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Counter-Terrorism Bill

It is a long-established principle of search and seizure that police may only seize documents covered by the terms of the search warrant or relevant statutory power. For police to take documents outside of the terms of the warrant or statutory power is not only unlawful but also very likely a serious violation of the owner’s right to privacy, especially if the documents are legally privileged. Despite these very well established principles, Clauses 1 to 9 introduce a series of sweeping provisions to enable the police to seize documents as part of a search, even though they do not know whether the documents are lawfully part of the subject of the search. The power to remove legally privileged documents is an especially disproportionate interference with the right to respect for privacy under Article 8.1 of the European Convention on Human Rights and the common law right of access to legal advice, including the right to communicate in confidence under the protection of legal professional privilege. Given that there is no power to take away legally privileged material by way of an ordinary search warrant, other than under the exceptional terms of Part 2 of the 2001 Act, and given the greater safeguards of Part 2, we on these Benches think there can be no justification for allowing such a broad, unfettered power.