Channel Tunnel: Migrants

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Tuesday 1st December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tomlinson (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Manzoor (LD)]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Manzoor]

My Lords—

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb]

My Lords, thank you very much. Could the Minister tell us, for those people who are currently suffering in the “jungle camp” in Calais, what the Government are doing to enable them to get to Britain if they have every right to be here? I have asked this as a Written Question; I had a response but I did not get an answer.

[Lord Bates]

Under the Dublin regulations, they have to apply for asylum in the first safe country that they arrive in. If that is France, that is where they must apply for asylum. There are regulations under Dublin III, which the noble Baroness will be familiar with, that deal with family reunification. Where the individual applies for asylum in France but actually has strong family links in the UK, we will enter into discussions with our French counterparts to see how that arrangement can be resolved in a way that keeps the family together.

Emergency Services: Central London

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Wednesday 18th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

This is very important. If we are going to tackle these people who would threaten our liberties, we need to work with the communities. That is why we have put forward our counterterrorism strategy, which my noble friend Lord Ahmad is leading, and we will bring forward legislation on that. Louise Casey has been asked to look particularly at what can be done to improve community cohesion. I totally agree with the noble Lord that the police and everyone in these communities should be working together to tackle this scourge.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, while it is all very well for the Minister to say that he knows the value of community, the current Commissioner of the Met Police has said that three-quarters of intelligence, whether it is about drugs, trafficking in people or terrorism, actually comes from the community, and yet the Government are savagely cutting the police budget. How do we square that circle? I do not understand why, although we can see that community intelligence is of value, police on the beat are being reduced.

[Lord Bates]

The key point to make is that of course we are not doing that. Neighbourhood policing numbers have increased by around 6,000 since 2010, and that is the straight answer. However, I have to say that a bigger thing is happening here. The nature of crime is changing and therefore the nature of policing needs to change. That is what the Inspector of Constabulary has said and it is the reason why a greater proportion of the budget is now being directed at cybercrime, which is dealt with by the intelligence agencies. They can provide surveillance, which is crucial to intercepting many of the terrorist attacks that have been planned in this country.

Draft Investigatory Powers Bill

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Wednesday 4th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

The noble Lord is absolutely right. This is why it is important to work with communication service providers: this has to be a partnership between the industry, the law enforcement agencies and the Government to make sure that we get this right and that there is a way of doing it which is secure. He is right about the threat being real. I have heard some of the reports from meetings which the Home Secretary has had with families who have been victims of the online sexual exploitation of children. They feel exactly the same way as my noble friend Lord Tebbit feels in terms of the actions which could be taken to ensure that their children and their loved ones do not have to suffer the exploitation which they have suffered at the hands of these heinous criminals.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, this has been described as a tidying-up Bill, and the reason for it is that the security services and the police have overstepped the mark and misused their past powers. The noble Lord, Lord Blair, talked about trust. What guarantees can the Government give that the security services and the police will not overstep these powers as well?

[Lord Bates]

That is one of the reasons why we have put in place a much stronger, clearer and well-resourced investigatory powers commissioner. That will also give an opportunity for cases to be brought to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal. There will be more transparency and openness there for people to take advantage of if they feel that we have got the decision wrong.

Police: Funding Formula

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Tuesday 20th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

I think that community intelligence is very important. It is part of a wider initiative that goes beyond the responsibility of just the police and includes the wider community, as the Department for Communities and Local Government referred to, in how we work together to combat this threat that we face. As I said before, the counterterrorism element of the budget will be protected and has actually been increased to meet the threat, and we keep it constantly under review.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I am sure the Minister knows that part of the counterterrorism funding is for the Prevent programme, which has in fact turned into a toxic brand that is alienating a lot of communities. Just at the point when the police, because of savage cuts to their budget, need community support, they are actually losing the good will of the public. Will the Minister explain how that works?

[Lord Bates]

I do not accept the premise which the noble Baroness puts forward. In the counterterrorism legislation that will be brought forward and in the Prevent strategy that we outlined, we very clearly articulate that, as a society, we cannot simply just parcel this off to one element of society to tackle; this needs to be the responsibility of all communities, and particularly public authorities, which must play a role in identifying and challenging those extremist views wherever they appear.

