Typical "mission creep"

This Labour government's mania for control and raising money by any means possible will soon have another wing to it. Ths Times reports that:

"Draconian police powers designed to deprive crime barons of luxury lifestyles are being extended to councils, quangos and agencies to use against the public, The Times has learnt.

The right to search homes, seize cash, freeze bank accounts and confiscate property will be given to town hall officials and civilian investigators employed by organisations as diverse as Royal Mail, the Rural Payments Agency and Transport for London.

The measure, being pushed through by Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, comes into force next week and will deploy some of the most powerful tools available to detectives against fare dodgers, families in arrears with council tax and other minor offenders.

The radical extension of the Proceeds of Crime Act, through a Statutory Instrument which is not debated by parliament, has been condemned by the chairman of the Police Federation. Paul McKeever said that he was shocked to learn that the decision to hand over “intrusive powers” to people who were not police was made without consultation or debate.

“The Proceeds of Crime Act is a very powerful tool in the hands of police and police-related agencies and it shouldn’t be treated lightly,” Mr McKeever said. “There is a behind the scenes creep of powers occurring here and I think the public will be very surprised. They would want such very intrusive powers to be kept in the hands of warranted officers and other law enforcement bodies which are vetted to a very high standard rather than given to local councils.”

His concerns are shared by leading legal figures, who believe that there is a risk of local authorities abusing the powers to search people’s homes, seize their money, freeze their accounts and confiscate their property. They also see parallels with the spread of counter-terrorist surveillance powers to monitor refuse collections and school catchment areas. "

This Labour government may actually be a danger to the general population; a general election should be forced on the dithering fool Gordon Brown, the ever plotting Peter Mandelson, the naive David Miliband and the apparently 'trying to be as authoritarian as David Blunkett' Alan Johnson.

So are we to live in a state where as Sir Ivan Lawrence, QC, a former senior Conservative MP, said

"Far worse is the encouragement being given to non-police bodies to search for what they think are proceeds of crime but may not be and subject the victim to the draconian and manifestly unjust processes of the Proceeds of Crime Act. Does anyone in Government understand that if you give prosecutors, who are supposed to be unbiased ministers of justice, the bribe of a proportion of the money they can find, you are actually poisoning the roots of justice in our society?"

The Times lists the POCA powers as (I emphasis the most worrying items):

"• Freezing a suspect’s assets at the beginning of a criminal investigation

• Presumption that all an individual’s assets are acquired through a criminal lifestyle

• Search for and confiscate cash of £1,000 or more

• Demand that banks and other institutions disclose financial information

• Seek confiscation order for assets after a conviction

• Collect a share of confiscated assets "