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Home Office - Terrorism Act 2000 Section 44 Authorisations

Writing to the Home Office seems to be a very random affair.

It should not be necessary to invoke the Freedom of Information Act for every query, but our last two attempts have had to eventually go down the FOIA route in order to get any kind of answer from them.

How can a new Counter Terrorism Bill be debated properly, when the controversial Terrorism Act 2000 Section 44 stop and search without reasonable cause powers, are applied in such a secretive manner ?

How can they be a deterrent to terrorists, if the supposedly limited areas in which these powers apply are kept secret ?

These section 44 powers apply almost certainly throughout the whole of the London M25 area, and have been applied, temporarily around political party conference venues.

Where exactly are such powers in force at the moment ?

Where are such powers being falsely claimed by jobsworth private security guards etc. ?

The legislation says that the Home Secretary must be informed about any such Section 44 Authorisations by local Police chiefs, and may amend them if necessary. Therefore the Home Office should have a list of these Authorisations readily to hand.

The deadline for compliance with our FOIA request is this Thursday 13th December 2007:

Home Office
Direct Communications Unit
2 Marsham Street
London SW1P 4DF

E-mail: public.enquiries@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk

Wednesday 14th November 2007

Dear Sirs,

Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000:

Please disclose the following:

Regarding the Terrorism Act 2000 Power to stop and search

Section 44 Authorisations
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/Acts/acts2000/ukpga_20000011_en_5#pt5-pb2-l1g44

and

Section 46 Duration of authorisation
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/Acts/acts2000/ukpga_20000011_en_5#pt5-pb2-l1g46

Please disclose the following:

1) Authorisations which the Secretary of State has been informed of under Section 46 (3)

2) Authorisations which have not been confirmed by the Secretary of State and which have lapsed under Section 46 (4)

3) Authorisations modified by the Secretary of State under Section 46 (5)

4) Authorisations which have been cancelled by the Secretary of State under Section 46 (6)

5) Authorisations renewed in writing under Section 46 (7)

Ideally, please disclose all of the Authorisations since the Terrorism Act 2000 came into force.

If that is deemed to be too many Authorisations, please advise how this FOIA request may best be modified, according to your duty under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 Section 16 Duty to provide advice and assistance

Please provide the information, ideally by publishing it on your public world wide website, or alternatively by email.

Ideally this should *not* be in the form of a "copy and paste" locked Adobe .pdf file, or similar, attachment.

In the unlikely event that this information is not already available in a standard electronic format, then please explain the reasons why, when you provide the information in another format.

If you are proposing to make a charge for providing the information requested, please provide full details in advance, together with an explanation of any proposed charge.

If you decide to withhold any of the information requested, you should clearly explain why you have done so in your response, by reference to the Freedom of Information Act 2000 legislation.

If your decision to withhold is based upon an evaluation of the Public Interest, then you should clearly explain which public interests you have considered, and why you have decided that the public interest in maintaining the exception(s) outweighs the public interest in releasing the information.

I look forward to receiving the information requested as soon as possible, and in any event, within the statutory 20 working days from receipt of this email i.e. by Thursday 13th December 2007

Yours Sincerely,

Comments

The Guardian reports:

Hundreds searched illegally at Gatwick


Louise Radnofsky and agencies
Wednesday December 12, 2007
Guardian Unlimited

Hundreds of passengers at Gatwick airport have been subjected to illegal police "stop and searches", the Home Office admitted in a written statement today.

Sussex police made a paperwork error when they applied for special permission to stop people without "reasonable grounds" that a crime is in progress, said the security minister, Tony McNulty.

The 259 people stopped and searched by Sussex police during three weeks in September will receive apologies, McNulty said, adding that Home Office officials were reviewing the paperwork connected with stop and search tactics under the Terrorism Act 2000 to check for more mistakes.

"No arrests occurred as a result of these stop and searches," he said.

"However, Sussex police will shortly be writing to all of the individuals concerned to apologise.

"All steps have now been taken to ensure ... that such regrettable and serious omissions do not occur again."

[...]

We wonder if
"All steps have now been taken to ensure ... that such regrettable and serious omissions do not occur again." includes publishing these Terrorism Act Section 444 Applications on the Home Office or on regional Police Force websites, where they can be checked for validity by the "wisdom of the public" ?

Will the fact that these people have been searched stopped and illegally mean that the computer records will be purged of the illegal data on the various police and intelligence databases ?


McNulty's Written Statement:

12 Dec 2007 : Column 41WS

shows that the Home Office foes not even coordinate the Section 44 Authorisations itself, but seems to have farmed out the job to another layer of bureaucracy the "National Joint Unit" at the Metropolitan Police Service!

Terrorism Act 2000

The Minister for Security, Counter-Terrorism, Crime and Policing (Mr. Tony McNulty): I wish to inform the House of a recent error in processing an application for section 44 Stop and Search powers under the Terrorism Act 2000.

The application by Sussex police, dated 3 September 2007, did not follow the recognised procedure. Forces submit applications to the National Joint Unit (NJU) at the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) which are then sent to the Home Office for ministerial authorisation. This must occur within 48 hours of the request being signed by an officer of assistant chief constable or above (Commander in the MPS) in the relevant force. In this case, due primarily to a process failure, the application was not passed to the Home

12 Dec 2007 : Column 41WS

Office for ministerial authorisation but the force continued to use the powers for the period up to 25 September when the next authorisation was submitted to the NJU. Sussex police has confirmed that 259 stops and searches were carried out at Gatwick airport during the unauthorised period. This relates to the period between the previous authorisation expiring and the next one being signed by the force.

This error was identified on 25 September 2007, when an application for section 44 powers was received by the Home Office making reference to the previous authorisation for Sussex police. I met officials at the Home Office on 27 September to discuss the matter. Officials were in contact with both the then chief constable of Sussex police and the NJU to establish where and how the failure took place, and to put in place more robust systems to ensure that there was no repeat of this error. On 25 October I subsequently wrote to the new chief constable of Sussex police outlining my concern that this error had occurred. I also wrote to Lord Carlile in his role as the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation. Lord Carlile replied on 9 November to indicate that he would be recording this incident in his annual review, which I expect to be published in Spring 2008. A note from ACPO (TAM) (Association of Chief Police Officers, Terrorism and Allied Matters) was disseminated to all forces on 14 November outlining the more robust section 44 process.

No arrests occurred as a result of these stop-and-searches; however, Sussex police will shortly be writing to all of the individuals concerned to apologise. Since this error came to light, it has been brought to my attention that this is not the first time that Sussex police have used these powers without proper authorisation. Regrettably, a similar incident occurred in June 2003. All steps have now been taken to ensure, with the NJU, that such regrettable and serious omissions do not occur again.

In light of this, Home Office officials are reviewing previous section 44 authorisations to identify any other occasions where the power has been used in error. Officials will keep Lord Carlile and me informed and I will report back to the House as appropriate.



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