Yesterday NUJ General Secretary Jeremy Dear gave evidence of escalating police restriction and intimidation of photojournalists to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights session on policing and protest. The Committee, comprising MP's and members of the Lords, heard Dear describe failure of police to implement the existing ACPO guidelines, intimidatory use of FIT monitoring, arbitrary threats of arrest and use of violence against photographers in public order situations. A DVD containing photographs and video of some of the alleged incidents was given to the Committee.

Dear's evidence is reproduced verbatim below from the full draft transcript of the session.

Q90 Earl of Onslow: May I interrupt there? I was on the select committee that looked into vivisection about five or six years ago and heard some of the really unpleasant things that happened to you and it could be for the benefit of the Committee if some of those experiences were laid out. Before we went - this was before 9/11 - the chief of police who came to advise us on our own security said "These people are more dangerous than any terrorist we know" - this was post-IRA and pre-Islamic stuff. It would be useful for the Committee if you could tell us some of that.

Mr Gay: I can wax lyrical or I can send you some information post this because otherwise it will take a lot of time but I can certainly send you information on the experiences of our organisation. At that stage the police did not know how to handle the protesters whatsoever even though there was learning in other police forces around the country because there had been similar protests in Oxfordshire before that with animal rights activists. But the police at that stage did not seem to learn from other police forces and they acted singly and in silos. What has happened in the last five or six years is that there is much better cross-boundary co-operation between police forces, there is the set-up of an organisation called NDET and NETCU who promote best practice within police forces; that is across boundaries and things and that is working very well to improve the coverage of protests. That is for the benefit of protesters as well as those people being protested against and so there is, if you want, best practice. There is still a way to go, it is by no means a level playing field, even within Cambridgeshire for instance which has had a lot of experience of this. Certainly, there are best practice ideas out there which are being communicated and so in general it is improving, but there is a long way to go.

Mr Dear: In relation to the issues our members face there should be no difference because the guidelines on police and media are the same across the whole of the UK, whether it is ACPO or others they have adopted the guidelines. I have letters here from 48 different forces, all saying something slightly different about how they would facilitate the media, how they would place arbitrary restrictions on different levels of covering protests, but I have examples of physical attacks on journalists coming from Brighton, Nottingham, Birmingham, Milton Keynes and obviously many in London because the vast majority of the big protests take place in London. There are examples of good practice in terms of policing of demonstrations and they come about where the police in advance engage with the media, talk about the guidelines, use the guidelines as part of the training and pre-briefing of police officers so that they understand what is expected of them on the day of a major protest. Unfortunately, that happens in a very few circumstances and it needs to happen in a lot more.

Q91 Chairman: When you say physical attacks on journalists, do you mean by the police or the protesters?

Mr Dear: I mean by both. There are a number of physical attacks which I have documented, some of which have resulted in court cases where journalists have taken the police to court, whether it is being charged by police horses or something else. Here is one from last week - this is a police officer having kicked a photographer and this is the damage that was done to that photographer's leg. I have got a DVD of which I will supply copies to every member here that has pictures of physical assaults by police officers on journalists - pushing them over, one of them being hospitalised as a result of being pushed off the pavement in Parliament Square outside. Also, because the police try to access the pictures and information that journalists have, that makes them more likely to become targets of the protesters as well who fear that journalists and photographers may well become part of the state machinery in terms of providing information about protesters. To be honest, when I say a third party here I mean a third party, we are trying to strike a balance between the police and protesters in order to ensure coverage, whether it is veal crates at Shoreham, whether it is the Olympic torch procession, whether it is protests at the NATO defence ministers. It is not for us to decide about the protest but we have a legitimate right to cover it on behalf of citizens and that is the right that is being infringed all too often now as these clashes between police and protesters become worse. The serious and organised crime police have made that worse; that is the reality of the situation.

Q92 Baroness Stern: This question is just to Mr Dear because it is about the NUJ. I understand you recently wrote to the Home Secretary complaining about surveillance of journalists covering protests by the Metropolitan Police Forward Intelligence Team. Please could you give us some specific examples of where and when this has happened.

Mr Dear: There is a whole number of examples and, again, some of them are contained on this DVD.

Q93 Baroness Stern: Can we get them on the record?

Mr Dear: The police say that they do not routinely take photographs of legitimate journalists - how the police decide who is a legitimate journalist or not I do not know because they are all carrying press cards recognised by the Association of Chief Police Officers - but they say if journalists are photographed it is "collateral damage"; that was the rather unfortunate phrase that they used.

