Subordinate Legislation Committee, 06 Jun 2000

Meeting date: Tuesday, June 6, 2000

Official Report 226KB pdf

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Regulation of Investigatory Powers (Scotland) Bill

Good morning. This is the 19th meeting of the committee. The first item on the agenda is delegated powers scrutiny. We will first consider the Regulation of Investigatory Powers (Scotland) Bill. I thank the witnesses for attending. I think that you have been advised of the nature of this committee's meetings. Perhaps you would like to make some opening remarks, after which the committee will ask you to clarify various matters.

Thank you, Mr MacAskill. Perhaps I could say who we are. I am Ian Snedden, the head of police division in the justice department of the Scottish Executive. On my immediate left is Hugh Dignon, who is responsible for the day-to-day activities of the RIP bill. Also present are Mr Alan Williams, who is a solicitor at the Scottish Executive with responsibility for justice department matters, and Charlotte Carpenter, who is also involved in work on the bill.

Before we get into detailed consideration of the bill, I want to bring some developments that might be helpful to the committee's attention. We intend to introduce some changes to the subordinate legislation at stage 2. I am sorry for springing them on the committee at such short notice. The changes have arisen from discussions with the Deputy First Minister and in consultation with Home Office colleagues, and are designed to reflect concerns about the UK and Scottish bills.

The first proposed change is to the powers contained in sections 3(3)(d) and 4(3)(d), which allow ministers to specify additional purposes for which directed surveillance and the use of covert human intelligence sources may be authorised. As the bill is drafted, those two powers are subject to the negative resolution procedure; however, the Executive intends to amend the bill to ensure that the powers will be subject to affirmative resolution procedure. That change reflects the fact that sections 3(3)(d) and 4(3)(d) extend both the primary legislation contained within the bill and the powers beyond those specified in the bill.

Furthermore, although it was previously implicit, the Executive now wishes to make it explicit that ministers may specify additional purposes for the use of directed surveillance or human intelligence sources only if the purposes are compatible with those allowed under article 8(2) of the European convention on human rights.

The second change proposed by the Executive is to the subordinate power contained in section 5(3)(c) of the bill. As drafted, the bill gives ministers the power to designate public authorities that will be able to authorise directed surveillance and the conduct or use of covert human intelligence sources. That order is subject to the negative resolution procedure. The Executive proposes that the bill should be amended so that public authorities requiring to use such techniques will be specified in a schedule of the bill. The amendment will contain the provision for a power enabling ministers to add or remove public authorities from the list in the schedule. It is proposed that any changes to that schedule would be subject to affirmative resolution.

Finally, we have picked up an error. We propose to amend a mistake that relates to the powers contained in section 23(1) of the bill. At present, that power is drafted as being subject to the negative resolution procedure, but as the subordinate legislation memorandum and references in section 24(3) of the bill suggest, it was intended to be drafted so as to be subject to affirmative resolution.

I hope that that is helpful. I apologise for bringing these changes at short notice.

Thank you.

Will you clarify which subsection of section 4 you are talking about, because I could not follow your evidence on that?

The first changes that Mr Snedden mentioned are to sections 3(3)(d) and 4(3)(d), both of which concern the powers for Scottish ministers to add additional purposes for which surveillance or use of covert human sources may be authorised. In both cases, we wish to make it explicit that it will be within the terms of the convention and subject to affirmative resolution.

You have answered some of the points that we were going to raise, but there will probably be others. It may be easiest for the committee if we go through the matter section by section. No points arise in sections 1 or 2, but there were various matters in section 3, although some points have been addressed. Do members of the committee wish to raise any questions on section 3?

In relation to section 1, I have a point on the drafting on which I would be grateful for the evidence of our witnesses. A distinction is drawn between surveillance that is intrusive and that which is not. Is not all surveillance intrusive per se?

The approach of the bill is to divide surveillance into two categories: that which is most intrusive—which we have called intrusive for the purposes of the bill—and that which is less intrusive, which we have called directed surveillance. It could be argued that any sort of surveillance is intrusive to some extent. However, we feel that, for the purposes of this bill and for the purposes of making surveillance compatible with the convention, it is useful to divide it up into two different categories.

I raise it only because I imagine that some smart lawyer might use it as the basis for challenging the whole classification in the act at some future date, on the grounds of possible non-compliance with the ECHR. Would you be troubled about that?

