ABSTRACT
Once the Act is in force, it will affect the actions of public authorities,
since they are bound by the rights it receives into domestic law. The
current government has also put in place a new, extremely
comprehensive statutory framework for State surveillance and for
counter-terrorism. The provisions are continued in the Regulation of
Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) 2000 and the Terrorism Act 2000. It is
necessary for the new RIPA provisions to be in place as soon as possible
since otherwise various practices of the police and security agents might
be found to be incompatible with the Convention guarantees. This is true
to a lesser extent of provisions of the Terrorism Act. However, although
the provisions of the two Bills were declared in Parliament to be
compatible with the guarantees, this must remain a matter that will have
to be determined in future. The RIPA is an intensely controversial Bill
which attracted wide ranging critical comment and which was amended
quite significantly in the Lords. The Terrorism Bill was also amended in
the Lords; crucially the definition of terrorism was radically altered. The
RIPA and the Terrorism Act are likely to come into force in late October
Although these two Acts were introduced either in order to meet
the demands of the Convention or with those demands in mind, the
strong possibility arises that in certain aspects they have failed to meet
them.