Q94 Baroness Stern: When did they use that?

Mr Dear: This is the police saying if they do accidentally take pictures of journalists who are caught up in a public order situation it is collateral damage.

Q95 Baroness Stern: This is when you negotiate with them.

Mr Dear: Yes, we frequently have meetings with them to try to resolve these issues. It is not collateral damage when the police follow a car full of photographers, when they have already checked all their details, to a local McDonald's several miles away from a protest site; as they are filing their stories on their laptops from that the police are standing outside the window filming them on video. It is not collateral damage at City Hall in London where they are standing on their own chatting, an hour before a protest starts, and they are being filmed continually by the forward intelligence team. There are examples of this that we have serious concerns about; we wrote to Jacqui Smith about it and we asked four very simple questions of her - who is collecting the information, what use is it being put to, who has access to it and are they deliberately targeting journalists. We got an unsatisfactory answer and were told that we would get a meeting with Tony McNulty which was due to happen this week, but of course he has been moved and we are due to meet Vernon Coaker next week to talk about the issue.

Q96 Earl of Onslow: Do you think you will be locked up? Can we have a copy of the answer you got?

Mr Dear: Yes, we have a copy of it here, I can make that available to you.

Q97 Chairman: The full exchange of correspondence would be helpful.

Mr Dear: I will make that available to the Committee. What we are seeing is a group of journalists who regularly cover protests being stopped and searched, way away from the protest, being photographed, having information recorded about what they are wearing, where they are going, who they are working for and so on, and it is creating an intimidatory atmosphere that means people are less likely to go out and cover protests. If we are all saying that publicity is one of the reasons for protest, actually what the police are doing here is undermining that freedom of the media and the ability of protesters to be able to get their message across via the media. So there are lots of different examples of it and it has become an increasing part of what the forward intelligence team are doing. We are putting in some Data Protection Act requests around a number of journalists who regularly cover these kind of events, whom we know have been filmed and we know that photographs and video exists of them, in order to try to find out some of the answers to the questions that are not being answered. One person has already done this, a Sky News journalist, and they get back a file that says at the top of it "Investigative journalists". If it is collateral damage and these are deleted and it is accidental, why are files being held on investigative journalists? We do not know the answer to that but we would like to know because it is acting as an intimidation of those who investigate a whole range of different issues and who cover protests.

Q98 Chairman: These are files held by the police?

Mr Dear: This one actually came via the Ministry of Defence and Metropolitan Police so this is somebody who has covered protests that were happening at the DCSI, at the arms fairs and so on who are then having files kept on them despite the fact that they have committed no crime; they are carrying out their lawful business as a journalist. The reasons for this are not clear and nobody is answering that question, despite the fact that we have been asking it for a long time.

Q99 Mr Timpson: Conversely, looking at it from the journalists' perspective, where there may have been an uneventful protest and where you have had a dialogue with the police, you have managed to come to an agreement beforehand which has meant that the thing has passed peacefully from the journalists' point of view, is that the exception rather than the rule or is that something that is becoming more likely or less likely?

Mr Dear: It is becoming less likely to be the case, but that does not mean that the demonstration has to be peaceful for it to go all right with the journalist. Demonstrations can turn violent but journalists are still able to do their job in covering that. What is increasingly becoming the norm is it is the kind of low-level intensity of it, the hand over the lens, the pushing you away, the moving you away so you cannot take a photograph of what is going on. A lot of these are things that individual photographers have sent into me and they literally say it is an almost weekly occurrence now when I am out photographing on the street. It is also the restrictions put on what you can and cannot photograph. I noted some down while I was sat outside: the London Eye - someone has been arrested for photographing the London Eye - if we arrested everybody who photographed the London Eye we would have to build an awful lot more prisons - traffic police, Brighton railway station, a traffic accident, an incident on Tyne Bridge and the switching-on of the Christmas lights in Ipswich. It has become so arbitrary and so commonplace now that actually these guidelines that we all agreed to - and we sat down for ages with the police to negotiate them - are useless because the police on the street do not know anything about them. In fact, I think the clerk of your Committee tried to access these guidelines on the ACPO website; they do not exist and she had to go to the NUJ website in order to be able to get hold of a copy of the guidelines.

Q100 Chairman: Perhaps you could let us have a copy as well.

Mr Dear: We certainly will do.