No, we would not be particularly worried about that. We feel that in some ways this bill goes further than is required by the convention, which does not require us to separate surveillance into different categories. It requires that surveillance should be in accordance with law and for certain specified purposes. We have added the distinction between types of surveillance for further protection of civil liberties, so that the most intrusive forms of surveillance will be those that are subject to prior approval by senior judicial figures in the form of the surveillance commissioners. It is not a matter for the ECHR whether surveillance falls within one category or another.

The whole thrust is to try to ensure that the processes in the bill are compatible with the ECHR.

In sections 3(3) and 4(3) we have

"(a) for the purpose of preventing or detecting crime or of preventing disorder;

(b) in the interests of public safety;

(c) for the purpose of protecting public health".

I appreciate why you may wish to keep powers open for any situation that may arise, but what situation do you envisage that is not addressed by those sections? They seem to be all-encompassing from a public safety or state security point of view. Crime, disorder, safety and health are covered. Why do we need additional unspecified powers, even if they are to be dealt with by affirmative as opposed to negative resolution?

As we said, any additional powers specified by Scottish ministers would have to be compatible with the convention. Two powers are specified in the convention but are not in the bill. They relate to the protection of morals and the protection of the rights and freedoms of others. We have not put those in because we are unable to envisage any circumstances in which public authorities would want to use surveillance for those purposes.

The convention is a living instrument and circumstances might arise in which surveillance that is being carried out is thought more properly to fall under those purposes, in which case we could use the powers to introduce the purpose to the bill. Alternatively, a social situation might arise in which the powers might be used. We cannot envisage such a circumstance at the moment, however.

We have discussed, in relation to other bills that have enabling legislation, having some form of super-affirmative procedure. Such a procedure would require the standing orders to be amended, but would allow parliamentary groups and members greater opportunity to delete and amend statutory instruments instead of simply accepting or rejecting them. If we strayed into the areas of morals and third-party rights—I had not thought about those aspects—would there be a possibility of having a super-affirmative procedure that could allow debate on a quite contentious subject?

I am not familiar with the super-affirmative procedure that you mention.

At present, we have either negative or affirmative procedures. A super-affirmative procedure would allow there to be greater debate and would bring the situation closer to that which exists with principal legislation. Members would be able to amend the legislation, rather than take it or leave it.

I recall that the Deregulation and Contracting Out Act 1994 contained something similar to that. The context is different in this case because you are talking about whether to add a purpose rather than to fine-tune a purpose. It might be that there are urgent reasons why that purpose would need to be added, but if there were something complicated about the procedure, it might not be appropriate to do that.

The terms of section 3(3)(a) allow an authorisation for the purposes of preventing disorder. If an elected MSP were perceived to be a threat to order, I presume that there would be nothing to prevent a surveillance authorisation being granted.

That would be unlikely. It would be possible but any surveillance has to be proportionate to the issue under consideration.

I am not suggesting that such surveillance would be particularly enlightening or exciting.

Would you accept as a matter of principle that, in order to ensure compliance with the ECHR, the use of subordinate legislation powers should be eschewed?

Our legal advice is that subordinate legislation is perfectly compatible with the convention.

In principle, and as I understand the position, whether the rules that establish the foreseeability criterion are in primary or subordinate legislation causes no real difficulty with article 8 of the convention. The main issue is whether the criterion is established in accordance with the law, and there is no real difficulty with article 8 if that is done by a Scottish statutory instrument or under an act of the Scottish Parliament, provided that the terms are reasonably clear.

We have advice about the approach taken by our counterpart committee at Westminster. Paragraph 41 of that committee's special report for the 1998-99 session states:

"The Committee hopes that this Bill may help to establish a precedent whereby provisions designed to ensure that legislation is implemented compatibly with the European Convention on Human Rights are not normally left to secondary legislation but included on the face of the bill."

Should not the Scottish Parliament be trying to implement that principle, rather than departing from it?

Section 3, as read with sections 1 and 2, sets out the basic scheme. Therefore, the scheme is set out in primary legislation. Nothing in section 3(2) introduces any form of subordinate legislation. I am not quite sure if I have picked up your point.

Section 3(3)(d) entitles ministers to grant authorisation in terms of secondary legislation, for any purposes that they may consider desirable.

It does not; it merely introduces the possibility that a further purpose could be inserted into the scheme. The scheme that authorises persons to grant authorisations for these purposes is set out in the primary legislation.

