My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, for her explanation of this set of amendments. I shall be brief in presenting Amendment 28. I am a member of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which considered the Bill and the issue of granting authorisations. This amendment would restrict the authorities that can grant criminal conduct authorisations to police forces, the National Crime Agency, the Serious Fraud Office and the intelligence services.
The recent Joint Committee on Human Rights report considers the wide range of public bodies in the Bill unnecessary and unproductive. Criminal conduct authorisations, from a human rights perspective, must first consider whether the exceptional power to authorise crimes to be committed without redress is truly necessary for all these public authorities.
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The second issue is whether granting that power would be proportionate to the human rights interferences likely to result. The Government have provided limited and insufficient justification for the authorisation of criminal conduct by bodies such as those listed here. The Home Office has provided brief guidance on this—a series of operational case studies and hypothetical examples of where CCAs might be used by, for example, the Environment Agency and the Food Standards Agency.
The key question is: why would the police, or another body whose function is totally focused on the prevention of crime, not take responsibility for any need to authorise criminal conduct in the course of undercover work that falls within the purview of these organisations? The JCHR concluded that
“in the absence of satisfactory explanation from Government, it is hard to see any justification for extending the use of CCAs to bodies whose central function is not protecting national security or fighting serious crime … The power to authorise criminal conduct should be restricted to public authorities whose core function is protecting national security and fighting serious crime.”