Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will make an assessment of the extent to which requests made by local authorities under Part I, Chapter II of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 to date have been proportionate; and if she will make a statement.

Under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, local authorities must
follow a robust internal authorisations procedure in order to ensure that
requests for communications data are both necessary and proportionate. The
Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 also introduced judicial approval for local
authorities' requests; a Magistrate will make an additional judgement in each
case whether an application to access communications data is proportionate.

The Interception of Communications Commissioner's office has oversight of the
communications data access regime and, in the Commissioner's 2013 report, he
noted that the National Anti-Fraud Network (which provides a data acquisition
service to 85% of those authorities that used their powers that year) ‘showed
very good compliance' with the legislation.