‘Terror powers used to spy on paper boys’ was the headline in the Cambridge Evening News a few weeks ago when the County Council too a newsagent to court for employing children without a permit. The article went further and said:

‘Afterwards, [the newsagents] hit out at the council for monitoring them and their paper boys by using the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), which was drawn up to help authorities prevent serious crime, including terrorism.’

Since this seemed pretty serious, I thought I would look into the matter and use my position as Chair of the Corporate Services Scrutiny Committe to find out more about what the County Council is doing.

Well, the article turned out to be very misleading and it was extremely useful to find out the truth. RIPA is not an anti-terrorism law, but is a law designed to prevent Councils misusing the powers they already have to obtain evidence. It puts in place a series of controls to ensure that, before they use these powers, they have to go through an approval process.  Mostly, the surveillance powers are used by Trading Standards to catch rogue traders, but occasionally they are used for other purposes, and RIPA is there to prevent over-zealous use.

At the Scrutiny Committee meeting, we heard of the arrangements the Council has in place, and made some suggesions for improvement. However, we were satisfied that most of the controls were adequate.