Protection of Freedoms Bill

My Lords, Amendment 1 is grouped on its own. As I am on my own, I will wait for the House to evacuate before I continue. The amendment follows on from the Private Member's Bill which I introduced into your Lordships' House and which was passed, which said that people should not be able to go into other people's homes and property without permission or a court order. At that time we also looked at loitering and the nervousness that was caused by people loitering outside properties, surveillance by television cameras, observance from afar and spying in general, but that was left out. When we recently dealt with the Bill in Grand Committee, it was suggested to me that certain other areas needed to be dealt with. One related to the amendments to RIPA proposed in the Protection of Freedoms Bill which are designed to address the concern about the use of RIPA powers by public authorities to investigate minor offences. The Minister—the noble Lord, Lord Henley, whom I sometimes regard as being a little bit like ““Stonewall”” Jackson or Cool Hand Luke, who plays a bat and will not let things go past him—confirmed at that time that he accepted the proposals in the Bill would ban the use of covert surveillance by public bodies to gather evidence of non-serious offences and should be amended to ensure that those public bodies could not then get round the law by adopting evidence obtained by covert means by third parties. When I introduced an amendment to deal with this loophole in Committee on 13 December, I was encouraged at the time by the words of my noble friend Lord Henley, who agreed to look at this issue to, "““see whether we might come forward with some suitable change””.—[Official Report, 13/12/11; col. GC 329.]" He has not come forward with any suitable change, but I gather that he has it still in the back of his mind. The great thing with my noble friend is to take things from the back of the mind and try to get them as near the front as possible. It seems that my amendment was what the ““pros”” call too widely drawn. When it was suggested that I put down another one, I went, as always, to the Public Bill Office. I learnt that you do not put down amendments at Third Reading unless you can demonstrate that the Minister had undertaken to do something and had not done it. I had forgotten about that. We checked the matter very carefully and this amendment was the result. I hope that it can be accepted. I would like to ask my noble friend about other issues that I raised in Committee. I asked whether, since we had the Powers of Entry Bill, he would be kind enough to take the 1,200 powers of entry that we had identified, print them and put them in the Library. He said that that was not necessary because everything could be done electronically. I have a slight conflict of interest here in that, as a member of the Information Committee, I can tell noble Lords that half your Lordships are not electronically enabled, if that is the phrase. Therefore, they like to think back to: "““Abstract nouns in -io call""Feminina one and all;""Masculine will only be""Things that you can touch or see””." Your Lordships like to feel pieces of paper from time to time. Therefore, I asked my noble friend whether he would agree to put the list of powers of entry in the Library. He said that he might think about it. Other matters came up. One of the difficulties with Private Members' Bills is that Ministers are here today, gone tomorrow and back the next day. A code of conduct was proposed. The Minister said that the Bill would induce a code of conduct. I asked him why it could not be stated. I do not think that he said he would think about that. I understand fully that matters such as powers of entry were tacked on to the Protection of Freedoms Bill. However, some aspects of it seem to me that they might even reduce people's freedom. We should debate this matter further. I beg to move.