Clause 7
Policing and Crime Bill
10:15 am
David Ruffley (Shadow Minister, Home Affairs; Bury St Edmunds, Conservative)
We are now back on track, as you would wish, Sir Nicholas and I have just one question. The clause relates to authorisation under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. Can the Minister, for the benefit of the Committee, tell us why the Government did not seek to take the opportunity in this clause to look at the RIPA codes? The Minister will be aware of the debate—his predecessor was certainly well aware of it—which concerns the fact that RIPA is an important means of making sure that the authorisation that officers seek, when they carry out surveillance, is done in a way that civil rights are protected. We understand that.
However, many representations were made to his predecessor and have been made to me. I shall give just one example. Over two years ago, the Police Superintendents Association made representations in writing to the Home Office, the nub of which was to amend the RIPA codes to say that in a set number of examples—it came up with up to 20—an authorisation under RIPA would not be necessary. To give a flavour of that, it suggested that the RIPA codes should be amended in the following, stylised example. At the moment, if a police officer had intelligence, anecdotal or otherwise, that youths were breaking into cars parked in a particular supermarket car park on a Sunday, in order to survey that event by hiding behind a wall, under a strict interpretation of RIPA 2000, that officer would have to get written authorisation for that surveillance.
That was one example where the Police Superintendents Association indicated that the RIPA codes should be re-written to create an exemption. That is a current issue. When I last raised it with the Minister’s predecessor in Westminster Hall last year, the Minister said that this problem—I paraphrase—had been dealt with. It is clear that what he said in Westminster Hall was not the understanding that serving officers had of the operation of the RIPA regime and seeking authorisation. They were seeking a re-writing of the RIPA codes to make exemptions. Officers said the problem was still current. The Minister’s predecessor was wrong to say there was no concern. I wonder, in the light of that, why the Home Office or its advisers did not see fit to touch on that in the police reform part relating to authorisations necessary for surveillance in the context of RIPA, which is the subject of this clause.