figure because it would be meaningless as records have not been kept by all 51 police forces around the country. That is why we are doing this work now to ensure that records are formally kept. We are talking with ACPO about the need to get the precise figures. We need statistics and figures that are meaningful and can be accepted and used within this House.

The Earl of Erroll: My Lords, surely the terrorism websites should be closed down by the Serious and Organised Crime Agency, not by local police forces.

Lord West of Spithead: My Lords, we operate in this country by letting the local police carry on and take those particular actions. SOCA is very closely involved in some of these arenas, as is GCHQ and others, but the police take the action.

The Earl of Onslow: My Lords, can we have some advice on websites that instruct people on how to make bombs and are, in effect, sources of information rather than terrorist websites? It is unfortunate that people can just Google the question, “How can you blow everybody up?”.

Lord West of Spithead: My Lords, the noble Earl identifies a difficult area. If that is tied to things that are inciting people to take action, it is much more straightforward, but it is very difficult when it is just straight information. One of the reasons I am concerned about the whole area of CBRNE—chemical, biological, radiological and novel explosive-type stuff—is that the availability of such detailed information on the internet is quite worrying. A lot of that—for example, stuff to do with biological—we cannot take off because there is no reason why it should not be there. However, it is extremely worrying because, more than ever, there is access to things that are very dangerous.

Lord Pearson of Rannoch: My Lords, when we use the word terrorism in this context, are we mostly referring to violent Islamism, to the jihadists, or are other sects involved when we use that word, in which case how many and to what extent?

Lord West of Spithead: My Lords, the word terrorism applies to a whole spectrum of people. The greatest threat to our nation at the moment, without a doubt, is al-Qaeda or al-Qaeda-inspired terrorism, but there are a number of others. I would not wish to go through them all, but all of them are monitored and have action taken against them if they are breaking the law.

I have a confession to make.  At least once a day I read Iain Dale’s blog.  Sometimes I find it amusing and sometimes I find it interesting, particularly as a means of understanding the modern Conservative mindset.  Occasionally, of course, I read it as an antidote to low blood pressure.

Today, he had a good rant with “This Pseudo-Fascist Plan Must be Scrapped“.  This relates to the proposals on communications data and the need to preserve these for law enforcement purposes.

Reading the rant, I was surprised – not at its tone (Iain Dale is renowned for giving good rant), but at what I naively assumed was the factual trigger for the rant.  It sounded as though the Government was pressing ahead with legislation on this with a view to getting it passed this side of a General Election.  I was surprised for two reasons: first, that I had missed the announcement; and second, I had understood that this was not what was intended.

However, such was my faith in Iain Dale that I have only just got round to checking the facts.

And what did I find?  The entire rant was based on absolutely nothing.

The Government has NOT announced that it is pressing ahead with legislation.  All it has done is publish the results of its consultation exercise on the issue.  And sensible commentators (not Iain Dale) have recognised that the plans have been shelved.  The idea of a single Government database had in any event been dropped months ago.

I have two warnings for Iain Dale.

First, if he gets himself this worked up about something that ISN’T happening, he will need to be on heavy-duty tranquillisers long before we get into a General Election campaign.

And second, as I have pointed out before, there is a real and serious issue here that any Government must address.  As I said before the consultation was launched:

“At present, telephone companies keep data on their subscribers who make telephone calls, who they connect to and for how long.  They do this, so that they can bill people.  For many years, it has been possible for the police to access this data as part of their investigations into crime.  To do so, they have to get proper authorisation, certifying that accessing the data is proportionate to the crime being investigated and each case has to be considered individually.  The data can be used as evidence in Court and does not involve tapping the call and listening to the content.  Many trials rely on this evidence for criminals to be convicted – there is a murder trial under way at the moment where the crucial evidence is which mobile phones contacted each other just prior to and immediately after the murder took place.

But – and this seems to have passed the pundits by – technology is changing.  Telecoms companies (both fixed line and mobile operators) are building new networks based on VoIP technology.  This is cheaper and more flexible and - critically – does not require detailed call-by-call billing.  The data on which so many trials now rely will soon cease to exist.  The Government is therefore quite rightly going to consult on what can be done to capture this information and allow it to be used in criminal investigations where necessary.

It is not about giving the police more powers to pry into people’s personal lives.  It is about not losing vital material that is currently used to catch criminals.

