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A Surveillance Society?

Absolutely. I applaud the large section of the Committee's report that deals with CCTV, because I had reached the same conclusions some time previously—I take a big interest in private security. However, I hope that any inquiry would look not just at the effectiveness of police-owned or municipally-owned CCTV, but at the importance and effectiveness of CCTV in the private sector, because the private sector will be far and away the largest purchaser and operator of CCTV. CCTV is not a panacea and it has to be seen in conjunction with other forms of protection. Frankly, anyone who relies completely on cameras is barking, but I dissent from the idea that my freedom will somehow be impinged on because I am on television so frequently. Avoiding television is not something for which Members of Parliament are renowned, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East got on television 300 times—he is not here now, so he is perhaps perambulating around Westminster, which means that he will be on at least 20 cameras. My last point is that the Security Industry Authority has not got around to including important sectors such as private investigators—it is still agonising. We have the Private Security Industry Act 2001, but it is now 2009, and the SIA and the Government have not got around to regulating investigators. The security commissioner has a pretty strong view on private investigators. A minority of them are almost the lowest form of pond life, and they should be struck off and removed from their so-called profession. I have no financial interest whatever in the security industry, but I have monitored it. It is wrong to think that we can expunge the private security profession from our consciousness or nobble it with restrictions. A view is gradually emerging—the Minister will obviously take an interest in this—that we should see what can be done about private investigation. These people are not all Eddie Gumshoes; some are operating at the top end of the market. They are hired by the police and big business to do inquiries that the police cannot or will not do, or which they do not have the expertise to do. My plea to the Minister is that when regulation is proposed it should be imposed sensibly, because if it is not that could be seriously damaging to society.