Member

The amendment’s prohibitions on the deployment of agents provocateurs would also go some way to ensuring proper discipline in the use of these awesome powers, focusing them truly on the needs of national security as opposed to individual gain and abuse. The amendment would bring the UK closer to international comparators, rebalancing the relationship between state power and individual rights and restoring a measure of democratic legitimacy to an area of the law that has for too long operated in the shadows. It would not be an impediment to effective policing, for effective policing cannot take place unless trust is restored—and that can be done only where proper safeguards are in place against precisely the kinds of harms that have already been proven, time and again. I beg to move.