Lazy Lob
04-22-2007, 09:53 AM
From The Sunday Times
April 22, 2007
Open up, it’s the bee police: 266 laws let officials into your home
nWill Iredale
IF the bee police don’t get you, the hedge inspectors will. A new study has identified 266 laws that give powers not only to the police but to a wide array of government functionaries and council officers to enter private homes, by force if necessary.
Many measures such as antiterrorism laws are justified, according to the researchers. But they argue others have been passed by parliament with little thought given to how, cumulatively, state authority over private homes is being expanded.
Failure to allow an official into a garden who is mandated to inspect hedge heights can lead to a £1,000 fine; it is also an offence to resist inspectors sniffing out “foreign” bees. It is deemed even more serious — worth a £2,500 fine — if a householder attempts to bar entry to someone authorised by the chief inspector of schools to root out unlicensed child-minders.
Harry Snook, a barrister who carried out the research, published today by the Centre for Policy Studies, the centre-right think tank, said: “Originally this kind of law would be used for basic security services or contrac-tual disputes of property. The overwhelming dominant use is now by governmental regulatory agencies and local authorities.”
He warned: “Many powers are drafted so broadly the citizen has little or no protection if officials behave officiously or vindictively.”
The study, entitled Crossing the Threshold: 266 Ways the State can Enter your Home, says Labour and Tory governments have presided over the expansion of state power. The highest proportion of laws identified by Snook currently in force were passed in the 1980s and 1990s, while 25 have been created since 2000. Many are the result of powers originally enacted in Brussels.
One notorious example of inspectors’ zeal occurred in January this year, when two official vets, eight trading standards officers and 12 police officers set up a roadblock and used bolt-cutters to enter a field to slaughter a pet cow called Harriet because a calf born in a different herd on a farm where she had once lived had contracted BSE. They were there under powers handed down by the Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies Regulations 2006.
The nine-year-old Jersey cow was bought seven years ago by David Price, 48, a builder, and Liz Davis, 47, as a pet for their son James, 21, to live with them in Newent, Gloucestershire.
“No one asked if we could open the gate,” said Price. “They just charged through. The police said they had no powers to stop them and we would be arrested if we intervened. It was something you expected to see in somewhere like Russia. How they can have that sort of power here?”
Price and a group of locals prevented Harriet being taken, despite the risk of a £5,000 fine or two years in prison. The inspectors backed down and Harriet was allowed to live pending a judicial review, but died before a decision could be reached.
“The overall picture is a mass of confused and intrusive regulation,” said Jesse Norman, a senior fellow at the Policy Exchange think tank.
“The result is Harriet the cow and similar episodes; or more generally, a public culture obsessed with health and safety issues, huge government bureaucracy, endless pettifogging, official intrusion and little public understanding of the rights of the citizen.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1687528.ece
Here is the study in pdf format if anyone has the time or inclination.
http://www.cps.org.uk/cpsfile.asp?id=693
April 22, 2007
Open up, it’s the bee police: 266 laws let officials into your home
nWill Iredale
IF the bee police don’t get you, the hedge inspectors will. A new study has identified 266 laws that give powers not only to the police but to a wide array of government functionaries and council officers to enter private homes, by force if necessary.
Many measures such as antiterrorism laws are justified, according to the researchers. But they argue others have been passed by parliament with little thought given to how, cumulatively, state authority over private homes is being expanded.
Failure to allow an official into a garden who is mandated to inspect hedge heights can lead to a £1,000 fine; it is also an offence to resist inspectors sniffing out “foreign” bees. It is deemed even more serious — worth a £2,500 fine — if a householder attempts to bar entry to someone authorised by the chief inspector of schools to root out unlicensed child-minders.
Harry Snook, a barrister who carried out the research, published today by the Centre for Policy Studies, the centre-right think tank, said: “Originally this kind of law would be used for basic security services or contrac-tual disputes of property. The overwhelming dominant use is now by governmental regulatory agencies and local authorities.”
He warned: “Many powers are drafted so broadly the citizen has little or no protection if officials behave officiously or vindictively.”
The study, entitled Crossing the Threshold: 266 Ways the State can Enter your Home, says Labour and Tory governments have presided over the expansion of state power. The highest proportion of laws identified by Snook currently in force were passed in the 1980s and 1990s, while 25 have been created since 2000. Many are the result of powers originally enacted in Brussels.
One notorious example of inspectors’ zeal occurred in January this year, when two official vets, eight trading standards officers and 12 police officers set up a roadblock and used bolt-cutters to enter a field to slaughter a pet cow called Harriet because a calf born in a different herd on a farm where she had once lived had contracted BSE. They were there under powers handed down by the Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies Regulations 2006.
The nine-year-old Jersey cow was bought seven years ago by David Price, 48, a builder, and Liz Davis, 47, as a pet for their son James, 21, to live with them in Newent, Gloucestershire.
“No one asked if we could open the gate,” said Price. “They just charged through. The police said they had no powers to stop them and we would be arrested if we intervened. It was something you expected to see in somewhere like Russia. How they can have that sort of power here?”
Price and a group of locals prevented Harriet being taken, despite the risk of a £5,000 fine or two years in prison. The inspectors backed down and Harriet was allowed to live pending a judicial review, but died before a decision could be reached.
“The overall picture is a mass of confused and intrusive regulation,” said Jesse Norman, a senior fellow at the Policy Exchange think tank.
“The result is Harriet the cow and similar episodes; or more generally, a public culture obsessed with health and safety issues, huge government bureaucracy, endless pettifogging, official intrusion and little public understanding of the rights of the citizen.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1687528.ece
Here is the study in pdf format if anyone has the time or inclination.
http://www.cps.org.uk/cpsfile.asp?id=693