Agreed, but the principal point is whether it would be better to set forth the purposes, which Mr Snedden described in his opening remarks as the protection of morals and the protection of the rights and freedoms of others. Surely it would be better to state those purposes in the bill, given that you already accept that there may be circumstances, although you cannot envisage them at present, in which these criteria would be used by ministers to authorise surveillance?

As Mr Williams explained, the purposes that are set out in the bill are the primary purposes for which we would expect authorisations to be used. I take Mr Ewing's point about the other purposes. At this point, we do not think that those purposes will be necessary, but this section will give ministers the opportunity of introducing new purposes while still allowing Parliament to consider them.

We hear that argument day and daily: the justification for subordinate legislation is to give ministers flexibility. All members of this committee recognise that there must be a degree of flexibility, as no one can see what life will throw at legislators. However, we are not dealing with a common or garden statutory instrument in this case; we are dealing with the surveillance of individuals.

Section 3(3)(d) seems to me to give ministers the power to do whatever they want and to set out whatever criteria they want. We are talking about the right to privacy as set out under article 8 of the convention and, therefore, surely the different approach suggested by the Westminster committee should be taken because of the interest in protecting the privacy of the individual. We should follow that principle, and there are far too many departures from it in this bill.

At the risk of repeating Mr Snedden's comments, the power in section 3(3)(d) will not be completely open and unrestricted if the Executive amendment, which we are considering, is accepted by the Parliament. The power will be explicitly constrained by the requirement that it must be compatible with the convention and subject to affirmative resolution.

However, the general question about whether it would be sensible to include those two other purposes has been raised. There are only two other purposes—either they are not reserved under the terms of the Scotland Act 1998, which reserves matters such as national security, or they are not already included in the bill. That leaves only the two to which I referred: protection of morals and protection of the rights and freedoms of others. We could take away that point and discuss it with ministers, although I do not know if they would think it appropriate to include those purposes in the bill. The general principle that we have observed hitherto is that if we cannot envisage the circumstances in which we would use those purposes, it is better not to include them. At present, we are thinking about that.

The position that has been laid out by various representatives of the Scottish Executive is a reasonable one. The Executive does not envisage that such surveillance will take place with regard to those two sections of the ECHR. I disagree with Fergus Ewing. The subordinate legislation does not give powers to ministers. They can introduce subordinate legislation; however Parliament has to approve it by affirmative resolution. At the end of the day, that is a brake on what ministers can introduce. There is another brake, in that subordinate legislation would still have to be compatible with the ECHR. This is not as big an issue as it has been made out to be today.

Do members have any points to make on sections 3 or 4? It seems not.

With regard to subsection 5(1), I understand that you do not wish to specify ranks because situations may be fluid, but could not you list ranks so that we have some idea of the level of seniority at which these matters will have to be initiated, and have a power under subordinate legislation to change the list? I appreciate that situations may be fluid—for example, will chief superintendents and chief inspectors be with us in years to come? However, it may be better if we at least specify in the bill, "or such other ranks as may supersede them", or something like that. Do you have any comments on that?

Under section 5 the rank that we have in mind with regard to the police service is superintendent. However, it is worth bearing in mind that other public authorities will be able to use this bill to authorise directed surveillance and the use of covert human sources—for example, various parts of the Scottish Executive or perhaps Scottish local authorities. They will not have superintendent grades, and we are in the process of consulting with those bodies to work out what would be the appropriate equivalent. We can specify superintendent for the police, but it would not be straightforward to specify ranks for the other public authorities that we have in mind.

Given that you are bringing in a schedule for subsection 5(3)(c) that details relevant public authorities, surely it would be appropriate that we should know the level of seniority of those who can initiate proceedings? I am surprised that the level at which what may be a major intrusion can be initiated is as low as superintendent. If we are talking about local authorities, surely we should know the level of seniority that would apply? Would it not be reasonably easy to specify the level of superiority in the schedule, so that at least Parliament could debate whether the senior clerk of the North of Scotland Water Authority—which Fergus Ewing flippantly referred to before the meeting opened—was senior enough?

I would like to clarify something before I answer your question. Section 5 is concerned with those who are entitled to grant authorisations for surveillance under sections 3 and 4, which are concerned with directed surveillance and covert human sources. Under section 5, authorisation of intrusive surveillance will be given only by chief constables or the director general of the National Criminal Intelligence Service, and will require the prior approval of a surveillance commissioner.