Q101 Lord Lester of Herne Hill: Mr Dear, what you have just been saying I take extremely seriously and if factually it can be demonstrated I am sure you understand that the police service is in blatant breach of the European Human Rights Convention and the Human Rights Act because what they are doing is a gross interference with free speech and, plainly, has a chilling effect on investigative journalists who are the eyes and ears of the public. If that is right, what is the NUJ doing about that because you have a perfect right to take steps to protect the interests of journalists and, if necessary, to go to court. What are you doing about it?

Mr Dear: Again, in this file is a letter from our union solicitors that says the first thing you should do is meet with the Home Office and find out what guidelines they are issuing to the police, meet with the police and put in the Data Protection Act requests in order to find out what information is being held - and this is part of a process we feel we are forced to go through now to try and protect that ability of journalists to cover protests because, you are right, it is having a chilling effect on people being prepared to go out and cover these protests. The big problem is an awful lot of legislation relies on individuals taking cases. These are individuals who already feel they are being targeted and some of them do not want to stick their head further above the parapet because when they go to Kingsnorth or when they go out on the street in Parliament Square they are out there on their own. Whilst the NUJ will take a case for them afterwards it does not stop the kind of thing that I have shown you a picture of happening on the day, and not many people want to have to go through that just to do their day's work.

Q102 Lord Lester of Herne Hill: What I am putting to you is that the NUJ itself has standing to be able to deal with this if necessary. Are you taking steps to do so as a union?

Mr Dear: Yes, we are, but what we would rather is that the Home Office were making sure that the police were abiding by the guidelines.

Chairman: We will see what you have to say about that later on as well. The Earl of Onslow.

Q103 Earl of Onslow: You suggested insufficient regard was given to using counter-terrorist powers against protesters targeting Huntingdon Life Sciences; can you explain what you mean by this? I was slightly alluding to that earlier on.

Mr Gay: That really refers to a point at one stage, again at the excessive end of protest, direct action, whatever you want to call it. Certainly, the activities of the extremists could have been defined as terrorist in nature and certainly I think their aims were to terrorise and therefore to coerce people into changing what they were doing. Therefore, if that is what they were doing, could not stronger legislation be used against them and I think it limited the police's actions and activities, certainly before SOCPA became available, in that it limited their ways of investigating the extremists and what they were doing. In that situation, therefore, the police were limited in what they could do and what resources they could put against these people.

Q104 Earl of Onslow: From what I can remember of it, it seemed to me that all the things that were described to us by your company in my previous existence were way outside the law and could have been pursued very happily had the cases been brought, even without any need for terrorism law at all. I also accept that the policeman did say to us "These people are the worst terrorists" - this was before 9/11.

Mr Gay: I take your point entirely and truthfully that was exactly our argument, should we not be able to throw extra police and law enforcement support against that, but at that stage, early in 2000, 2001, 2002, these were still seen as separate acts, intimidatory acts, not seen as a campaign of action, with the occasional very serious act there. If that is not then intimidatory for anybody who could be a target, they were still seen as separate acts and not seen as a campaign of activism. Our proposal at the time and our legal advice was to try and adopt some of the terrorism legislation; it was certainly not allowed by either the CPS or the police at the time.

Q105 Lord Lester of Herne Hill: A broad question to you all and then I will come to one about Huntingdon and the injunction afterwards. We know from Lord Scarman - the Red Lion Square disorders, the Brixton disorders - his analysis of the problems and the law reforms that took place as a result, and we know that there is a great wealth of criminal and civil law of all kinds available. To what extent does each of you consider that we need yet more law and if so what kind, or a change in police practice or what? A brief answer from each of you would be helpful because you all come from different points of view - perhaps we could start with Mr Dear.

Mr Dear: I am not sure that a change in the law is necessary - there are laws there that protect the rights of journalists - but what we do need is a change in the enforcement of that law and the operation of the law, particularly by the police. There should be better training of the police, so in pre-event briefing and in their actual training they should be going through the guidelines and relations with media. Better enforcement of the guidelines - I do not know whether that is possible legally but certainly contractually it is quite possible, lots of other professions have guidelines and codes of conduct that are contractually enforceable. Also there has to be a clarification of the law on the issue of restrictions on photography because at the moment Jacqui Smith's answer says in local circumstances restrictions can be imposed by the local chief constable and 48 letters to 48 forces elicit 48 different responses as to in quite which circumstances those restrictions can be imposed. That is unsatisfactory for a professional journalist, knowing as they move around the country that different restrictions are being imposed on them arbitrarily by a chief constable in a particular area, so there needs to be a clarification of the law in that respect as well.

