Lord Cormack (Con):...Fundamentally, what it comes down to is this:
what we are doing in the Bill is giving authority for people to
commit crimes. We all accept the basic necessity when it is a
matter of national security. I am not convinced, and I will need a
lot of convincing, that we have to give similar powers to the
Environment Agency, the Competition and Markets Authority, the
Financial Conduct Authority, the Food Standards Agency and the
Gambling Commission. There are others on this...Request free trial
(Con):...Fundamentally, what it comes down to is this:
what we are doing in the Bill is giving authority for people to
commit crimes. We all accept the basic necessity when it is a
matter of national security. I am not convinced, and I will need a
lot of convincing, that we have to give similar powers to the
Environment Agency, the Competition and Markets Authority, the
Financial Conduct Authority, the Food Standards Agency and the
Gambling Commission. There are others on this list, such as the
Serious Fraud Office, the National Crime Agency
and the intelligence services, that one would approve, but wherever
one is approving, one is giving potentially a vast range of people
the authority to authorise crimes and to launch these agents into a
world where they can do great damage to individual innocent people.
We touched on this earlier when we talked about compensation...
(LD)
[V]:...Perhaps noble Lords are attracted to something like our
proposal. I am sure that it would need expanding—for instance, to
allow inquiries by the commissioner, questioning the person giving
notice and so on. If the commissioner considers that subsection (4)
has not been satisfied, we suggest that two things should follow.
The first should be that the conduct would be not be lawful for all
purposes, which would reintroduce the question of redress,
including applications to the criminal injuries compensation fund.
Secondly, the matter must be reported to the head of the relevant
public authority—the National Crime Agency the
Gambling Commission, whoever. In turn, the authority should refer
it to the DPP, and the usual steps should then follow. For good
measure, our amendment makes direct mention of the annual
report...
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