On your question, our reasoning is that that level of detail is not usually appropriate for primary legislation, which would not set out whether the grade of a particular clerk in a particular local authority is equivalent to or has the same job weight as a police superintendent. An order by Scottish ministers will specify job titles, ranks, grades and equivalents of the individuals who will be entitled to grant authorisations for those categories of surveillance. That order will be laid before the Scottish Parliament.

Are there any other questions on section 5?

I am pleased that there will be a schedule that lists the public authorities that would have such powers. I say that not least because, apart from the police force and the National Criminal Intelligence Service, I can think of no public authorities that could conceivably be empowered to grant authorisations for directed surveillance or covert human intelligence sources. Will you give a few examples? Does the Executive consider that the Inland Revenue is a public authority that might be granted such powers?

Yes. The Inland Revenue could be granted such powers, but not under this bill. The Inland Revenue would be likely to seek such authority under the UK Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill, because it is a reserved authority. As I understand it, the Inland Revenue carries out directed surveillance in major cases of tax evasion and tax fraud and it uses informers occasionally. We envisage that the bodies—other than the police—that might be authorised under the bill might include, as I mentioned, various parts of the Scottish Executive. That includes departments that are responsible for fisheries protection, wildlife protection and other agricultural sectors. It also includes Scottish local authorities, which might be involved in trading standards enforcement; making test purchases would count as an undercover operation and would, therefore, fall within the definition of covert human sources.

There is a range of organisations that quite properly carry out such activity. We think that it is right that they should be brought within the terms of the bill.

Is the operation of bodies such as the Inland Revenue—to take the example that you mentioned—supervised by the police?

It is not supervised in the sense that you mean. As Mr Dignon says, a number of agencies within the Scottish Executive, such as the Scottish Fisheries Protection Agency, carry out directed surveillance. The Food Standards Agency might well carry out directed surveillance against organisations that it has concerns about. It was thought proper that that agency should be brought within the terms of the bill.

I want to pursue this matter. One can understand the desirability of granting such powers of surveillance and investigation for the purpose of pursuing people who are suspected of tax evasion or public debt of any kind. However, is a distinction drawn between a person who is suspected of having evaded their liabilities and a person who is subject to ordinary debt collection?

It needs to be made clear that none of the surveillance by the Inland Revenue will be authorised under this bill; it will be authorised under the UK Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill. Mr Williams will correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that such surveillance is allowed for the purpose of collection of taxes, duties or excises that are owed to central Government. I am not an expert on how that is interpreted.

Other public authorities that carry out surveillance will need to conform to the legislation and the code of practice in the same way as the police do. We expect authorities to operate to the same standards of professional conduct and probity across the piece. The police will not have different standards from other public authorities.

If surveillance is allowed only for the collection of taxes that are due to central Government, does that preclude the granting of powers to non-departmental organisations—colloquially known as quangos—for the purposes of collecting their debts? Can such bodies get tapping orders or authorisation to survey non-payers?

First, clause 27(3)(f) of the UK Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill states that a purpose of surveillance is

"assessing or collecting any tax, duty, levy or other imposition, contribution or charge payable to a government department".

My understanding of "government department" would not include non-departmental public authorities. However, in so far as we are talking about UK public authorities, I think that the power of the Secretary of State for Scotland—similar to that of the Scottish ministers—to specify other public authorities, would be used if we carried out directed surveillance.

Does that mean that bodies such as water authorities could be "relevant public authorities" for the purposes of section 5(3) of the Scottish bill, and so appear in a schedule?

That would not, as I understand it, be the case in relation to the collection of tax, which is the responsibility of a government department. Other authorities could be added only in connection with criminal matters, rather than the collection of taxes. If there were a criminal offence—evading a licence duty or some such thing—that might be interpreted as a purpose that would fall within prevention of crime. However, that would not fall under the purpose of the collection of duty.

You mentioned oversight of surveillance. My understanding is that the surveillance commissioners would have general oversight of the exercise of the powers, in terms of both the UK bill and the Scottish bill.

Am I right to assume that there might be a broader definition? Would, for example, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency be included in the schedule in order to allow it to pursue cases of environmental dumping, which could be conceived of as quasi-criminal? Would SEPA be the kind of organisation that could be given surveillance powers?

