Bishops join protest against police bill

Press, 18 March 1983, Page 8

Bishops join protest against police bill

NZPA London Bishops of the Anglican Church added their protest yesterday to a developing national controversy over Government efforts to give the police extended powers of search, arrest and detention. The 56 bishops, who signed a statement objecting to the Government’s Police and Criminal Evidence Bill, acknowledged that the police needed a legal framework to fight organised crime and terrorism. But they said that the measure now before Parliament, which permits the police to search a priest’s office for evidence of serious crime, would trap innocent people who wrote to their clergymen for help, and would threaten the confidence between priest and

people. “We view this as a considerable and potentially very dangerous step toward the increase of the power of the State over the individual,” said the bishops. “We love our country and thank God for the liberties we have'inherited.” But they said that if the bill was enacted, they anticipated acute conflicts between the requirements of the law and the demands of conscience. Since the bill, was published in November by the Home Secretary Mr William Whitelaw, it has been attacked by lawyers, doctors, journalists, trade unions, and civil rights groups. The objectors say that the bill replaces Britain’s traditional policing by consent with policing by coercion. Mr Whitelaw called the

bill a big step forward enforcing the law and said that he looks to the police to protect traditional freedoms.

The bishops said that they were “shocked” at a proposal in the bill to let the police search the premises of doctors, psychiatrists, social workers, and priests for evidence in prosecuting a “serious arrestable offence.”

Such powers threatened the principle of confidentiality essential to priestly ministry and often providing the only safety valve for desperate people, said the bishops. Their statement was signed by 18 of the 43 diocesan bishops and 38 of the 63 suffragan bishops, who are assistants appointed to help the bishop of a diocese in a specific area.