Surveillance Legislation

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Thursday 16th July 2015 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, following David Anderson QC’s report on surveillance legislation, whether they intend that Ministers should retain the power to authorise surveillance.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Bates) (Con)]

My Lords, as I said in the House on 8 July during the debate on the recent reports into investigatory powers, the Government have made no decisions on the proposals within the reports. We intend to bring forward legislative proposals in the autumn that will be subject to pre-legislative scrutiny.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I thank the Minister for his reply. It is important to think that the public understand how and why such decisions are made. However, it is an offence to disclose that a warrant for authorisation of surveillance has been issued, and it is government policy not to talk about security matters, so how can the public understand exactly what the Minister has done and why he has done it? Is some sort of transparency a factor in his thinking?

[Lord Bates]

David Anderson’s report, on which we had a very helpful debate last week, talks about trust, and there needs to be a balance of trust. The issues that are being investigated by our security services and law enforcement agencies are of the most grave and serious nature, so full disclosure is not possible. However, there is an Interception of Communications Commissioner who reviews the decisions taken by the Home Secretary. Should an individual feel that they have wrongly had their communications intercepted, they have the ability to take that up with the investigation tribunal to look into the decision further.

Investigatory Powers

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Wednesday 8th July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, there have been a number of reports into the use of investigatory powers by public agencies in the UK. Indeed, I published my own report, which looked at the Metropolitan Police’s use of undercover police, at the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and at police databases. I found that the police had overreached and misused their powers, aided by illiberal legislation that is not fit for purpose and, of course, a mayor who was happy to turn a blind eye rather than champion civil liberties. Today I will limit my comments to David Anderson’s report. Like many noble Lords, I welcome several of its recommendations.

I am pleased that David Anderson found that RIPA is not fit for purpose and should be replaced. This is something that the Green Party called for at the last election and we had in our manifesto. RIPA has failed. It fails to regulate the actions of undercover police officers, to support the confidentiality of journalistic sources and to protect legal privilege, and it certainly does not provide a proper and open right of redress via the Investigatory Powers Tribunal.

I am also pleased that Mr Anderson recommends that the new legal framework that replaces RIPA should comply with international human rights standards. I find this particularly relevant when the Government are indicating that they would consider withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights. I would welcome clarification from the Government of the implications of this new legal framework if we were to leave the ECHR.

I welcome the recommendations for judicial approval for the interception of communications rather than the current arrangement involving the Secretary of State. In practice, Ministers are not held to account for warrants because it is an offence to disclose that a warrant has been granted and because of the Government’s policy of “neither confirm nor deny” on security matters. Were questions to be asked here or in the other place about the specifics of an intelligence operation they would not be answered. When questions of security are asked, the common response is “operational issues” and the stonewalling of NCND. This lack of accountability is partly why I welcome the move to judicial approval.

I also think that the idea of replacing the three existing oversight commissioners with a single independent surveillance and intelligence commissioner is to be welcomed. I believe it would provide greater safeguards around the use of metadata, as well as the increased safeguards needed for lawyers, journalists and others who handle privileged information.

By contrast, some aspects of the report do not go far enough and cause me concern. For example, I am pleased that Mr Anderson recognised that the role and jurisdiction of the IPT should be expanded. However, I do not think his report goes far enough. I do not believe that the IPT should hold proceedings behind closed doors. Instead, cases should be brought in open court, subject to closed material procedure or public interest immunity framework. This would provide greater transparency and allow for secrecy where necessary.

I question the bulk collection of external communications—those sent from and into the UK. While Mr Anderson says it should continue, subject to “additional safeguards”, I would like to see a far more robust case put forward from the police and security services which makes clear why blanket non-targeted surveillance is more effective than targeted operation-led powers. I found the information provided in the six agency case studies in the report to be limited. I remain to be convinced that the results achieved could not have been achieved using targeted surveillance.

