Dear British Broadcasting Corporation,

I bring to your attention a page produced by HSE instructing investigating officers on conducting PACE compliant interviews.

http://www.hse.gov.uk/enforce/enforcemen...

The contrast between this document produced by an organisation that takes its legal obligations seriously and the TVL Visiting Procedures produced by an organisation that has no problem acting ultra vires is plain for anyone to see so I won't go into details here. But I would note that whilst HSE has no issue publishing it's procedures on the internet, TVL has been incredibly secretive about its own procedures, releasing them only in response to FOIA requests and even now the visiting procedures remain heavily redacted. I raise the question about whether the reason for the redactions is to prevent ultra vires policies and actions from being subject to public scrutiny

Section 67(9) of PACE states that persons other than Police Officers charged with the duty of investigating offences shall in discharge of that duty have regard to any relevant provision of such a Code and TVL has confirmed it's statutory obligation to ensure that its procedures comply with PACE here https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/1... in which you state “The Courts have held that persons such as TV Enquiry Officers are …
persons charged with the duty of investigating offences.”

In light of the above I would like you to send me any and all documentation concerning the rationale behind the decision to produce procedures without regard to the PACE codes.

I would like you to send me detailed information concerning the design of the TVL178.

Was independent legal advice taken on this? What were the qualifications of the person providing the advice? What date was legal advice last sought? Was the legal advice applied in full? If not, explain why not.

Kindly demonstrate how the form complies with PACE requirements to maintain a verbatim record of an interview (there is no space for verbatim answers to be entered and the interviewer is encouraged to simply draw circles around printed choices) and how the form complies with 3.5 of CIPA (the pre-prepared questions assume guilt and do not allow the possibility of exploring explanations pointing towards the suspects innocence)

Yours faithfully,

Louisa Woodward