Clause 105 - Search warrants: other amendments
Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill
3:30 pm
Ms Hazel Blears (Minister of State (Crime Reduction, Policing & Community Safety), Home Office; Salford, Labour)
I dealt with the issue of the level of judge in my previous comments. I, too, hope that I can beguile the hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield with regard to his amendment. It has been properly tabled, in that it probes the safeguards of the new power. That power is indeed intrusive: it extends the period of the search warrant from one month to three months, and provides that there can be a series of multiple entries to the premises concerned. A similar series of safeguards relates to the exercise of this power to those regarding multi-premises search warrants. Again, the magistrate has to be satisfied, and where the officer wants to exercise the warrant on a number of separate occasions, they have to satisfy a superior officer of at least the rank of inspector to enable permission to be granted. That is a sufficient safeguard in justifying their actions at every stage of the process. We have to reach a balance between safeguarding people's privacy and proper concerns and giving police officers the tools to get on and do their job.
I say to the hon. Member for Huntingdon that criminals these days are sophisticated enough to move their property around and seek to hide it from legitimate searches. They can not only move their property around from premises to premises, but temporarily take it away and then return it to the same premises, in which case it would be necessary to allow multiple entry on the same set of warrants. A 28-day limit on the warrant would mean the police had to go back to court time and again. It is a matter of striking the balance as to whether we feel that a month is the absolute maximum we could allow for a warrant, or whether we are prepared, in circumstances subject to judicial and administrative oversight, to be more flexible.