My Lords, I will intervene very briefly to make two points. I spent about eight years overseeing police work on counterterrorism in London and more generally. The use of the Section 44 power, which gives the police the power to stop without suspicion, was one that most people, when they thought about it, would say was acceptable: they understood that they were in an area where there was an obvious terrorist target and heightened concern.
When that power was exercised, was it without controversy? I am afraid that the answer is no. There was enormous resentment towards it, precisely because of the issues about disproportionality that have already been referred to and the complications that ensued from that.
That was in circumstances when most people might understand it, when they had it quietly explained to them—which does not usually happen during the course of a normal stop and search—that, “We’re stopping you, because we’re in this area, you are close to this and we are stopping people at random, just to make sure that they are not carrying explosives or a bomb”. But this is about circumstances where people are engaging in a demonstration or exercising their civil rights. That is of a completely different order and what makes this disproportionate.
My second point may sound trivial by comparison. We have had the point made about what rank of officer should look at this. It was suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, that it might be quite difficult to find a chief superintendent at the right moment. All I would say is, if this is a matter of such seriousness that we are being asked to approve these extraordinary, disproportionate powers, then there should be a chief superintendent or people of equivalent rank overseeing and supervising what is happening.