Marc Vallee has expressed his fear new laws to replace Section 44 of the Terrorism Act may mean a return to police randomly stopping and searching photographers
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Photographers are concerned that new stop and search powers will mean "business as usual" for those on the ground, photographer Marc Vallee said today. In January the government announced new proposals to replace controversial Section 44 of the Terrorism Act stop and search powers with a "more tightly defined power" and necessity test.
The proposals, then introduced in March in a written ministerial statement to the House of Commons under Section 47a, followed a review of counter-terrorism legislation after the European Court of Human Rights' ruled last year that Section 44 powers were illegal.
Under the proposed new powers a senior police officer would be able to make an authorisation for stop and search powers "where they have reason to suspect a terrorist attack will take place and searches are necessary to prevent it". Speaking on Radio 4 Today, Vallee said for photographers on the ground the new power "is exactly the same".
"There will be no suspicion by the police officer on the ground that you're a terrorist or that you're engaged in any terrorism activity, you can just be randomly stopped and searched.
"Photographers are very concerned that this is going to be Section 44 again, we're going to be reliving the last decade of stop and searches. Particularly with the Royal Wedding coming up, it's fundamentally the fear is that it's going to be business as usual."
Responding to Vallee's concerns chief constable Andy Trotter of the Association of Chief Police Officers disagreed, saying that under the new rules photographers should be allowed to go about their business in the normal way.
"It is no offence to take a photograph of a public building or a persona and I don't want police officers spending any time bothering professional photographers or tourists just doing what people are allowed to do," he said.
"This new power is actually very restrictive on the police, it has a very high threshold and I believe very few of them [authorisations to have a stop and search power] will be granted, this is going to be for short durations, for specific locations, for specific reasons when it's absolutely necessary.
"This isn't a replacement for Section 44, this is a very specific new order made only when necessary.
"This is a very tightly controlled piece of legislation which I think will ensure that people can go about their business not bothered by police officers and only used in very specific circumstances in very specific places, not forgetting the terrorism threat is at severe.
"We have real threats to this country and from time to time will very rarely need these powers. And even within this there's a specific part of the code about respecting the right of photographers. Photographer's rights are enshrined into the code."
