Journ­al­istic scru­tiny of the UK police (and the armed forces and intel­li­gence ser­vices, btw) is about to be severely restric­ted thanks to the Counter-Terrorism Bill.

Here’s what the Bill says:

83 Offences relat­ing to inform­a­tion about mem­bers of armed forces etc
(1) After sec­tion 58 of the Ter­ror­ism Act 2000 (c. 11) (col­lec­tion of information)

insert—
“58A Eli­cit­ing, pub­lish­ing or com­mu­nic­at­ing inform­a­tion about mem­bers of armed forces etc

(1) A per­son com­mits an offence who—

(a) eli­cits or attempts to eli­cit inform­a­tion about an indi­vidual who is or has been—

(i) a mem­ber of Her Majesty’s forces,
(ii) a mem­ber of any of the intel­li­gence ser­vices, or
(iii) a constable,

which is of a kind likely to be use­ful to a per­son com­mit­ting or pre­par­ing an act of ter­ror­ism, or

(b) pub­lishes or com­mu­nic­ates any such information.

(2) It is a defence for a per­son charged with an offence under this sec­tion to prove that they had a reas­on­able excuse for their action.

The ‘reas­on­able excuse’ defence sounds ‘reas­on­able’, but in the early stages of any invest­ig­a­tion such excuse is often hard to jus­tify — you’re ask­ing for the evid­ence up front that the invest­ig­a­tion might provide.

Easy to see how this becomes one giant stick with which to beat any­one doing account­ab­il­ity journ­al­ism in respect of the constabulary.