“Examples of poor or unnecessary use of section 44 [Terrorism Act 2000] abound. I have evidence of cases where the person stopped is so obviously far from any known terrorism profile that, realistically, there is not the slightest possibility of him/her being a terrorist…In one situation the basis of the stops being carried out was numerical only, which is almost certainly unlawful…A section 44 stop, without suspicion, is an invasion of the stopped person’s freedom of movement…It is totally wrong for any person to be stopped in order to produce a racial balance in the statistics”.

Not the words of a crusading civil libertarian but the sober judgement of Lord Carlile, the government’s official anti-terror law watchdog, in his annual report. Under section 44, police can stop and search anyone in a designated area without suspicion that an offence has occurred. Last year out of a total of 117,278 people stopped and searched, 73,967 were white, 15,218 were blacks and 20,768 were Asians. Lord Carlile said that he can understand the concerns of the police that they should be free from allegations of prejudice, but it is an invasion of the civil liberties of the person who has been stopped, simply to “balance” the statistics. According to the ‘Guardian’, he later went on to say that “if, for example, 50 blonde women are stopped who fall nowhere near any intelligence-led terrorism profile, it’s a gross invasion of the civil liberties of those 50 blonde women. The police are perfectly entitled to stop people who fall within a terrorism profile even if it creates a racial imbalance, as long as it is not racist”. He could here be accused of validating the concept that it’s OK to stop a non-white, but not OK to stop a blond woman, even though the vast majority of Asians and black people are as far from any known terrorism as he perceives blond women to be.

Nearly 90 per cent of the searches were carried out by the Metropolitan Police, whose officers use section 44 to carry out stop and search between 8,000 and 10,000 times a month. Lord Carlile admits a sense of frustration that the Metropolitan Police still do not limit their section 44 authorisations to specific boroughs, rather than to the entire force area. He can see no justification for the whole of the Greater London area being under permanent special search powers. None of the many thousands of searches has ever resulted in conviction of a terrorism offence, and he says that its utility has been questioned publicly and privately by senior Metropolitan Police staff with wide experience of terrorism policing.

Lord Carlile calls for greatly reduced use of section 44 powers and repeats what he calls his “mantra”, that terrorism related powers should be used only for terrorism-related purposes. Otherwise their credibility is severely damaged. “The use of section 44 has attracted particular criticism as having a negative effect on good community relations. Its purpose and deployment are poorly understood”.

The full text of Lord Carlile’s report can be found at:-
http://security.homeoffice.gov.uk/news-publications/publication-search/general/Lord-Carlile-report-2009/Lord-Carlile-report.pdf?view=Binary

Over the past decade there has been a wholesale removal of rights that were apparently protected by the Human Rights Act and set down nearly 800 years ago in Magna Carta. The liberties that were assumed to be guaranteed by British culture have been compromised, as have constitutional safeguards that were once considered beyond the reach of a democratically elected legislature. The attack has been as broad as it is deep, with over 25 Acts of Parliament and some 50 individual measures involved so far.

That is the conclusion of “What We’ve Lost”, a report by the UCL Student Human Rights Programme, compiled for the Convention on Modern Liberty. This conclusion is backed by many examples. The presumption of innocence and the principle that every defendant has the right to be tried by a jury have been weakened by the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act 2004. The important distinction between standard of proof for criminal and civil law was eroded with the introduction of ASBOs. The right to silence was further eroded by the Counter-Terrorism Act 2008. Under the same Act an individual and his lawyers may be barred from court proceedings. Freedom to communicate in private has been effectively extinguished by the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. Under the Identity Cards Act 2006 and the Children Act 2004 a record of all the important transactions in a person’s life will be created by electronic verification. The rights to freedom of assembly and demonstration have been eroded by the Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2003 and the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005. Jack Straw’s Coroners and Justice Bill will end the independence of coroners, who until now have been able to investigate the cause of suspicious or uncertain deaths and criticise government departments and agencies. And so on.

In “The Assault on Liberty”, a ‘radical polemic on the state of the nation’, Dominic Raab, Chief of Staff to the Shadow Home Secretary, asks whether we can really defend our freedom by sacrificing it. “In the last ten years the government has launched an unprecedented assault on our civil liberties”. Writing in the ‘Guardian’, Timothy Garton Ash maintains that Britain has more CCTV, a larger DNA base and more police powers and email snooping than any comparable liberal democracy, coupled with a bungling bureaucracy that keeps losing vital information. He asks “how can a government of intelligent and often liberal-minded persons behave so illiberally, arrogantly and stupidly?” He sees hope in a three pronged fightback, led by judges and lawyers, the House of Lords Constitution Committee (see ‘Big Brother parts 1 & 2’, posted here on 10 February) and a rainbow coalition, many of whom have joined together to launch the Convention on Modern Liberty.

The full text of the “What We’ve Lost” report is at:- http://www.uclshrp.com/images/uploads/pdf/Abolition_of_Freedom_Act_2009.pdf

An earlier blog (10.06.08) contrasted ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’, where 42 is the answer to the meaning of life, the universe and everything, with the Government, for whom 42 is more a problem than an answer. 42 achieved the status of a threat to the leadership of the Government through the wheeling, dealing and almost daily concessions to get the provisions of the Counter-Terrorism Bill through the Commons, with the actual number itself seeming to be sacrosanct.

This week the headache became a full blown migraine for the Government when plans to give police up to 42 days to question terrorism suspects were crushed by the House of Lords. Peers voted against the measure by 309 votes to 118. This came after opposition to the proposals from all sides, with 24 Labour rebels including two former Lord Chancellors, Lord Irvine and Lord Falconer, as well as Baroness Manningham-Buller, the former head of MI5, Lord Justice Woolf, the former Lord Chief Justice, and Lord Condon, the former Metropolitan Police Commissioner.

In an emergency statement to MPs, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith conceded defeat and said that the Counter-Terrorism Bill would continue its journey through Parliament without the 42 day measure. According to the ‘Guardian’, Government sources said the Prime Minister’s hand was forced because whips in the Commons told Downing Street that they would struggle to muster a majority in favour of the proposal. The 42 day plan was only passed by MPs in June by nine votes after the Prime Minister won the support of the nine Democratic Unionist MPs. If ministers had insisted on keeping the 42 day plan there would have been the need for a series of votes in the Commons to overturn the Lords’ rejection and eventually the use of the Parliament Act to force the bill through next year.

The capitulation was defiantly unrepentent. In her Commons statement, the Home Secretary was positively reproachful. She said “The other place has tonight voted to remove from the Counter-Terrorism Bill the protections that the government believes should be in place. Not to amend; not to strengthen; simply to remove. Mr Speaker, my priority remains the protection of the British people. I do not believe, as some hon. members clearly do, that it is enough to simply cross our fingers and hope for the best …that is not good enough. Because when it comes to national security, there are certain risks I’m not prepared to take.”

In what some see as a face saving gesture, the Home Secretary announced that she had “prepared a new bill to enable the police and prosecutors to do their work – should the worst happen, should a terrorist plot overtake us and threaten our current investigatory capabilities… The Counter Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Bill now stands ready to be introduced if and when the need arises. This would enable the Director of Public Prosecutions to apply to the courts to detain and question a terrorist suspect for up to a maximum of 42 days. Individuals could only be detained where this is authorised by a judge.” Once again the totemic 42 days.

The climb down has pleased a wide diversity of groups, and it is reported that David Davies, who resigned his seat and fought a by-election over this issue, shared a celebratory bottle of champagne in the Commons with Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty.