The Home Secretary has announced that councils ‘might in future’ face restrictions on their use of covert surveillance measures. Some councils have been misusing their powers under RIPA , apparently, to snoop on parents lying about their home address in order to get their children into a preferred school, or on residents putting their bins out on the wrong day etc.

It seems obvious to me that these powers should only be used for offences that would result in a prison sentence and that council leaders should always be the ones authorising their use. The hypocrisy of the government in blaming councils for snooping in this way is breathtaking. This is a government, after all, that has given the UK the dubious honour of being the most watched state outside of China and Russia, with over 4million CCTV cameras, one for every 14 people. And of course, given our hugely over-centralised system, councils have no choice but to do the government’s bidding. Contact Point, for example, the new ‘national children’s database’, which will include the personal details of every child in the country, is a Labour government creation and councils have no choice put to put it into place.