Mr Gay: Current legislation does not need to be changed. We need to look at why and how the protests, then leading on into activism, are taking place and to see it in a broader context of what is happening. Within the current legislation of SOCPA and things like that we have the right legislation in place. We have already mentioned consistency across police forces and I think that is enormously important as well. The legislation in and around terrorism was looking at excesses that were occurring four or five years ago which have now been caught up with; I think at the time the activists and the extremists were getting away with things and doing more and more and that needed to be caught up. We are in a different period of time now and the current legislation is fine, as long as those caveats are taken into account.

Mr North: Firstly I do think it is absolutely absurd that people can do damage to a power station or a crop and claim a lawful excuse; it seems to me completely absurd to claim that you need to damage a chimney and your defence is the damage of global warming for something which was designed to allow you to kick down your neighbour's door when his house was on fire. It is just a complete mismatch and quite absurd. I am worried that young people, protesters, people of protest mind, think they are living in a police state because they know of laws which as it were came in for counter-terrorism and such which are catching them. Therefore, in a rather illiberal way I would beg you to consider in what ways you could in fact tidy up the law in such a way as to make people feel very strongly that while simultaneously they had to get permission to do quite a lot of stuff and they had to behave themselves, and they would get into quite severe trouble if they did not behave themselves but the degree was understood, we did not think they were terrorists because they wanted to read out a list of names in Whitehall. I am no lawyer, I could not begin to do that, but I hope I have framed the task that I think is in front of you.

Q106 Lord Lester of Herne Hill: I should have asked Mr Gay a specific question before coming to the injunction which is do you think any changes in the law are needed to deal with abuses via the internet?

Mr Gay: Yes.

Q107 Lord Lester of Herne Hill: What would you say?

Mr Gay: The internet, as we all know, is a wonderful device but it also can be used to abuse, intimidate and terrorise people, especially when it gets down again to personal targeting. The difference is in the protests and the extremism that took place against myself and my organisation where these were not general protests against a piece of legislation or against Parliament or a large body, these became very specific, and why the protests I suppose became so successful in some ways was that they became personal. When things get personal it is very difficult to cope with, even at what people might consider to be a low level of activity, when it is continuous, it is insidious, it is enormously difficult to deal with. The internet just facilitates that enormously; it facilitates sending round details of the person, details of what to do, details of how to harass them, details of how to intimidate them, details of how to coerce them out of doing what they are doing. It is an incredibly powerful tool if used in the wrong hands and it is out there.

Mr Dear: Can I just give you an example of that from our own experience, and that is Redwatch, which is an extreme right wing website run by the Blood and Honour Organisation and Combat 18 that specifically targets journalists in order to try and intimidate them. It uses the internet - it publishes home addresses, photos, ways of intimidating them. I had a visit at my house, we have got photographers who have had their windows put in and so on - those who photograph demonstrations of the BNP or Right-wing organisations. It is an incredibly powerful tool for intimidating people and having that chilling effect you talked about earlier.

Mr North: I would like to add one thing which is, I think, absolutely core and for all kinds of reasons I think we should make it infinitely easier for anybody who wants to, to hide their home address. Publicising the name and address as a person's identity is, in the modern world, quite dangerous and completely unnecessary. It is just a thing we have got into and it exposes lots of people to a great deal of unpleasantness and worse.

Q108 Chairman: On the internet point if you believe something must be done the question is what because it is really difficult to try and decide how you can control the internet and how to police it.

Mr Gay: At certain times we have chased down websites through different ISPs and things like that and you end up in censorship-free websites in South East Asia and Russia, over which you have absolutely no control whatsoever. So it is enormously difficult but it is to get potentially an international consensus on what to do with websites because it is not national, it is immediately international and if you chase them out of jurisdiction they will go into censorship-free areas. To get a level of understanding across globally is enormously difficult, I agree.

Mr Dear: The point about it is that most of the people engaged certainly in the Redwatch website are engaging in criminal activity in other ways. Actually, in our discussions with the Home Office about tackling this it is looking at the criminality, the fund-raising, the race hate and all the other issues so that actually the people behind the website can be targeted in that way and you reduce its impact like that, rather than trying to find certainly a national mechanism to control websites like that because, as has been said, they will simply move to another country and another domain name. So it is targeting some of the functions behind the public face of the website.