My Lords, in this group, Amendments 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 60 and 62, and the Clause 33 stand part debate, are in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Paddick; the Government have Amendment 59, which looks to be an innocent drafting amendment—I hope it is as innocent as my reading of it.
These amendments take us to the modification of warrants. We believe that modification is such a serious action that the judicial commissioner should be involved, which the first amendment deals with; “modification” perhaps gives the wrong impression as to what is sought.
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Amendment 54 would reduce the scope of minor modifications. I am not entirely convinced by my own drafting but let me give an example of the issues we are concerned about. A warrant may refer to “No. 125 Acacia Avenue” but someone looking at it says, “No, clearly that should have been ‘25’ because there is no No. 125”. That is not necessarily the conclusion to
reach, particularly if there actually is a No.125. I am not going to give anecdotes, so I refer noble Lords to my noble friend’s reference to a penguin on Monday. What it boils down to is that it cannot always be clear if there has been an error in typing up a warrant or an error in identifying the premises.
Amendment 57 questions who can make minor modifications. Clause 33(2)(d) and (e) would allow,
“the person to whom the warrant is addressed,”
or someone else senior within the same authority to make the modification. I am really quite worried about that. You receive a warrant and think, “That can’t be right so I’ll correct it,” or “modify” it in the terms of the Bill. Is that really an appropriate way to proceed?
Amendment 60 would restrict modifications signed on behalf of the Secretary of State or Scottish Ministers to cases of urgency. It seems to me that the originator should normally sign them.
Amendment 62, which is a little different, would provide a specific time limit for ratification; at the moment, it is open-ended. Our amendment would provide that the judicial commissioner should give ex post facto authorisation within a specific time. We have said 48 hours, which may be too much; the Joint Committee said that urgent warrants should be reviewed within 24 hours. The Intelligence and Security Committee recommended review—this is without prejudice to the points that I made on the earlier group—within 48 hours.
If we are to have a warrant system that is subject to any sort of oversight, it should test whether individuals or individual premises ought to be the subject of surveillance. It is not a minor modification to subject an individual or a set of premises to interception powers: it is actually the entire purpose of the system, and is fundamental to the whole operation. Allowing the state to add an intercept without prior judicial authorisation seems to us to undermine the whole scheme and to circumvent the most basic safeguard provided by the Bill. I beg to move.