HL Deb 19 December 1984 vol 458 cc718-20WA
Baroness Gardner of Parkes

asked Her Majesty's Government:

Whether they have yet completed their review of the use of equipment in police surveillance operations.

The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Elton)

The review has recently been completed, and I have today placed a copy of the revised guidelines in the Library of the House. The new guidelines contain more detailed and rigorous procedures than those in the previous guidance which was issued in 1977 and placed in the Library of the House in February 1982. The main changes are as follows:

  1. (1) The criteria for the authorisation of the use of listening devices, and of certain types of visual surveillance, are considerably tightened. In general such devices are henceforth to be used only when an investigation concerns serious crime; normal methods of investigation have been tried and failed or must, from the nature of things, be unlikely to succeed if tried; and there is good reason to think that the use of the equipment would be likely to lead to an arrest and a conviction, or to the prevention of acts of terrorism;
  2. (2) Authorisation levels and procedures are laid down for both aural and visual surveillance. The range of circumstances is extended in which the chief constable's personal authority is required for the use of surveillance devices;
  3. (3) More detailed records are to be kept of the occasions on which both aural and visual surveillance equipment is authorised, issued and used. These records are to be made available for inspection by HM Inspectors of Constabulary;
  4. (4) Guidance is given on the retention of the product of surveillance; its use in court proceedings and outside the police service; and its destruction when no longer needed;
  5. (5) The new guidelines explicitly rule out the use of surveillance devices in circumstances (such as in a public telephone box) where the sole purpose or only foreseeable result of their use is to overhear speech transmitted by telephone.

The guidance issued in 1977 recommended that records should be kept of the use of aural surveillance devices, and the new guidelines will require records to be kept for both aural and visual devices. Whilst these records will be made available for inspection by HM Inspectors of Constabulary it is not intended to record this information centrally on a continuing basis, since the use of surveillance devices is, subject to the advice given in the guidelines, an operational matter for individual chief officers.

My right honourable friend the Home Secretary is satisfied from the enquiries he has made in the course of this review that the scale of use of surveillance devices, particularly in circumstances where most sensitive questions of privacy arise, is not excessive. The guidelines make clear that a range of surveillance devices is used for a wide variety of purposes, and all forces make use of surveillance devices to a greater or lesser extent. In view of this wide range of devices and circumstances, statistical information would be meaningful only if it were broken down to indicate different types of device and operation, but it would not be in the interests of the prevention and detection of crime for information to be made public in this degree of detail.

We are confident that the revised and tightened guidelines, coupled with the attention that will continue to be given to these matters by HM Inspectors of Constabulary, will ensure that surveillance devices of all kinds are used only where strictly necessary for the proper and efficient conduct of police operations, and with due regard for the intrusion into privacy that may result in particular circumstances.