Terror law used to stop thousands ‘just to balance racial statistics’

Thousands of people are being stopped and searched by the police under counter-terrorism powers simply to provide a racial balance in official statistics, the government’s official anti-terror law watchdog has revealed.

Lord Carlile said in his annual report that he has got “ample anecdotal evidence”, adding that it was “totally wrong” and an invasion of civil liberties to stop and search people simply to racially balance the statistics.

“I can well understand the concerns of the police that they should be free from allegations of prejudice,” he said. “But it is not a good use of precious resources if they waste them on self-evidently unmerited searches.”

The official reviewer of counter-terrorist legislation said there was little or no evidence that the use of section 44 stop-and-search powers by the police can prevent an act of terrorism.

“Whilst arrests for other crime have followed searches under the section, none of the many thousands of searches has ever resulted in a conviction for a terrorism offence. Its utility has been questioned publicly and privately by senior Metropolitan police staff with wide experience of terrorism policing,” said Carlile.

He added that such searches were stopping between 8,000-10,000 people a month.

Under the Terrorism Act 2000, the “section 44 stops” allow the police to search anyone in a designated area without suspicion that an offence has occurred. But Carlile is critical of the use of the powers used by the Met police, saying he felt “a sense of frustration” that the force did not limit its section 44 authorisations to some boroughs or parts of boroughs but used them across its entire area.

“I cannot see a justification for the whole of the Greater London area being covered permanently. The intention of the section was not to place London under permanent special search powers.”

None of the many thousands of searches had ever led to a conviction for a terrorist offence, he said. He noted, too, that the damage done to community relations was “undoubtedly considerable”.

Examples of poor, or unnecessary use, of section 44 abounded. “I have evidence of cases where the person stopped is so obviously far from any known terrorism profile that, realistically, there is not the slightest possibility of him/her being a terrorist, and no other feature to justify the stop.”

The Met has announced a review of how it uses section 44 powers. And the home secretary, Alan Johnson, is to issue fresh guidance to the police, warning that counter-terrorism must not be used to stop people taking photographs of on-duty officers.

Carlile uses his annual report to endorse complaints from professional and amateur photographers that counter-terror powers are being used to threaten prosecution if pictures are taken of officers on duty.

He said the power was only intended to cover images likely to be of use to a terrorist: “It is inexcusable for police officers ever to use this provision to interfere with the rights of individuals to take photographs.” The police had to come to terms with the increased scrutiny of their activities by the public, afforded by equipment such as video-enabled mobile phones. “Police officers who use force or threaten force in this context run the real risk of being prosecuted themselves for one or more of several possible criminal and disciplinary offences,” he warned.

He mentioned an incident in which two Austrian tourists were rebuked by officers for photographing Walthamstow bus station, in east London.

David Miliband wants MI5 interrogation kept secret

The foreign secretary, David Miliband, told MPs today that he will not allow the public to see the secret interrogation policy that is at the heart of allegations that MI5 has been colluding in the torture of British citizens.

Gordon Brown has ordered that the policy be rewritten after a series of people complained that they had been questioned by British intelligence officers after being asked the same questions under torture by Pakistani and Bangladeshi intelligence officers. Brown has also pledged that the policy would be made public.

However, Miliband told MPs on the Commons foreign affairs select committee today that he has no intention of making public the policy as it currently stands, because of the risk of prejudicing a number of on-going court cases. Pressed further, he said that the currently policy would not be published even once those court cases have concluded, as to do so would “lend succour to our enemies”.

He added that the policy had been reviewed by the Intelligence and Security Committee, the group of MPs and peers who are supposed to oversee the activities of Britain’s intelligence agencies, and that the ISC was able to “square the circle between secrecy and accountability”.

The ISC sits in secret, its members and its reports to the prime minister are published after being censored in consultation with the agencies themselves.

Asked about the morality of receiving intelligence that has been extracted through torture, Miliband told the committee: “We would never procure intelligence, or procure evidence through torture. We would never say to another intelligence agency ‘Please get us information about X’ and, you know, abandon our legal and ethical commitments in respect of how you find that.”

Evidence heard in court has contradicted that, however. Last September Manchester Crown Court heard how MI5 and Greater Manchester Police drew up a list of questions for use by a notorious Pakistani intelligence agency which was unlawfully detaining Rangzieb Ahmed, a man from Rochdale. By the time Ahmed was deported to Britain 13 months later three of his fingernails were missing. Furthermore, civil proceedings brought on behalf of Binyam Mohamed, a British resident who was freed from Guantánamo earlier this year, has resulted in the disclosure of the questions that MI5 asked be put to him, despite knowing that he had been tortured in Pakistan and having reason to believe he was being tortured after being rendered elsewhere.

Miliband admitted that the the co-operation between MI5 and MI6 with foreign security and intelligence agencies during counter terrorism operations could risk detainees being mistreated.

“It is not possible to eradicate the risk of mistreatment. A judgment needs to be made”, he said in a letter to the committee. “We cannot act in isolation in order to protect British citizens.” He acknowledged that some countries had “different legal obligations and different standards to our own in the way they detain people and treat those they have detained”. He added that this “cannot stop us from working with them”.

