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Cornucopia

pphillips wrote: »

It does not change the duty to enforce - TV Licensing are still able to enforce from a distance whether it be by covert surveillance, letters or court summons.

Of those, the only one that actually applies are the threatening letters. I don't have an issue with them as a concept, however, they (a) need to be at a rational frequency (not every month), and (b) they need to recognise both the possibility of innocence and the rights of defendants (neither of which is something they trouble themselves much with at the moment).

They have no authority for general covert surveillance (only "electronic" surveillance to detect TV use). Given various reports, it seems like the legal definition for that needs tightening up. (Observation of light spill by eye is NOT electronic surveillance).

As for summons, BBC-TVL do not have the same kind of simplified administrative process as for speed cameras. They need first-hand evidence of the offence connected to a named individual. That generally comes via a confession (which raises more legal questions).

Yes - this does fulfil one of the conditions but S366(1) is clear that there are three different conditions that must be satisfied before a search warrant can be issued by the magistrate.

The threshold of "reasonable grounds for believing" does not seem particularly high. The limiting factor for the number of warrants (which is tiny) seems to be cost and the goodwill of the Courts.

As a general principle, I don't think that a public authority should be undermining people's rights, or making threats about the legal consequences of exercising them. I can see the trickiness of the issue, but I think they need to try harder to observe people's rights to exercise WOIRA without immediately threatening them with the fulfilment of one of the requirements for a Warrant. That response is ultimately pointless, anyway, because exercising the same right via HRA would not provoke the same response, and nor would a notification of PACE rights (in England).

There's also an outstanding question about Scotland, where BBC-TVL have consistently refused to recognise these rights whether they are specified in terms of Common Law or Article 8.

The common law right and Article 8 are consistent and work in conjunction with each other. Surely it would be unacceptable state interference if the law were to replace the presumption of consent (to receive letters, visitors etc) with a requirement of informed consent.

I think it comes down to where we draw the line in terms of "interference with privacy". I do not see a postal delivery as being such an interference. However, I do see a warrant-less search of premises as being so. I also have a rare "win" against the BBC in terms of a historic BBC Trust ruling that they must apply PACE Code B(5) Search by Consent, however the BBC do not appear ever to have addressed this obligation. Therefore their bad faith in the matter is already established.

More generally, I have looked for evidence that consent is in play, but there appears to be no general principle (which is what you would expect). The other HRA provisions would not be susceptible to a consent exemption, so I don't see why privacy would be. Where consent is legally important, it is also generally framed as "fully informed consent", so there is a question there about how the BBC and their agents go about obtaining such consent (and documenting it, this being a requirement in other areas).

It would probably be a breach of the BBC Charter & Agreement but I can't see how it could be a breach of the ECHR.

We're dealing with some quite basic legal concepts, here. (The very fact that we can have such a discussion about something that should be totally clear to the Public is a concern).

In essence, the issue is that Article 8 protects our privacy, and specifically it is unlawful for a public authority such as the BBC to breach it (since the necessary conditions for exemption do not appear to be met). Given that situation, I don't think it is appropriate (and it ought to be unlawful) for the BBC or their agents to communicate in such a way as to undermine or contradict those rights. That contradiction can come in policy (in the wording of policy or letters) - and it does, and it can come in day-to-day unsupervised interaction on the doorstep - and it does.