UK surveillance now by committees, dubbed "tension monitoring"

From: Town Halls should map race and religion to identify 'tension hotspots', says Hazel Blears

More than 10 million people are to have their everyday disputes, their politics and their business lives checked by new "tension monitoring" committees.

The committees are to be set up to try to cut the risk of riots or disturbances in the aftermath of terrorist outrages or outbreaks of local racial trouble.

They will ask for and file reports on named troublemakers whose political activities are considered to be raising community tensions.

Reports on the behaviour and attitudes of local residents will be collected by community workers, neighbourhood wardens, local councillors and provided by voluntary organisations, according to a paper published by Communities Secretary Hazel Blears today.

It will then be considered by the monitoring committees run by town halls.

A sample "tension monitoring form" for use in checking on the likelihood of local racial or religious trouble asks for details of individuals considered to be making political trouble.

The monitoring committees will ask for information on those identified as troublemakers with includes "age, gender, ethnicity and faith" of those being reported on.

The call for monitoring of everyday life in the cause of "community cohesion contingency planning" was made by Mrs Blears in a paper aiming to help identify "tension hotspots" and improve cohesion - the Government's buzzword for reducing racial and religious strife.

The word was adopted in 2006 after the once-dominating left-wing doctrine of multiculturalism was dropped by Labour because it made tensions worse rather than better.

But the establishment of monitoring committees in town halls is likely to generate new concerns about spying and surveillance by local councils.

Concerns have deepened in recent weeks after the Daily Mail revealed that Poole council in Dorset had spied on a family's life for three weeks because it wrongly suspected the parents of abusing rules on school catchment areas.

There are also worries over the spread of new council quasi-police forces, like the bin police that recently gave a criminal record to a bus driver in Cumbria who left the lid of his family wheelie bin open by four inches. . .