Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Bill — House of Lords, 2020-12-10
Topic: Law and Crime
Roy Kennedy (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, Amendment 63, moved by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, and other amendments in this group seek to draw attention to the range of organisations that will be given powers to grant criminal conduct authorisations to individuals involved in criminal conduct. There is a list of organisations on page 4 of the Bill, and I found it surprisingly long. Perhaps I just did not know how many organisations were involved in this activity Could the Minister tell the House how many organisations are currently involved in intelligence and providing authorisations after the event, and also set out for us why they in particular need those powers? Some colleagues have argued that these should be matters just for the police and the security services—that they should have the powers and other organisations should come to them for approval and authorisation. On the face of it, that could seem quite a sensible way forward For example, why do the Gambling Commission and the Environment Agency need these powers? There may well be very obvious and sensible reasons why they do, but it is important that those reasons are set out clearly. Initially, restricting the list could appear attractive, because these are serious powers, and we want to ensure that people are exercising them properly I think the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, expressed views held across the whole House about the concern here. We need to take on board, whatever the House decides in the end, that there is concern about the use of these powers, and they must only ever be used proportionately and by a minimum number of organisations My noble friend Lord Sikka drew the attention of the House to another point, and other noble Lords mentioned it as well. It is not due to this Minister, or to this or any other Government, but the risk that we run when we grant powers is that they are given to Governments of the future as well. Things can change. We might like the Minister who is in position today, or whoever has a particular position, but they will not always be in that position. We are granting powers to a potential range of Governments in future—and why are they necessary Then there is the whole question of statutory instruments. I have regularly attended debates on them, and it is quite frustrating the limited amount of power that we have as a Parliament, or as the House of Lords, to deal with them. There are many times when you want to vote them down, but you do not because you recognise that the fatal Motion is not often the way to do things. So you are limited as to what you can do—that is a fair point We need a very detailed response from the Minister, explaining why these organisations in particular need these powers, whether there are others, and why the Government need the power to extend that further under the limited provision of a statutory instrument, and not through primary legislation I accept the point that the noble Lord, Lord King of Bridgwater, makes: people need to be kept safe in this country and lots of organisations are doing very difficult and dangerous things. No one is against that. Equally, the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, made the point about the real need for training and safeguards. That seems sensible to me; if any organisation is to have these powers, you have to be confident that it will use them properly, proportionately and effectively I look forward to the Minister’s response. There are a number of areas to cover here for the House.