The government will try and introduce temporary legislation to enable police covert video surveillance to resume after it was suspended on ongoing investigations following the Supreme Court's Urewera judgment last week that made covert video surve
The government will try and introduce temporary legislation to enable police covert video surveillance to resume.
Prime Minister John Key told reporters this afternoon that patch legislation would be debated under urgency next week, to enable police to resume covert filming in more than 50 ongoing police investigations. A further 40 pending court cases involved similar video surveillance.
Filming had to be suspended on the ongoing investigations following the Supreme Court's Urewera judgement last week that made covert video surveillance unlawful.
The court ruled that Parliament had not made its intentions clear enough in this area.
Mr Key said the temporary legislation would make Parliament's intentions very clear.
The legislation would be retrospective, he said, so any information already collected would be admissable.
Surveillance was suspended in all ongoing police investigations once the court had made its ruling, Mr Key said.
Those investigations involved serious criminal behaviour, he said, and if video surveillance was not available to police, it was possible serious criminals would not be bought to justice, he said.
The temporary legislation would provide some breathing space, Mr Key said, with permanent legislation likely to be about a year away.
