My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, set out, Clause 32 as it stands offers strong powers to the Secretary of State in which there is no judicial involvement authorising the activities. I support Amendment 32 and will speak to Amendment 33. Those noble Lords who have read them will see that Amendment 32 is repeated by Amendment 33, which goes into more detail at some length, also taking into account the judicial systems of the countries of the United Kingdom.
As the noble Lord said, Clause 32 allows the Secretary of State to authorise the regulator to do “anything necessary”, which is a very dramatic—possibly cinematic—phrase, but we understand what it means. We can understand that there are times when moving quickly would be an issue, but this is not necessarily a block to judicial oversight. In contrast to the proposal in Clause 32, I point to the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 where warrants issued urgently by the Secretary of State, without advance approval by a judicial commissioner, must be approved by a judicial
commissioner within three working days of the warrant. If it can be done in those circumstances, I suspect it can be done in those which we are talking about today. The Government have not offered sufficient justification for the wider scope of the powers offered in Clause 32, so Amendment 33 is based on provisions in the Investigatory Powers Act and ensures judicial scrutiny of any enforcement authorisations under that clause. In similar vein to the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, it calls for a 48-hour period through which a justice of the peace can be involved. Our amendment stipulates that, if an enforcement remains in force for 48 hours, a justice of the peace should offer authorisation within that time or the action would cease to exist. Furthermore, no future enforcement authorisations may be granted under Clause 32 in relation to the same incident.
Amendment 33 then goes on to spell out the roles of the courts in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and the detail therein. Overall, we would welcome strong support for this principle from the Government and some idea of how other judicial oversight will be added to what currently appears to be a very wide legal writ for one person in government.
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