We are still considering how detailed the list of organisations in the schedule will be and whether we will list the individual departments of the Scottish Executive. We might list the Executive as a general body and specify later in the order the individuals who may authorise surveillance. Certainly, SEPA is one part of the Executive that we envisage might carry out surveillance under the Scottish bill.

Would not there be a considerable democratic deficit if the schedule simply listed the Scottish Executive? No one is suggesting that the National Galleries for Scotland would want to carry out surveillance, but I can understand why SEPA might—I would, perhaps, support that. However, I would be wary of a schedule that listed only the Scottish Executive rather than specifying the range of targets that the bill is attempting to cover.

I take that point and it is something that we will need to consider. We will need to consider which organisations have a legal identity and can be named in the bill. My colleague Mr Williams can probably add to this comment, but it might be that individual parts of the Executive do not have a legal identity and cannot, therefore, be identified. However, in the course of bringing the schedule to the attention of Parliament we would be happy to set out which parts of the Executive we envisage would be able to use the powers.

I have nothing to add to that. I would have thought that that power related to public authorities, which are defined in section 5(4) as including the Scottish Administration. We could consider whether the power could or should specify parts of the Scottish Administration. A question that I have not yet considered is whether that power exists already, but we will give that further consideration.

No points have arisen in relation to sections 6, 7 and 8.

I welcome the preliminary points that you made about moving from negative to affirmative procedure. In view of the concession that was made in the parallel legislation south of the border following representations, is there an argument that it might be appropriate to move to the affirmative procedure for section 9(2)(c)?

We had not thought that it was necessary to have the affirmative procedure for that, but we will certainly pass on your concerns to ministers.

Section 16(4), on the substitute power—

Sorry. On a point of clarification, in our memorandum we said that the procedure for section 9(2)(c) would be affirmative.

That is my mistake.

Section 9(2)(c) allows ministers to make an order to clarify what information must be provided before an intrusive surveillance order can be made. Is it the intention of the Executive that the detail of that should be contained within a code of practice?

Yes. A form will also be drawn up that police officers will have to fill in and submit to their chief constable for authorisation, which will then be passed to the surveillance commissioner. The code of practice will tell police officers what information is needed. They will be guided by the fields that must be completed on the form.

That will be very helpful. As we discussed, the police must know what is expected of them and what information is required when an intrusive surveillance order is being considered.

As we said when the minister was giving evidence, the codes of practice will be published in draft form.

At stage 2?

We are working on them with colleagues at the moment.

Will they be published before the bill completes its passage through Parliament?

We envisage that the code will certainly be available before the bill receives royal assent. I cannot be certain that the draft will be available before stage 2. To some extent, we are in the hands of the operational practitioners who are involved in drafting the code of practice. Once they have finished that draft, they will make it available to the public for further comment. My guess is that we are fairly close to a draft being available for wider release—probably in the next couple of weeks—but I do not know whether that will be before stage 2.

There must be a code at the moment. I presume that it is just a matter of adapting the existing code.

The existing code that is used by the police is not based on the approach that would be taken under the bill. The code was drafted by the police in anticipation of the ECHR, but it does not reflect the bill exactly. As I said earlier, the code that the police use relates solely to the police. The code that we envisage will relate much more widely to other public authorities that use the techniques in the bill.

You are talking about bringing in an interim code prior to royal assent being granted. Section 21 provides for an interim code.

The reason why provision for an interim code is included is that we can envisage a situation in which the draft code is available, but is out for wider public consultation and we have not completed the consultation or the affirmative parliamentary procedure that would bring the code of practice into statutory effect for 2 October. That is the date from which the ECHR will apply to police matters.

In such circumstances we would wish to bring in an interim code that would—in all probability—be the same as the draft code that is under discussion. Such a code would be temporarily statutory so that the police were able to act within the terms of the law for an interim period until the code of practice that is the subject of consultation was complete and ready to go through Parliament.

If an interim code was brought in under section 21, is not it possible that that interim code would persist, unless a time scale was specified in section 20(5)? Even if discussion is taking place, there is nothing to bring in a permanent code or to make the interim code permanent, although the interim code might be accepted subject to consultation. Would there be some merit in requiring that a code be brought in by a specified time? My question might be superfluous, but on strict reading of the bill, is not it possible that measures that were brought in under section 21 would become the code of practice because nothing else was introduced?