And, of course, new forms of communication are being created all the time (eg. on social networking sites and chat facilities built into on-line gaming).  Should the police have powers to find out who is communicating with who in these new ways?  That’s what the consultation is about.  It is not some monstrous new assault on civil liberties.  It is allowing a sensible debate about how existing powers should be modified to reflect the changes in technology.”

Unless Iain Dale wants to see the police having to fight serious criminals with even less information available to them than they have at the moment, this is a nettle that is going to have to be grabbed.

I see from the Evening Standard that a member of CO19, the Metropolitan Police’s specialist firearms command, has had to stand down/withdraw*/quit the command after his profile on an adult dating site came to light.

Apparently, on the site he appears as “funboybobby”, had posted pictures with his weapon displayed and as the Standard puts it:

“In some photographs the CO19 officer appeared aroused while in another he showed off a tattoo above his bare bottom.”

A Met spokesperson said:

“We expect firearms officers to display the highest standards of skill, professionalism and judgement on a daily basis.”

I would, of course, hope that all officers display the highest standards of skill, professionalism and judgement.  The spokesperson then continued:

“This case highlights serious concern about the officer’s judgement.”

Indeed!  I would hope that everyone understands the dangers of putting too much personal information on social networking sites – see my earlier comment following the debate I initiated in the House of Lords.

Or as the Standard reports:

“One source close to CO19 said officers could not lay themselves open to blackmail: “Armed officers keep surveillance on terrorists and serious criminal suspects. It is not appropriate that their most personal details should be open for anyone to view.””

Although, I am not quite clear which personal detail the source had in mind in this case ….

Also, the question arises how did Metropolitan Police management find out about “funboybobby”?  Were they trawling the adult dating site in question?

*searching for a term without triggering a double entendre

When the Government introduced the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 for the first time it placed a proper legal framework on the extent to which public bodies like local government could use certain surveillance techniques.  If I may remember correctly prior to this the only protections the citizens had were under Common Law.  The new Act codified and limited local council powers with a view to ensuring that Councils only used surveillance powers where there was criminal or potential criminal activity taking place.

In the last few years, however, a number of concerns have been raised that councils were using the powers inappropriately or too frequently.  Conservative Wandsworth Council used the powers nearly three hundred times in four years in some instance to identify people wrongly using a “Blue Badge” parking permit.  Conservative Northamptonshire County Council used the powers to go through people’s rubbish and Conservative Poole Borough Council tracked a woman’s movements to see whether her family properly lived in a primary school catchment area.

The Home Office has now tightened up the rules.  In a written statement, David Hanson MP, Minister of State for Policing, Crime and Counter-Terrorism, has made it clear that:

“The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA) marked a major step in the protection of privacy. Prior to RIPA, many of the more intrusive techniques which it regulates could be used by any public authority and authorised at any level, for any purpose. There was no comprehensive system of independent oversight, no independent judicial complaints mechanism available in relation to all these techniques, and no means by which Parliament could prescribe the ranks of authorising officers or limit the purposes for which the techniques could be used. …

Nevertheless, a small number of local authorities have authorised techniques under RIPA in circumstances when most of us would say it was not necessary or proportionate for them to do so.”

As a result of a review, the Government will now be introducing the necessary secondary legislation to stop this happening again which:

“will include measures to:

a) clarify the test of necessity and proportionality so techniques will not be used for trivial purposes such as investigating dog fouling or people putting bins out a day early;

b) raise the rank of authorising officer for RIPA techniques in local authorities to senior executive at a minimum of “Director” level;

c) give elected councillors a role in overseeing the way local authorities use covert investigatory techniques;”

This is sensible.  There will be occasions when it is right that public bodies should properly use limited surveillance powers, but such use must be proportionate and the use must be as rigorously controlled as the regime of limitations that apply to the use of such powers by the police and the security services.

I spent a hugely interesting morning (with some MPA colleagues) visiting the Explosive Ordinance Disposal Unit of the Metropolitan Police – the unit that contains the Explosive Officers whose task is to dismantle or make safe any bombs or explosives found in London, such as those in the car bomb outside the Tiger Tiger nightclub in the Haymarket.

All the Explosives Officers are ex-military with many years of experience in the field and they are trained to handle a full range of threats from unexploded World War II bombs through to bombs potentially laced with chemical, biological or radiological agents.  They are able to provide a response 24 hours a day throughout the year and because of their location are able to reach to reach central London locations within minutes and have ready access to the rest of the capital.  Their equipment – some of it robotic – was fascinating and the dedication of all of those involved (and their acceptance of the personal risks to which they might be subject) was hugely impressive.

London is well-served by them.