Private Security Firms

EDM number 1458 in 1993-94, proposed by Gerry Steinberg on 05/07/1994.

That this House is concerned at the ease with which private security firms are able to break security systems in order to obtain details of supposedly personal, confidential information; notes that increasingly private investigators have been posing as police officers, social security officials, market researchers, telephone engineers, journalists or prospctive employees in order to obtain details of pensions, credit cards and confidential medical inforamtion, as well as to check phone calls; believes that this Government's view, as set out in the 1991 White Paper on the Private Security Industry, that self-regulation is preferable to statutory control, gives no protection to third parties who are the subject of private investigators' enquiries; and calls upon the Government to protect members of the public by introducing appropriate checks on the workings of private security firms.

This motion has been signed by a total of 73 MPs.