No10 blocks judges’ surveillance powers

DOWNING Street last night poured cold water on plans to strip ministers of the power to authorise spying operations.

The Anderson report said putting a panel of judges in charge of issuing warrants for intrusive surveillance would improve public confidence.

The move was immediately welcomed by civil l i berties groups, who have protested for years about the power being in the hands of the Foreign Secretary and Home Secretary.

But Downing Street and Theresa May both immediately i ndicated t hey will r ej ect the idea – triggering a potentially huge row in the Commons later this year. There are concerns in Whitehall over the logistics of judges responding to urgent requests in the middle of the night.

The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: ‘The starting point on the issue of authorisation of warrants i s that we need a system with proper oversight that allows us to respond quickly and eff ectively to threats of national security or serious crime.

Senior Tory backbencher David Davis hinted the Government could now find itself in trouble passing new surveillance laws, with Labour also supporting the judges’ proposals.

The f ormer shadow home secretary said: ‘I know of no other civilised state which allows ministers to decide on such serious invasions of individual privacy without recourse to the courts.

‘Parliament will have to come to i ts own conclusion as to whether a system that relies on politicians r ather than judges to approve surveillance and intercept is acceptable in a modern democracy.’

But Professor Anthony Glees, from the University of Buckingham’s Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies, said Mr Anderson was ‘barking entirely up the wrong tree’.

He added: ‘Judges have a duty to uphold the law, politicians have a very primary duty to deliver national security and in these cases, which are all about national security, it is entirely right that an elected politician should decide.’