Powers of Entry etc. Bill [HL]

My Lords, I, too, support my noble friend Lord Selsdon and congratulate him, not only on his enterprise and on working so hard and so long on the Bill, but on introducing it today in such an amusing manner. It is not at all necessary for me to take up too much of your Lordships’ time—I will be brief—in repeating the cogent arguments in favour of the Bill. Like the noble Lord, Lord Cobbold, I was horrified when I discovered the huge number of bodies that have the right of entry into our homes, often with the application of severe force, and the condign penalties should we dare to question the need or manner of their doing so. I am also outstanding—I beg noble Lords’ pardon; I am not outstanding but astounded—that so many of those rights of entry merely relate to administrative and not very urgent matters, which in case of a dispute with a householder could be simply resolved in another way. I would like to describe one such case. In a holiday home that I own in the country, one of the utilities threatened me with such action because it had experienced difficulty in reading my gas meter, because I was never there when its meter man chose to come. No, it could not call on my neighbour who had the key, as it could call only at the address where the meter was situated. No, it could not simply open the garage door, which would be left unlocked for it, as the householder or his representative had to be present. But yes, it could break my door down if I did not handle the matter in its way. I spent 20 years as a magistrate. On many occasions, I was called on by the police at my home at extraordinary hours of the day or weekend and asked to sign a search warrant. It was never a case of, ““All right, officer, where would you like me to sign?””. In accordance with the strict training that I had received, the policeman had to take the oath solemnly, then tell me in detail why the warrant was needed and what they hoped to find, and—even more importantly—to explain why the matter was so urgent that I had to deal with it there and then, without the concurrence of a full Bench of my colleagues and the advice, if I felt I needed it, of my learned clerk. In many cases covered by the Bill, the rights of entry can be granted on the say-so of a public official or government department, sometimes as the result of some EU directive, as the noble Lord mentioned. A householder can do little or nothing at the time of entry when faced with an official, often backed by the police, who will threaten arrest for obstruction or disorderly conduct if he protests too vigorously inside his own home. He can do little or nothing to prevent irrelevant material being carted off in black bin bags. There is little hope of getting it back in a timely manner before it is lost by the department, or somehow mysteriously finds its way into the hands of one of the tabloids. Recent events entitle us to say that the public, with very good reason, have absolutely no reason to trust the Government to protect individuals’ privacy. The authority, by which I mean sometimes a minor functionary in some department or other, is judge, jury and executioner on the question of what entry is needed and how it is exercised. Rights of entry and seizure should be exercisable only after a warrant is authorised by a separate and impartial authority, not on the mere say-so of the person seeking the power. A year ago the Prime Minister, then still the Chancellor of the Exchequer, promised a ““bonfire of regulations””. According to reports in the press on Tuesday, not only has not a single bureaucratic burden been lifted or amended but, on the contrary, the list continues to grow by 14 new regulations every day. The Bill will not reduce that torrent of regulations, but at least it will fire a shot over the Government's bows as to how they exercise the powers that they are taking for themselves. The Government should ensure that the Bill gets parliamentary time to enable it to pass into law. I hope that the Prime Minister will continue in the path of rightly shedding his control-freak image and assist the British people to have less reason to fear, if not the midnight knock on the door, the peremptory demand to have their homes ransacked by—the gentlemen in the Box will have to forgive me—some civil servant.