I am pleased that Mr Anderson states that no operational case has been made for requiring service providers to retain records of users’ interactions with the internet—so-called web logs—as proposed by the draft communications data Bill, better known as the snoopers’ charter. I am pleased that he has questioned the lawfulness, intrusiveness and cost of the proposals. His report also points out that no other EU or Commonwealth country requires the blanket retention of web logs; in fact, Australia has recently prohibited this in law. I hope the Government and Home Secretary will pause for reflection on why we alone need such a power.

This report also touches on the use of undercover state agents, or covert human intelligence sources. I accept that this was not the focus of David Anderson’s report but it is an area where I have huge concerns. The House is probably aware of the cases of several women who were deceived into long-term intimate sexual relationships with undercover police officers. Their testimony to the Home Affairs Select Committee laid bare the life-changing consequences these women suffered. I am concerned that, as it stands, RIPA still authorises sexual relationships by state agents. I find this quite alarming. If Parliament thinks that state agents should have this power, which I do not, or that there should be limitations to it, that must be part of the debate we are having. If RIPA is to be replaced then its replacement must clarify the law in this area.

I also draw the House’s attention to a particular aspect of RIPA which I find inconsistent and in need of reform. Different forms of intrusive surveillance are authorised at different levels. For example, interception of communication requires authorisation from the Secretary of State. On the other hand, the authorisation of direct surveillance, including the activities of an undercover police officer, requires only the authorisation of another police officer. It is worth pointing out at this stage that most of the investigatory powers used to obtain communications data are so used by the police and not the security services. I believe that the highly intrusive nature of an intimate relationship with a state agent, presenting as someone else, is capable of being far more intrusive than the interception of communications. I should therefore like to see judicial authorisation for undercover state agents.

In conclusion, I hope that this report leads to a proper debate on these issues, but in order to have a rational and proper debate we must stop describing the threat we face as unprecedented. It is, as Mr Anderson explains, a “surprisingly common” mistake. As someone who has had a file held on a police database of domestic extremists, I am concerned by systems of surveillance which are not clearly defined, targeted and publicly held to account. The past few years have seen revelations that GCHQ spied on Amnesty International, that undercover police have been sent to spy on those campaigning for police accountability, and that RIPA has been used to violate lawyer-client privilege. It really is time that we had a proper debate. There should be clear rules and processes around obtaining data. It should not be easy for the state to obtain communications; that is the cost of privacy in a free society. It is our role to challenge the police and security services to provide a proper case, supported by evidence, for any additional powers that they need or request to do their job. Those who challenge the police and security services do not do so because we are unaware of the threat that we face. We do so to protect the very values that terrorism seeks to undermine.

London Airport: New Runway

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Thursday 2nd July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

I assure the noble Lord that the Prime Minister and the whole Government are fully committed to pushing Brussels to get greater control over a raft of issues concerning national sovereignty.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords—

[Lord Rosser (Lab)]

In 2009, as we know, the Prime Minister said that he would not support a third runway and did so with a certain degree of finality, since he said “no ifs, no buts”. Can the Minister confirm that that still represents the Prime Minister’s and thus the Government’s policy on a third runway at Heathrow? If it does not, could he draw our attention to any statement by the Prime Minister retracting his very clear policy statement that he would not support a third runway at Heathrow?

Police and Crime Commissioners

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

Well, they do set the policing plan. But this is one of the things that the Home Secretary has made very clear. When she came in, there was a plethora of targets and quotas that had to be addressed. She said, “Listen, as far as the police are concerned, they have one target and that is to cut crime”. I think that all good police and crime commissioners should follow that example.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, the Minister mentioned that these police and crime commissioners are accountable. In fact, the reports coming in from the police and crime panels, which are charged with holding the police and crime commissioners to account, suggest that they are underresourced. Will the Government consider funding those panels rather better than they are at the moment?

[Lord Bates]

The funding of the panels and the offices of the police and crime commissioners is a matter for the police and crime commissioners, which they must do and for which they must be accountable in their plan to the electorate.

Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Monday 26th January 2015 Lords Chamber

We need to take that report very seriously. Parliament appointed a committee of both Houses to look at the draft Bill. It did a painstaking and thorough job and said that the Bill would not wash. It is far too broad and dangerous to privacy and civil liberties. Yet the amendments today simply cut and paste. I realise that part of the exercise is to try to provoke the Minister into saying something that noble Lords might consider helpful—or not quite so helpful—but we are faced simply with a cut and paste of the 2012 Bill, with its huge breadth, lax definitions and terminology rooted in a pre-internet age. We should not accept the amendments. Whatever case there might be for a redrafted communications data Bill—my noble friend Lord Blencathra called it a snoopers’ charter, so I feel able to call it a snoopers’ charter, whatever some noble Lords might say—that case has not been made today. We have the old version and it is highly inopportune to accept it.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I rise to oppose the amendments for many of the reasons outlined here today. First, they are unnecessary. We have heard a lot about gaps, targeted and not blanket surveillance and bringing things up to date. This is, of course, absolute nonsense. As the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, said, the Met and presumably the other agencies already have the powers they need—powers that, I suggest, go far beyond what they need. We heard a lot today about Paris and Lee Rigby, but in fact all my information says that the shortcomings of the pre-investigation in Paris and in the Lee Rigby tragic murder were due not to a lack of surveillance but to a lack of good police work. That is what was fundamentally missing. It was not about not having enough recordings or surveillance. It was about a lack of information and a lack of talking to marginalised community groups. The cross-party committee which reported in November on the handling of the Lee Rigby killers exposed major internal failings in the way that agencies pursue leads. It found that both men had been known to the agencies for years—one had even been considered a priority—but basic issues such as delays, poor communication and bad record-keeping caused the problems, not the surveillance of the suspects.

Although these amendments are obviously within the letter of the law, they seem to me to be fundamentally undemocratic in the way that they are being brutally pushed into our parliamentary process. This seems to me a way of short-circuiting real scrutiny. It is great that they were looked at before, but they still need looking at again; if they are—I hope the Minister is listening—they absolutely must be looked at by the Joint Committee on Human Rights. It should look at these amendments before there is any more discussion in either of these Houses.

For me, this snoopers’ charter reduces our rights, and surely that is exactly what the terrorists are after. Terrorists want to impact on our society and on every single person who does not believe the way that they do. That is what we are letting happen here. It is absolutely mad. The Mayor of London recently referred to “this civil liberties stuff” in the most dismissive way, as if that is negotiable—that civil liberties are not terribly important when we compare them with the threat of terrorism. That is exactly when we need our civil liberties. That is what we in the West should be known for.

There is also the cost. My experience of the Met over the past 15 years is that it cannot deal with the data that it already has. I have asked many questions about its databases and the information that it gets from them. The Met does not know how many databases it has—it cannot tell me how many to the nearest hundred. Also, it often cannot search its databases. For example, I had the dubious pleasure of being on its domestic extremist database, I think under the regime of the noble Lord, Lord Blair, and I hope that I am not on the database anymore—the Met has changed its definition of what a domestic extremist is—but who knows because I cannot get the information. However, the Met cannot search that database for serious criminal activity. Because the definition was changed to relate to serious criminals, if you ask, “Can you look through the database and find out how many serious criminals you have?”, you will be told, “Oh, we haven’t logged that, so we can’t do that”.

Not only are we expecting the Met staff to deal with more data when they cannot sort and file the data that they already have, but, I would argue, they have enough powers. The noble Lord, Lord Blair, talked about some very tragic incidents where more surveillance might actually solve a crime or find a lost child. In fact, the police already have these powers. They have them under RIPA and, in my view, they are already misusing them. Under RIPA they do not have to go to a judge to ask if they can put surveillance on somebody; they just have to go to a chief inspector in a nearby unit and ask, “Could you sign this for me? It’s surveillance on somebody or other”.

We should not be thinking about giving more powers to our spies and to the police. We should be very careful about this. We should think about taking back some of those powers and making sure that we persist in keeping our civil liberties and human rights and do not let the terrorists take them away from us.

