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by Lib Dem team on 27 October, 2010
Stockport councillors are now holding the council to account on it’s use of RIPA (Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act). RIPA regulates the ways public bodies are permitted to use covert surveillance (or to spy on people, if you prefer to look at it that way).
Last year Stockport used RIPA four times – once to investigate anti-social behaviour and three times to investigate allegations of selling counterfeit alcohol or alcohol to underage people.
In the first quarter of this year (April – June 2010) RIPA was used five times, though two of those related to the same case.
One was a suspected benefits fraud and four were looking into anti-social behaviour. RIPA is used as a last resort when other avenues of investigation have proved insufficient.
You can read the report on pages 17-18 of the CRMG Scrutiny agenda here [pdf].
3 Comments
While I welcome this openness on the use of RIPA lets not forget it was originally “sold” as an anti terrorist instrument by the last Labour Governemt. Local Councils in my view have no place using it for any purpose as they are not responsible for anti-terrorism.
Hopefully it will be thrown out by the new Government – until then if it is used it should be authorised by the Chief Executive and Leader of the Council so they can be personnaly held responsible for any consequences.
Why should law breakers be allowed to continue? Only those afraid of being caught complain about policing – the law abiding majority must prefer valid measures to detect and deter crime. I am relaxed to walk/drive under surveillance and have some protection against self-seeking thieves, dangerous speeders and irresponsible hooligans.
As Marilyn says, RIPA was initially passed to tackle a terrorist threat (and the parliamentary debate was a lot more to do with computer crime than anti-social behaviour). We should be careful about how we use it – I’m not bothered about some surveillance, but wouldn’t want to be spied on, especially if I were doing nothing wrong.
But there are many laws that end up being used for different purposes, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing.
If we can use RIPA powers to stop anti-social behaviour and illegal sales of alcohol to children that wouldn’t otherwise have been stopped, I think that’s the right way to go.
The key thing is to keep the balance – to ensure RIPA is only being used to spy on people where there’s strong reason to believe they’re breaking the law and where other methods have failed.
That’s what the rules on use of RIPA aim to achieve and it’s what we as councillors are checking on each quarter in Stockport.