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Counter-Terrorism Bill

moved Amendment No. 9: 9: Clause 6, page 5, line 5, leave out subsection (3) The noble Baroness said: I have four amendments in this group—Amendments Nos. 9 to 12—and I will go through them individually. As I said on Amendment No. 8, this leads us into ““Access to documents””, and my amendments probe the duty of the officer to return the documents and any copies made. Amendment No. 9 highlights the provisions that place a duty on the police to distribute copies of the document to certain people while it is seized. Oddly, the provisions under Clause 6 that ensure access are not the same as those under Clause 8 which ensure that the document is returned to the correct person. As far as I can see, the provisions would allow the owner of the document no access if he was not in custody of it when it was seized. Is that the case? It is the kernel of this problem. There is also no discretion under Clause 6 to deny access to somebody who had custody of the document at the time of the seizure, but who should not have had it. That could occur anywhere in a workplace, for example. Clause 8 considers the possibility that someone had inappropriate custody of the document at the time of its seizure, but Clause 6 does not. This is a case of ensuring that the clauses and provisions stack up together. Amendment No. 10 highlights the unusual judgments that these provisions will demand from police officers. As we have discussed, a police officer is in possession of an unreadable document, because it was found during a search based on a terrorism offence. He is now meant to decide whether access to this document, which is still unreadable, will prejudice a future investigation of criminal proceedings or even facilitate the commission of an offence. How can an officer tell whether allowing someone access to a computer, or giving them a copy of document, will do any of those things? He must decide who to give it to, or who not to. The point about these documents is that the officer still does not know what they contain. He is being asked about access, does not have the faintest idea what they say, and must decide whether the person asking about it has a right of access to it or not. As he does not know, he cannot tell. Amendment No. 11 is a probing amendment, designed to explore what would happen if the document had been damaged or lost; this is probably more relevant if a computer had been taken apart and the document had been damaged in the process. Are the police responsible or liable for the loss or destruction of that document? Amendment No. 12 looks at the grounds on which a document’s return could be delayed. In the Commons, the Government promised to look at the Police (Property) Act 1997 to see whether there was a mechanism for deciding the property’s owner. Can the Minister give us any information about that, and whether those inquiries took place? That is the burden of those amendments. I beg to move.