Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill

Debate between Baroness Lane-Fox of Soho and Baroness Ludford

Monday 26th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lane-Fox of Soho (CB)]

My Lords, I apologise for not being able to speak at Second Reading. I was detained at a board meeting.

This House has given me many occasions to feel both alarmed and surprised. Today is no exception, first, in describing Tinder to my Back-Bench friends during an earlier part of the debate and, secondly, in rising to speak against four noble Lords for whom I have the greatest respect and who have offered me enormous friendship since I entered your Lordships’ House. I should like to cite three brief reasons why I oppose the amendment.

First, I wholeheartedly agree that we need a more detailed, complex and timely debate around this enormously complicated issue. The Government were slow to react compared to the quick review by America of the oversight and security services post-Snowden. This Government have looked lacklustre in their response. However, different processes are under way.

I declare an interest as being part of a panel set up by the Deputy Prime Minister and administered by the Royal United Services Institute. The Information Commissioner work is also continuing and we have the emergency legislation referred to as DRIP, which has already been talked about this afternoon. I believe it is very important that those pieces of work reach the next stage and that the debate in Parliament puts all of them into the mix.

Secondly, it is easy to underestimate the power of the public’s view on this subject. The noble Lord, Lord West, mentioned that he thinks that the public are fairly disinterested in this issue but I disagree wholeheartedly. A YouGov survey found that only 6% of people believe that the Government have a coherent data strategy but that it affects them directly. Another poll whose results I saw recently said that just 2% of people trust the Government when it comes to their data. That is immensely important for the reason that the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, most eloquently espoused earlier—to build trust and engagement among exactly the groups that this legislation is trying to reach.

More than that, perhaps I may give two technical examples that make me believe that such trust is so vital. There is now a move towards more and more use of the dark web—a place where it is very difficult to collect any data—and towards more and more encryption. At one end of the spectrum is a small start-up—actually it is not so small any more—called Wickr. This was started by a woman in the US and it enables communications to remain completely secure. Imagine sending a message that is never stored on any server anywhere. Not only does it disappear remotely in your hand but also it never stays on the network. She has had enormous success in building her app—quite understandably for many people, who believe that they should have a private mechanism for communication and that the Snowden revelations have shown that systems are not safe or secure. Then, more in the mainstream, we have Facebook, which has recently asserted that it is starting a sub-site on the dark web—the unregulatable and uncontrollable web—so that its customers can feel safe.

If we do not listen to what the world is doing and move and engage with it, allowing people to feel that their concerns around security are being addressed, there is a danger that we will take a retrograde step with communications Bills, such as with this amendment.

Finally, I believe that we need to engage much more deeply with both civil liberties groups and the industry itself. Here, I agree with a recent statement by President Obama, which I hope the Committee will forgive me for repeating. At the press conference in Washington which he shared with our own Prime Minister, he said in answer to a question about surveillance and about whether there was a swing to security from privacy:

“In six years I and the Prime Minister have seen a constant threat stream across our desks—the pendulum doesn’t need to swing but we need a consistent framework. There needs to be a debate about the laws and the discussion needs to involve the tech industry, who have responsibilities not only to security but also to the customers who use their products, and it also needs to involve the civil libertarians who are tapping us on the shoulder”.

I urge the Government to address the very real concerns of the general public on the one side and the security services on the other, particularly about the boundaries and framework for data collection, but I urge them not to do so by way of this amendment.

[Baroness Ludford]

My Lords, there are objections of both process and substance to these amendments which make it inopportune and injudicious to cut and paste this amendment into the Bill—to “bounce” it into the Bill, in the words of my noble friend Lord Blencathra, whose speech I thoroughly commend. As the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, has just mentioned, there is an issue of trust. We all know—it is commented on with great regularity—that there is very little trust in politicians and parliamentarians. The noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones, even though she would like an updated communications data Bill, referred to the poor reputation of the existing model. However, it is the existing model, shorn of the safeguard of judicial authorisation and scrutiny and the safeguard of restrictions on the exercise of powers, that it is proposed should be inserted in the form of these amendments.

I have counted five current reviews of investigatory powers, which make it bad timing to proceed with the substance of these amendments. As I understand it, there is one by the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, David Anderson, another by the Intelligence and Security Committee, another at the request of the Deputy Prime Minister by the Royal United Services Institute, another by Sir Nigel Sheinwald on the international aspects, and one by the Interception of Communications Commissioner, Sir Paul Kennedy, into the use of RIPA to identify journalists’ sources. With all those reviews going on, I think it is rather disrespectful to them to say, “Well, we won’t wait for those conclusions but we’ll stick into this Bill all this new capacity to collect communications data”.

Mention has been made of the capability gap. The 2012 committee report said that the Government failed to share with the committee the research findings behind their assertion of a then 25%, going on 35%, capability gap, and that such a figure was “unhelpful and potentially misleading”. Therefore, we simply do not know what the capability is. My noble friend Lord Strasburger mentioned the revelations of the Tempora programme. I am not sure why we bother to legislate half the time, as GCHQ seems to go a great deal beyond the scope of any Bill.

The report also said:

“Part of the gap is the lack of ability of law enforcement agencies to make effective use of the data that is available”.

That is not my assertion but the assertion of a very thorough and wise Joint Committee report. I agree with it that addressing that ability should be a priority.

There was also mention of the failure to consult communication service providers and internet service providers, and there have been recent complaints, which I mentioned earlier, by the Internet Services Providers’ Association about the lack of consultation. Before any redrafted legislation is introduced, the Joint Committee recommended extensive and meaningful consultation,

“once there is clarity as to the real aims of the Home Office”,

which would be quite useful.