Officials now have 1,200 powers of entry to private homes

A fresh bid to curb wide-ranging powers for officials to enter private homes was launched in the Lords yesterday.

Spearheading the move, Tory Lord Selsdon said he had unearthed about 1,200 powers of entry in dozens of different Acts of Parliament.

He called for a code of practice to put strict limits on entry powers for all cases except those involving suspected serious crime or terrorism.

Introducing his Powers of Entry Bill, Lord Selsdon said he had been pursuing the issue for more than 30 years and had introduced several previous Bills.

He said the problem was that no one knew exactly how many powers of entry there were, adding: "Worse than that, the householder has no idea either. "The householder feels more and more insecure. He fears the knock on the door."

Under the Bill, entry would have to be authorised by a judge or magistrate and the householder would have to agree to it.

A maximum of four officials would be allowed in, only between 8am and 6pm on Mondays to Fridays, or between 8am and 1pm on a Saturday.

Backing the Bill, crossbencher Lord Scott of Foscote, a law lord and former Attorney General, said far too many powers of entry were exercisable not only without the consent of the occupier but also without the authority of a warrant.

Tory Lord Marlesford welcomed the Bill as an attempt to overthrow "overbearing, disproportionate and intrusive" powers. Too often, powers of entry were made without a magistrate and followed by "every officious officer", he said.

For the Liberal Democrats, Baroness Hamwee supported the premise of the Bill but cautioned that the situation required a "rather more complex and detailed, more subtle approach".

For the Tories, Lord Skelmersdale said: "Powers of entry have become so widespread and so draconian over this Government's time in office that there has arisen a considerable amount of unease to put it mildly, both in and outside Parliament." He added: "The whole purpose of this Bill is that we can't go on like this and I commend Lord Selsdon for bringing this issue forward."

Government spokesman Lord Brett suggested the Bill amounted to an "inflexible approach" towards limiting powers of entry. He told peers the Government did recognise there were "difficulties" that needed to be addressed.

He added: "What we are proposing is that any new or amending powers of entry are put before Parliament for consideration, in that case the sponsoring department must comply with a code of practice that sets out the considerations that I believe, many of the points that peers have raised today."

The Bill gained an unopposed second reading but without Government support is unlikely to become law.

New Labour invents 33 new crimes every month

Thanks to New Labour, it is now illegal to swim in the wreck of the Titanic or to sell game birds killed on a Sunday or Christmas Day – eventualities overlooked by previous governments.

New Labour has made 4,289 activities illegal since the 1997 election, at a rate of about one a day – twice the speed with which the previous Conservative government created crimes.

Gordon Brown was the worst offender, with his government inventing 33 new crimes a month. Tony Blair's administration made 27 new offences each month.

Some of the more inventive crimes dreamt up by New Labour include "disturbing a pack of eggs when directed not to by an authorised officer" and reporting the door of a merchant ship to be closed and locked when it isn't.

New Labour also introduced laws against activities which would already have been covered by previous legislation – such as "causing a nuclear explosion."

Liberal Democrat home office spokesman Chris Huhne, who brought the figures to light, will criticise the government's administrative binge in a speech tonight.

He will say New Labour has spent 12 years "suffering from the most acute and prolonged bout of legislative diarrhoea", calling the rate of 69 new Home Affairs Bills in 12 years "staggering".

The Electronic Police State Report - UK is joint 4th with Russia

A report by internet security consultancy Cryptohippe has ranked the UK as being equally as repressive as Russia, in terms of having become an Electronic Police State.

This result emerges from Cryptohippie’s recently published Electronic Police State 2008 Report.

This is the first in what are intended to be a series of annual reports that will audit the "State use of electronic technologies to record, organize, search and distribute forensic evidence against its citizens".

The audit focusses on 17 factors, ranging from requirement to produce documents on demand, through to the extent to which states force ISP’s and phone companies to retain data, the blurring of boundaries between police and intelligence work and ultimately the breakdown of the principles of habeas corpus.

The UK has been ranked as having a score of 3.18 on the scale used, the same as the score obtained by Russia.

Only China, North Korea, and Belarus obtained higher scores, indicating that the UK is the most repressive electronic police state in Western society.