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 4DFE-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-l1g44and
Section 46 Duration of authorisation
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/Acts/acts2000/ukpga_20000011_en_5#pt5-pb2-l1g46Please 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:
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 ?
Posted by: wtwu | December 12, 2007 4:50 PM
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!
Posted by: wtwu | December 13, 2007 3:57 PM