Protection of Freedoms Bill

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 126 and the other amendments. I support my noble friend Lady Miller. This subject is, unfortunately, one of my hobbies. I am totally opposed to people entering other people’s property without permission or court orders and I am totally opposed to this form of surveillance, even if it is called observation. I declare an interest as former secretary of the Parliamentary Space Committee; I am involved in space and privy to certain information about advanced technology that makes me even more nervous. RIPA was a great idea when it started—like most things with initials that you cannot remember—but, even when it is amended, I will be concerned about public bodies and, in particular, covert activities. However, public bodies can get round the safeguards that are there by accepting evidence gathered by non-public bodies. That leads us to the fear that in these sort of covert operations a public body, all in good faith, may find that it has an opportunity to obtain from a third party information that may be offered to it, not necessarily by a hacker but by some person who finds that he has something of value that could be sold. The amendment proposed is that one should not be able to use that information in prosecutions. I will not go too far on this but we know that the listening devices that are around are extremely sophisticated and can be programmed from many miles away. Aerial surveillance is also possible from satellites in real time—not the Google thing of showing a picture of your house from above but information that can be picked up. The purpose of Amendment 126 is to introduce a safety clause. I think that the Minister may be prepared to accept it. Once amended by the Protection of Freedoms Bill, public bodies will be able to get round the safeguards by accepting evidence gathered by non-public bodies using covert surveillance that could not have been authorised by the public body itself. This may mean that the public body, in good faith, is offered information or materials that could be helpful in pursuing its course by a private sector or non-public body. The question is therefore whether the public body has any responsibility for this and for the information provided. The suggestion here is that if freedoms are to be protected the loophole must be closed and it must not be acceptable for information to be gathered covertly without proper authorisation and used for prosecution. That means that the public body must take responsibility for any information that may be gathered and its name must be linked to it. Thus any information that is gathered that the public body has not itself authorised or been associated with should be excluded from any efforts of prosecution. We know that many examples of this are being pushed around at present. The amendment is relatively simple; it says that anything that is done in the name of a public body, or is misused in the public body’s name, must be the responsibility of the public body, which should be responsible for making sure that everything is in order. I beg to move.