of the Human Rights Act 1998) is not sufficient by itself for an error to be a serious error.’
It will be interesting to see how the Commissioners interprets this in practice.
While my wish for a single public-facing oversight body has been fulfilled, my wish
that this should be a ‘Commission’ has not. This means that the Investigatory Powers
Commissioner’s Officer (IPCO) will be staffed by Home Office civil servants, with the
Chief Executive managed by a Home Office Director. This raises questions around
independence. In addition, I felt that the creation of a Commission would give the
Commissioner’s staff more powers to request access to information and systems. This
is important to enable rigorous inspections, which will continue to be carried out, in
the majority of cases, by civil servant inspectors rather than judicial commissioners. I
recommend that consideration be given to using the provision under 238(5) of the Act to
delegate statutory powers of inspection to inspectors.
www.iocco-uk.info
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