Clause 56 - Disclosure notices
Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill
9:45 am
Mr Dominic Grieve (Shadow Attorney General, Home Affairs; Beaconsfield, Conservative)
I apologise, Mr. O'Brien, for not being able to hear the Minister's reply to the amendments or to participate further in the debate once I have spoken. However, as I tabled most of the amendments, I will speak to them.
The Bill gives the power not only to seize documents or to ask where they might be, but to ask questions of a third party who is not under investigation in respect of the content of those documents. Power exists in company law and in respect of serious fraud to ask a third party to provide explanations. However, when the power in this part of the Bill was first proposed, the justification for it, which I heard on the radio, was that it was inconvenient to have to go to court to obtain a production order in relation to documents and that what was desired was the ability to attend the home of a third party and to secure documentation without going through the court procedure. I was comfortable with that concept, as it seemed that what was proposed made sense. On examining the detail, however, it became clear that a much wider power was proposed, although the explanation on the radio was probably not made wilfully. It is the power not only to say, ''Have you got any of Bloggs's documents in your house,'' or to seize them or to say, ''Can you show me where they are?'', but to say, ''Tell me what these things are all about from what you know of them?''.
I said earlier, not entirely tongue in cheek, that these are fascist provisions, the provisions of a totalitarian state. If they are to be implemented, we need a good and sufficient reason for doing so. As the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome said earlier, which I echoed, SOCA's remit is potentially extremely wide.
These are probing amendments on a matter of principle; I hope that the Minister will take the opportunity to discuss them, and I will read Hansard and think about what is said. I hope that she will explain why the power has to be so widely drawn if what is desired is the ability to seize documentation and materials speedily. The measure goes much further than that, and it could be argued that if the Minister wishes to include the power to ask questions of a third party about the material, it should be put in a more restricted setting than that of the seizure of documents—there could be a two-tier system. I will return to the matter on Report if I am not satisfied with the Minister's answers.