[Lord Macdonald of River Glaven]

My Lords, I was surprised that at an early stage in his speech the noble Lord, Lord West, suggested—until he revised the figure—that communications data were employed in some 95% of criminal cases. My experience from the years when I was responsible for prosecuting serious crime and terrorism was that the figure was 100%. I cannot remember a serious criminal case, and I certainly cannot remember a terrorism case, in which communications data were not used. Of course, there is a difference between data which are employed to detect terrorism and data which are then used as part of a prosecution to convict terrorists. Certainly, so far as the latter is concerned, there was a vast amount in every case.

The noble Lord, Lord Evans, will remember some of those cases which occurred when he was director-general of the Security Service. The men who tried to commit mass murder on London’s Underground are serving long prison sentences. The men who wanted to detonate a bomb containing radioactive material in Oxford Street are serving long prison sentences. The men who wanted to put a bomb in Bluewater shopping centre at half-term when it would be particularly busy are serving long prison sentences. In the case of the men who wanted to put a bomb in a nightclub—the Ministry of Sound—two were recorded by members of the noble Lord’s service. The leader of the gang said to one of his colleagues, “No one will be able to criticise us for blowing up a nightclub; all those slags dancing around”. This is material which is of the utmost importance in criminal prosecutions.

It is also true, of course, that technology is changing and our capacity to monitor this sort of material must change with it. I accept that, but I do not believe that these amendments are the right vehicle for achieving that change. These amendments suffer from the deficiencies which the original Bill suffered from; in particular, they are insufficiently specific. I agree with everything that the noble Lord said in his compelling speech a few minutes ago. These amendments are deficient for the same reasons that the original Bill was deficient and I shall not support them. This is not, as my noble friend Lord Carlile said, a party political matter. It is a matter of analysing the material and determining whether it is fit for purpose. With respect, I do not agree with my noble friend Lady Neville-Jones that we must do something. We must do the right thing and I do not think that this is the right thing. In everything, we must maintain balance and proportionality. No one has argued in this debate that we should not have a mechanism whereby the security services can access material of this sort. The question is what sort of mechanism.

The security services in recent years, and perhaps in years long gone by, have been led by people who understand the tension between security and rights. When I was DPP and the noble Lord was the director-general of the Security Service, I enjoyed the discussions we had on this topic. Sometimes we disagreed about precisely where the line was drawn, but we agreed that there was a line. One of my fears about these amendments, as with the draft Communications Data Bill, is that they draw the line in the wrong place. One result of that would be an adverse impact on our great security institutions. There is no doubt that the security services in this country enjoy enormous public support, which is unfamiliar even in democracies such as France. It is clearly understood by people in this country that the security services are after “them and not us”. In other words, they are interested in targeting those individuals who are trying to do us wrong rather than the rest of us. The danger of breadth in legislation of this sort is that, if the idea gets about that the security services are interested in everybody’s communications, not just the material of those subject to investigation who are being targeted because it is believed that they are involved in crime, then the sense which the British people have of their security institutions will begin to alter in subtle ways, and not for the good. I would caution those who argue that legislation of this breadth is needed because it is future-proof. We must take great care with legislation that is enacted in the context of the sort of public confidence issues that the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, indicated.

People are interested in these issues. They express their interest in different ways, but there is a feeling abroad that the Government and the security services are becoming nosy. I do not believe that that is true, but if we enact legislation that appears to people to be unnaturally broad, we run the risk of feeding that monster. I shall oppose the amendment.

Parliament Square: Occupy Protests

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Tuesday 28th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

Does the Minister agree that this is a terrible waste of time, energy and resources for the police force? Part of the problem is that you are asking them to police and enforce laws that are extremely repressive. It was a Labour Government who introduced the police reform Act, and you are now enforcing it. Is it time to ask your ministerial colleagues, perhaps, if they would repeal the worst aspects of that Act?

[Lord Bates]

The noble Baroness is a Member of your Lordships’ House; she is free as a parliamentarian to propose any laws that she wishes; but the reality is that in 2011 your Lordships decided by an overwhelming majority that they wanted this law and they wanted this space for public peaceful protest.