Judge backs bugged evidence

Top legal figure backs uses of evidence from phone taps

News, 29 March 2005

Lord McCluskey has given his support to the need to use evidence from covert surveillance techniques such as phone tapping or computer spying in court.

The retired judge argues in today's Scotsman that the security threat to the UK from terrorists makes it necessary to place some restrictions on civil liberty to protect public security.

His remarks come after it was revealed that 250 secret orders to bug telephones were signed by the authorities in Scotland in 2002, a 150 per cent increase in surveillance operations.

He said that "normal constraints" on terrorists no longer work and that thousands of lives could be lost by the actions of a few martyrs.

However one of Scotland’s leading human rights lawyers has reacted to Lord McCluskey’s suggestions, claiming the threat of terrorism is being used as a platform to push a series of ever more draconian measures onto the statute books.

Fraser Gillies, of Edinburgh and Glasgow based Wright Johnston & Mackenzie (WJM) LLP said today: “A blanket approach to the problem may not be appropriate and the fairness of trials could be affected by the introduction of such evidence.

“Measures are continually being proposed which would infringe upon our human rights, potentially in breach of article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights. The proposals should be scrutinised very carefully.

"Lord McCluskey's reference to 'the security threat to the UK' is reminiscent of the arguments put forward by the Government in support of the Prevention of Terrorism Bill, some clauses of which have proved highly controversial."

Mr Gillies added that other European states have not seen fit to enact measures like those contained in the Prevention of Terrorism Bill. He said: "Even Spain, a country which has actually suffered a major terrorist attack on its own soil since September 11th, has not done so.”