Bill to extend police powers under fire

Press, 19 May 1984, Page 11

Bill to extend police powers under fire

NZPA staff correspondent London The British Government’s controversial bill to extend police powers has been condemned by the Labour Opposition, who sav it will reduce the civil liberties “of millions.” There was an outcry this week when a majority of members of Parliament voted in favour of new police powers allowing them to detain without charge for up to 96 hours and changing the rules on stop and search. This was despite several Government members of Parliament voting with the Opposition and a number of others abstaining. The bill has undergone numerous changes because of the civil liberties issue — including the introduction, on an experiemental basis, of taping police interrogations.

The Shadow Home Secretary, Gerald Kaufman, said many safeguards had been

written into the Police and Criminal Evidence Bill as a result of the Opposition’s efforts. But it still remained “profoundly obnoxious,” he said, and “the overwhelming majority” of those stopped

and searched or detained without charge “will be innocent people.” The Home Secretary, Mr Leon Brittan, said the bill struck a fair balance between necessary powers for the police and appropriate safeguards, with long hours of debate leading to many changes being made. Mr Kaufman said the new stop and search powers could affect up to seven million people a year, the road-search and road-block powers were far too wide, and detention without charge was an unacceptable infringement of civil liberties.

The defeated Labour amendment attempted to reduce such detention to six hours.

Mr Kaufman said the police could still carry out forcibly intimate searches in six hours, and would be able to take intimate body samples. “This bill, while doing nothing effectively to fight

crime, will erode the liberties of millions of people,” he said. Mr Brittan said the Government had made changes in response to criticism of the powers of entry clauses, and had made a commitment to the tape-recording of suspects. But he said the bill had become necessary in order to provide “the right legal framework” for modern policing. For more than a year the Home Secretary has been attempting to reconcile the concerns of the police, many of whom believe their legal powers are too limited, and public concern about police methods. Police action has become particularly controversial in dealing with the 10-week-old miners’ strike. “Flying pickets” — miners going to picket the mines that are still being worked — have been checked by what has been described as the biggest police action of the century.