NEW spy laws are being used by Scottish councils to track people suspected of housing-benefit fraud, selling cigarettes to children and environmental-health offences.

Campaigners are now calling for a "root-and-branch review" into the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa), after the scale of its use by local authorities across the UK was revealed.

Ripa was introduced in 2000, primarily giving the police, security services and HM Revenue and Customs wide powers to spy on people and their communications.

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The main objectives of the Act were to help in the fight against crime and terrorism. But in 2002, the powers were controversially extended to councils, offering the opportunity to carry out surveillance.

An investigation has now revealed that councils have even used the Act to track dog-foulers and litterbugs, with some local authorities using the powers more than 100 times in the last 12 months.

Among the Scottish local authorities that confirmed using Ripa in the past year was Aberdeen City Council, which admitted covert surveillance on eight occasions to investigate benefit fraud, environmental-health and trading-standards issues.

The council did not specify which environmental-health offences were involved, but this can include flytipping, littering and noisy-neighbour disputes.

Glasgow City Council carried out physical surveillance 24 times in criminal investigations, over trading-standards offences and illegal money-lending.

Thirteen requests to access phone billing information – another power granted under the Act – were used in the same investigations.

In Perth, the Act was used to investigate whether cigarettes and fireworks were being sold to under-18s.

Earlier this month, it emerged that a family in Poole in Dorset had been covertly tracked for nearly three weeks to check if they lived in a school catchment area.

Full article here.