The information requested falls within the responsibility of the Charity Commission. I have asked the Commission to reply.
Letter from Andrew Hind, dated April 2009:
As the Chief Executive of the Charity Commission, I have been asked to respond to your written Parliamentary Question on the Commission’s use of its powers in connection with Directed Surveillance under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA).
It may be helpful to set out the position in relation to this legislation. The Charity Commission has limited powers under RIPA. Under an Order made in 2003, we have powers in connection with Communications Data (CD). We also have powers in connection with Directed Surveillance (DS) and the use of Covert Human Intelligence Source (CHIS). We can use these powers for the purposes of preventing or detecting crime or disorder.
In answer to your question, we have not made use of our powers in connection with DS nor have we used CHIS.
However, we have used our powers in connection with CD under section 21 (4) (c) of RIPA eight times since 2004. In all cases the information obtained was used to progress our investigations.
We only use these powers when absolutely necessary and in the most serious of cases. Their use is always authorised at a senior level within the Commission.
You may have seen an article in The Times of 17 April alleging that the Surveillance Commissioner had criticised the Charity Commission ‘over misuse of RIPA’. I wrote to the Editor pointing out that this was incorrect. I am pleased to say that the newspaper published a correction on 21 April as follows:
“In a commentary on the reform of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (News, April 17), it was suggested incorrectly that Ofcom and the Charity Commission were criticised by the Surveillance Commissioner for the misuse of Ripa powers. We are happy to make clear that no such criticism has been made of either organisation.”
I hope this is helpful. A senior member of the Commission’s Compliance team would be very happy to discuss this aspect of our work with you if that would be useful.