Surveillance and legal privilege

[Peter Tomlinson]

Nicholas Bohm wrote:
> The House of Lords has decided that although RIPA can enable lawful
> surveillance of privileged communications with lawyers, the current Code
> of Practice does not enable this to be done compliantly with the HRA.
>
> www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200809/ldjudgmt/jd090311/mce-1.htm
>
> "Having decided not to appeal the Divisional Court’s decision that
> surveillance of privileged and private consultations under the present
> regime is unlawful, the Secretary of State should have ensured that such
> surveillance did not take place or she should have promptly changed the
> regime so as to comply with the Divisional Court’s decision. As Lord
> Carswell points out, more than a year has elapsed since that decision,
> and your Lordships were told that the Secretary of State was not even in
> a position to produce a draft regulation embodying the changes to ensure
> that such surveillance was carried out legally. Unless no surveillance
> of privileged and private consultations has been going on for the past
> year in the United Kingdom (which appears most unlikely), this strongly
> suggests that the Government has been knowingly sanctioning illegal
> surveillance for more than a year. If that is indeed so, to describe
> such a state of affairs as “regrettable” strikes me as an understatement."
>
> (LORD NEUBERGER OF ABBOTSBURY)
>
> Nicholas
>   
That is in para 119 of 120. Nicholas, can you help by telling us (a) 
what you think will happen next, and (b) is this judgement strong enough 
to change govt's attitude to and/or stop the surveillance?

Peter