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Protection of Freedoms Bill

My Lords, I rise to support the proposed amendment. It relates to the circumstances in which a statutory instrument or legislation can give authority to regulators—not the police as their powers are enshrined in statute and are not in question—to enter private property without the consent of the owner or occupier of the property or the authority of a warrant granted by a judge. This goes to the view that one takes of the importance of the rule of law in considering what powers the Executive ought to have to interfere with rights of private property. Clause 40 provides that the Government may place fetters on rights to enter private property. That is a discretionary power that the Government may or may not exercise, and in relation to a number of statutory instruments that I have seen, some quite recently, the safeguard provided by Clause 40 has not been adopted. The obligation on government to obtain the consent of the owner or occupier or to obtain a warrant ought, in my opinion, to be the rule. Of course, there may be exceptions. The noble Lord's amendment provides for them. I suggest that they are ample and adequate, but the rule ought to be that the consent of the occupier or a warrant is obtained and that the case has to fall within one of the recognised exceptions. At the moment, the legislation is the other way round so that the rule makes the addition of safeguards to protect the rights of property dependent on the discretion of the Government. That is not acceptable as a basis on which rights of property can be interfered with. I do not wish to take up your Lordships' time by repeating what I said during previous debates on this topic and, moreover, today is my wife's birthday and I have agreed to take her out to dinner at 6 pm. I hope, therefore, that the Minister will forgive me if I do not stay to hear his reply to this amendment.