I take your point. However section 20 introduces a mandatory duty to issue the code. There is also a mandatory duty to consult on the code, so there should be some legal control over Scottish ministers should they fail to consult.

Can I have clarification on section 23(1)(c)? In what circumstances is it envisaged that surveillance will be treated in that way?

We recognise your concern about downgrading surveillance and the Deputy First Minister is aware of that concern. We will tell him again that you have raised the matter with us. It might be that ministers will take a view on that.

I am grateful for that because there seem to be no checks and balances. I do not want to scaremonger, but the bill should provide some balance.

Because section 23(1)(c) provides for intrusive surveillance to be treated as directed surveillance, the points that Mr Snedden made in response to queries about section 5(3), which does not apply to intrusive surveillance, mean that bodies such as SEPA could engage in intrusive surveillance, such as phone tapping and so on. There is nothing to stop quangos tapping phones if intrusive surveillance is reclassified as directed surveillance.

Phone tapping is quite separate from the provisions in the bill. Telephone interception will be included in the UK bill, in which a separate section will clarify that matter. The clause to which you refer covers only the police.

In that case, I misunderstood the section, but intrusive surveillance is defined in section 1(3) as involving

"the presence of an individual, or of any surveillance device, on any residential premises".

I assumed wrongly that "surveillance device" could include a phone tap, because I was not sure what other types of device might be involved. The point of principle remains the same, however. If intrusive surveillance can be downgraded by ministers through subordinate legislation, bodies such as SEPA would be entitled to engage in it.

As Mr Snedden indicated, we are discussing with ministers how that part of the section might work. There is a reasonable chance that we might see some amendments to it. The reasoning behind the section is that it should reflect the fact that the ECHR is a living arrangement and that courts will take views about how we should interpret various types of surveillance. In that way, it will fit the terms of the convention and give ministers the flexibility to respond to that. We recognise that downgrading intrusive surveillance raises specific concerns, which we are prepared to address.

I would be grateful if you did that, because I think that we are pretty uncomfortable with that section.

We will convey your concerns about that point to the Deputy First Minister.

I am sorry to be a bore, convener, but I have one final point that arises from the case report—on Khan v UK—with which we have been provided. I believe that the case has not been finally decided, but the judgment that was issued was in favour of Mr Khan and it awarded him quite a lot of money. That was decided on 5 May. Are you familiar with that case? I was not, until last night.

The case illustrates what seems to be a worrying problem for the Executive, given that it has gone down the route of using secondary legislation. In the case of Khan v UK, Mr Khan was regarded as having a right of privacy under article VIII of the ECHR. The Government said that it was entitled to protect the public interest by reference to the law, but there was no domestic law on the use of covert listening devices that applied. Therefore, because there was no law in place, the European Court of Human Rights decided that Mr Khan's right to privacy had been violated. Am not I right to say that there is no law until such time as those statutory instruments are issued? Therefore, until that is the case, the legislation is by definition ECHR non-compliant.

On the Khan case, my understanding is that the activities that were involved in that case are covered by part 3 of the Police Act 1997, which enacted a code that enables police and customs officers to enter premises. They used a form of trespass because they wished to obtain information on serious crime. I believe that in that case the type of activities in which Mr Khan was involved would have fallen within the definition of serious crime. As far as Khan v UK is concerned, if those circumstances arose after the commencement of the Police Act 1997, they would be covered in Scotland and in England.

In relation to matters that are not connected with serious crime—such as directed surveillance and the use of covert human intelligence sources—the purpose of the legislation is to ensure that for Human Rights Act 1998 purposes the scheme is in accordance with the law on 2 October. The intention is that the provisions—including all the subordinate legislation that is required—will be in force on 2 October so that the police are protected from that date. The police cannot be subjected to challenges under the Human Rights Act 1998 before that date, because it will not have commenced, but from that date they will be subject to protection in terms of the Human Rights Act 1998.

I do not think that there are any other questions.

Thank you very much for coming. We are grateful for the preliminary information that you gave the committee on those matters. It might have taken the wind out of our sails, but it has probably circumvented a lot of discussion.

We would usually discuss our views on the matter, but we have witnesses waiting to talk about bail. Do members want to have a quick discussion while matters are still fresh in our minds, or shall we bring in the witnesses who are waiting and deal with both matters contemporaneously thereafter? I am open-minded; what do other members think?

Bring on the next witnesses.