New government powers to snoop on your post – forced through by Labour and Tories

The ramming through of the Digital Economy Bill during Parliament’s ‘wash-up’ period has got the most attention, online at least. However there is another measure that was forced through, and this one without even a proper vote, which should have people up in arms.

A change to Section 106 of the Postal Services Act 2000 might not at first sound that important, but the change means that in future postal operators (such as the Royal Mail) can decide to detain any item of post and send it on to Customs and Excise for inspection.

Previously this could be done, but only if you were first told that your post was being intercepted and (if you are in the UK) given a chance to be present. Both those safeguards against abuse of power and unnecessary intrusions into privacy have been removed. Instead all the interceptions can happen in secrecy – and secrecy means lack of accountability for how well or badly the power is used.

And it gets worse. The Government claims the clause is just about tackling tobacco smuggling. Yet you know what’s missing from the new rules? Any mention of them only applying to tobacco. Or only applying to smuggling.

And it gets even worse. Because how did this get through the House of Commons? It got through with barely a debate and with no vote.

It was left to the Liberal Democrats (again) to raise the issues that should be debated – well done Evan Harris – but no Labour or Conservative MPs joined him and – courtesy of the Labour/Conservative deal on how to handle the bill – there was no vote.

As Ben Williams on his [now closed] site puts it:

Because it was Clause 59 of the Finance Bill, and there were only three hours for debate, it didn’t get reached for discussion. In fact, by the time MPs got on to the bit where they consider the bill in detail, line-by-line, there were only 28 minutes left to look at the whole bill.

Think about that for a moment.

28 minutes for a line-by-line examination of the bill that would usually – for the Finance Bill – take months in Committee.

This change to the law was made without a single second of proper scrutiny – and without a single vote. Worse, it was made without even the opportunity for a vote.

And that is what the Conservative Party and Labour Party wanted.