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Investigatory Powers Commissioner ’s Annual Report 2019
12. Law Enforcement Agencies
and Police
Overview
12.1
In 2019, we inspected all territorial forces within the UK, including Regional Organised
Crime Units (ROCUs) and Counter Terrorism Policing Units, together with other police
forces and law enforcement agencies including the British Transport Police, Ministry of
Defence Police, Royal Air Force Police, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC), the
National Crime Agency (NCA) and Immigration Enforcement and Border Force. We also
inspected covert activity of the Sovereign Based Area Police in Cyprus and the overseas
covert human intelligence sources (CHIS) activity conducted by UK law enforcement
agencies (LEAs), which included meeting their partner agencies in the US.
12.2
We conduct additional inspections if we have concerns or note repeated poor performance.
We conducted four additional inspections in 2019, one of which was followed up personally
by the Investigatory Powers Commissioner (IPC), then Sir Adrian Fulford, through a
meeting with senior officials. One re-inspected Force had been subject to five inspections
since 2016. Many of the issues raised in this year’s report have featured repeatedly
since that time, such as the integrity of the Central Record, considerations in relation to
proportionality and use of the urgency procedures. This Force was the subject of a visit by
the IPC in January 2020.
Findings
12.3
The level of compliance at the forces we have visited has generally been high, although we
continue to make recommendations in relation to record keeping. As discussed below, the
differences in the detail of what is required of applicants and Authorising Officers (AOs) can
at times be confusing and we believe would benefit from being more consistent. We have
made this recommendation to the Home Office, which is responsible for setting policy and
guidance across the range of powers. Inevitably, changes in process and the introduction
of new authorisation structures leads to different interpretation and can cause some
confusion as forces work to comply with the new guidelines; we have seen this play out in
terms of targeted equipment interference (TEI) documentation. However, we have noted
that the level of engagement with the new processes, available training and discussions
about developing consistent policy has been good.
12.4
Within many smaller forces the financial and manpower reductions over recent years have
meant that whilst there may be the desire to use covert powers in investigations, they
are often not pursued or have been curtailed, as the necessary resources are simply not
available. Although we were not able to inspect some of the smaller forces in 2018, we
did not find in our 2019 inspections that there was an adverse impact on compliance from
the cutbacks. In fact, in 2019 there has been an increase in the number of inspections
concluding with no formal recommendations.