Leading article: Time to dismantle our surveillance society

The Government should repeal the RIPA act, not tinker with it

The latest report from the Interception of Communications Commissioner affords us a glimpse of the true scale of official surveillance in modern Britain. It shows us that some 500,000 requests for access to private email and phone data came from public bodies in 2008 – and that this included an astonishing 1,500 requests for surveillance powers from town councils.

We know a little about what these requests from councils were for. Cases have emerged of local authorities using the powers to monitor individuals suspected of littering, fly-tipping and dog fouling. It is appalling that such minor offences are being used as a pretext for invading people's privacy. The sheer number of such intrusions indicated by these figures makes the scandal still worse.

The Government feebly points out these latest figures show a fall on the number of requests for information made in 2007. But they still represent a 40 per cent increase on 2006. The direction of travel is still towards ever-greater state surveillance.

This can all be traced back to a single, spectacularly foolish, act of Parliament: the Regulations of Investigatory Powers Act of 2003. This was presented by ministers as a crucial tool that would assist the authorities in combating terrorism and serious crime. The Government was warned at the time that the act was too sweeping. Many pointed out that it contained inadequate safeguards and would be misused by officials. Yet ministers refused to listen. And now the dire predictions of the act's critics have been amply fulfilled. RIPA has become not a power of last resort, as ministers intended, but of first resort. Intrusions into people's privacy by officials have now become routine.

Stung by public anger, the Home Office launched a public consultation on RIPA's implementation. They are talking of revised "codes of practice" for public authorities. But rather than tinkering with the legislation they should simply repeal RIPA and start afresh. As the chief surveillance commissioner, Sir Christopher Rose, wrote in his report last month: "If... the Government does not wish public authorities to use powers conferred by Parliament, the proper course... is for Parliament to remove those powers."

Most would agree that the police and intelligence services need the right to place terror suspects and organised criminals under surveillance, so long as this is sanctioned by a judge. A specific, tightly-written, law to that affect should be created. But as for councils, it is impossible to see any justification for permitting them to retain these intrusive surveillance powers.

Sir Simon Milton, chairman of the Local Government Association, argues that RIPA helps councils to catch benefit fraudsters and the like. But there are other means of preventing such crimes that do not involve council officials riding roughly over the privacy of local residents. The social benefits of catching petty criminals need to be set against the social harm that results from infringing the privacy of the innocent. Under the present arrangements, the harm significantly outweighs any benefit councils have been able to point to.

The Government now has a clear choice. It can repeal RIPA and demonstrate that it has learned these lessons. Or it can attempt to fiddle with this irredeemably flawed act and prove that, despite the show of concern, it remains essentially contemptuous of our privacy.