Kate Wilson

The police want the IPT to ignore Art 14. There is no clear test in law for when Article 14 is ruled on, however when it is clear that discrimination is an important part of the breaches a ruling is made and it is clear from the facts of the case that is appropriate here.

On the police submissions the #spycops operations should only be subject to Article 8 assessments and not to the entire HRA. They say that "proportionality" should do all the work in making sure operations are lawful. It is our submission that simply cannot be the case.

The SOCA report expressly deals with the failure to address necessity and the fact that the #spycops fail to consider alternative methods and to properly justify the operation. That point is also picked up in the HMIC report.

The question of "lawful" #spycops operations is complicated. There is the broad legal regime, and then "lawful" on the specific facts of a case. It has to meet the law, AND be "necessary in a democratic society"

"Necessary in a democratic society" is broken down into 1) is it justified on the facts of the individual case; 2) is it necessary in practice (i.e. are there no alternatives); and 3) is the level of intrusion proportionate to the intended aim. #spycops

It is our case that there is no basis on which any of these #spycops authorisations can be said to be necessary, not least because they contain lies.

Police say they don't defend the claim that I was a key player at Cornerstone. It is false. They call it an example of MK's falsehoods, but it is clear that other senior #spycops officers would have known it was untrue.

But secondly, if that were true it paints a very worrying picture of the NPOIU. The police seek to rely on the RIPA authorities as evidence of "necessity", but at the same time they say they are unreliable and based on #spycops lies.