As well as allegations of collusion in torture in Pakistan, where British intelligence officers have questioned people being held by agencies whose use of torture is widely documented, there have been allegations of complicity in the torture of British citizens detained in Bangladesh, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.

Miliband refused to answer questions from the committee yesterday about allegations that MI5 officers had put the same questions to detainees that had earlier been put, under torture, by foreign intelligence officers, claiming that to do so may prejudice ongoing court cases.

The only cases currently before the courts are those in which the British government and its intelligence agencies are being sued for damages by the alleged victims of torture.

Referring to the secret interrogation policy, Miliband did tell the committee: “Before 2004 the guidance was informal, after 2004 it was more formal. It is now comprehensive, including comprehensive legal advice to all officers.”

He also said the interrogation policy would be made available to defence lawyers representing terrorist trial defendants who allege that they were tortured by foreign agents, and then questioned by British intelligence officers, before being deported to the UK and prosecuted. “Surely, it is founding principle of our legal system: defending counsel can call for whatever papers they want,” he said. “Defence counsel having these papers isn’t the same as putting them on the internet.”

Ed Davey, the Lib Dem shadow spokesman of foreign affairs, said that British intelligence officers had been given “inadequate” guidance on their obligations while interrogating detainees held overseas.

A prince and a philistine

Perhaps we should not be surprised that the Prince of Wales, ­working “prince to prince”, has persuaded the Qatar royal family to reject Richard ­Rogers’s ­design for the new ­housing project on the site of the Chelsea Barracks. As Rogers says, architecture “evolves and moves forward”. The Prince of Wales does not. For all his pretensions, he personifies a mindless admiration for antiquity. He thinks of Britain as a theme park where gawping tourists and sycophantic “subjects” can briefly relive the past. The monarchy is, of course, the central exhibit – described by its more sophisticated adherents as decorative, convenient and harmless. It ceases to be any of those things when it imposes its prejudices on the public.

Prince Charles is clearly a ­philistine – a quality which would not be a ­handicap in his line of work were it not for the presumption that prompts him to believe he is an expert on subjects about which he is ignorant. He knows nothing about architecture, as Poundbury proves. It is not surprising that Clarence House primly announces: “We don’t want to get into a debate with Richard Rogers.” That pathetic admission is a perfect example of the prince wanting to have his organic cake and eat it. He is prepared to step outside the bounds of royal propriety to interfere in the life of the country, but when asked to defend his intrusion he becomes again the heir to the throne who must avoid controversy.

Richard Rogers, in an admirably ­moderate response to the Chelsea outrage, takes pity on the prince – “an unemployed individual looking for a job”. It is fair to say in the royal defence that the long wait debilitated all his predecessors. But that does not excuse behaviour that should alarm convinced monarchists and add thousands of recruits to the republican cause. His interference in the Chelsea ­Barracks decision exemplifies all that is most unacceptable about a hereditary monarchy. As a result of blood and birth, a middle-aged man of no particular merit enjoys a special status in society. More sensible members of the royal family are discreet about their “divine right”. Charles recklessly chooses to use his position to advocate his favourite causes – alternative medicine, badger culling, architectural pastiche.

The result, in our still deferential ­society, is the propagation of weird ideas. I recall a past president of the Royal Institute of British Architects rhetorically asking me to estimate how many new council offices would, thanks to the Prince of Wales, have polystyrene Corinthian pillars in their public rooms. But in modern Britain, the next head of state should be more than a bad and highly expensive joke. The one good thing to come out of the whole Chelsea Barracks scandal is the attention that it focuses on the anachronism which is the hereditary monarchy and the ­consequences of a royal family. No one can imagine an elected head of state interfering ­capriciously and arbitrarily in a quasi-judicial planning decision. The idea that his or her offspring might claim a special right to influence the character of a major building development is absurd. Therein lies the truth about the monarchy. A “royal family” – superior because of its genes – is an absurdity.

Perhaps, as long as the royal family plays within the rules, that only matters to egalitarians who hate the idea of a hierarchical society in which the Windsors are the publicly acknowledged pinnacle. In this tight little right little island it is difficult to stimulate much opposition to a hereditary monarchy as long as it accepts that its function is to be polite to foreign heads of state, present the FA Cup to the winner and make platitudinous speeches to mark solemn occasions. But once the sovereign and her family begin to believe that they have an intrinsic importance and a duty to propagate a particular point of view, the argument that they are a benign curiosity is more difficult to sustain. Where is it likely to end? If the Prince of Wales can exercise covert influence over what sort of building goes up in Chelsea, how can we be sure that he will not at least try to use his royal prestige and connections to impose his will on other decisions which are none of his business?

As a privy councillor I am entitled to give advice to the Queen. If she wants the monarchy to continue on its untroubled way, she should tell her son to respect the restraints of his position. Better still, she should let it be known through the Palace PR machine that she disapproves of his demarche to the Qatari royal family and does not believe that, because they are one feudal monarchy, the Prince of Wales should behave as if he is the heir to another. She might also point out that his reverence for all things ancient does not seem to include respect for the constitution and that republicans like me rejoice at the damage he does to the idea of monarchy.

Roy Hattersley