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Protection of Freedoms Bill

My Lords, I should first declare an interest as I have CCTV cameras around my house. My main point is that the emphasis has perhaps very much been on what is to some extent a sort of fear and constraint: ““Let’s find out how much””. I can see that, absolutely. However, CCTV is actually one of the great advances in protection, liberty and freedom and in having a safer society. I would always caution against standing against it. I recollect very well that many years ago when Citizens’ Band radio first came out, the Home Office in those days was very opposed to it. It reckoned that radio communications were for the broadcasting authorities, the military, the emergency services and itself. For a long while, people were illegally using CB radios but eventually the Home Office came round to recognising that CB radios, and any other intercom system by wireless, was a perfectly legitimate method of life. It is now in the ultimate in the mobile phone. I can see that information is always interesting to get, but sometimes a survey such as this can be very expensive. There could be a commercial interest; no doubt, companies who supply mobile phone networks and, indeed, the hardware for mobile phones do a great deal of market research in order to maximise their sales all over the world. However, one wants to be quite careful before one takes something which has become an absolutely standard method of life and starts to spend a lot of money—public money in particular—in making great inquiries into it. I am happy for the commercial people to spend their money. The example of the police in France was fascinating, and I had not heard about that. I do not think that we must do anything which stands in the path of progress in using modern technology. CCTV is not a particularly modern technology but it is an absolutely everyday technology. All of that said, there must of course be constraints on abuse or misuse of a technology. That is all I would like to say.