Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill

Baroness Warsi Excerpts

Monday 26th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marlesford (Con)]

My Lords, I am curious about two of the sources of opposition to what my noble friend Lord King and others have proposed. One is that we somehow have plenty of time and that we do not need to rush. Terrorism is time-related, but it is not time-limited. The terrorist threat was there yesterday and the day before. It is certainly there today and it will be there tomorrow, I am afraid, and I fear the day after tomorrow as well. We do not have the luxury of time that many have suggested.

The other point that surprised me so much is the one about public concern. Of course, it is very easy to say to the public that there is a danger of a snoopers’ charter, which will interfere with everything that you are communicating and is very much against your interests. We know that technically that is simply not true. It is a fear and concern that has been fanned by politicians, quite often for their own purposes.

The noble Lord, Lord Butler, was so right to draw attention to the fact that a draft Bill has been prepared. As far as I can make out, that has been deliberately suppressed by one party for presumably some sort of political reason. It has not been brought forward for discussion. If you ask the public to choose between reducing the risk of death from terrorism to themselves or others whom they do not know, or a possible invasion of their privacy or the privacy of others whom they know or do not know, I have little doubt as to what they would choose.

There are ways in which the security of this country is not being maintained when the Government would like to maintain it. I take one example. It is clearly in our interests in the world of terrorism that we should know who crosses our borders—out as well as in. We have been given an example of the people who go to do jihad and all the rest of it. The fact is that a big attempt was made with the e-Borders programme. A contract worth £750 million was given to Raytheon in 2007. It ran into tremendous difficulties and in 2010 the contract was cancelled. Since then there has been a great deal of judicial toing and froing and arbitration. The net result appears to be a debt to the taxpayer to be paid by the Home Office to Raytheon of £200 million. Something like that failed when it was tried. Let us at least do things that we think can be done. Do not let us say that we have until the day after tomorrow as things may happen tomorrow.

[Baroness Warsi (Con)]

My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Butler, I appreciate that this debate has gone on for some time, so I will try to keep my intervention short. These extensive amendments have been proposed in many ways by people whom I consider to be institutions, so I am therefore hesitant to stand up and speak on them. They have been proposed by people for whom I have much admiration. But it concerns me that they are being bolted on to what is already a difficult and in many parts controversial Bill, at the end of a Parliament in what will be a toxic political year and in an expedited way. It is probably not the best way in which to bring these matters forward. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, that if there is a better version of this Bill out there in the ether of government it may have been better to have considered that version rather than the one before us today.

I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, for her expert understanding of the IT community and developments in that community. It always surprises me that just when we think that we will be able to deal with an issue the industry finds a way that leads us to think—after that legislation has been passed—that we probably will not. In those circumstances it is important that we ask whether what we are going to do is needed.

The noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, made some very important points about evidence gathered and the basis on which we secure prosecutions and convictions for people who are now serving sentences. Is it absolutely true that this kind of communication is the missing link, right now, in preventing terrorist actions being successful? The noble Lord, Lord Carlile, raised the issue of the two ladies who are married to the two men in France and were communicating with each other, how we did not have those data, and how, had we had that information, it might have provided the missing link that alerted the French security services. I, for one, am not convinced. Sisters-in-law spend hours gossiping to each other all the time. I am not sure that that would have been the moment when the bright light came on to say that a terrorist act was going to be committed—because two women married to two men are speaking to each other.

The gathering and retention of these data is for the purposes of national security. Again, noble Lords, or the Minister, may be able to clarify what this means. I was talking to the noble Lord, Lord King, earlier, about the definition of national security as it relates to this amendment, or part of the Bill, and we could not find such a definition. Perhaps somebody could bring one to my attention. However, for the purposes of national security something that could be interpreted as very wide and broad, and which could change depending on the political persuasions of Ministers at any time, is a very wide provision and so requires consideration.

I hear the point which has been made: “We do not have the time”, but I also think that our security services have, through the number of plots they have foiled up to now, shown that they are able to operate within current constraints and keep us safe. While we need to give them more power, over time, to make sure that they continue to keep us safe, it is important that those powers work and are needed by the people who are an essential element of our fight against extremism and terrorism.

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Evans of Weardale, who, in many meetings, used to be the biggest voice of reason on these issues. He spoke of the amount of support and co-operation that was received from the British Muslim communities in the fight against terrorism, and how that was an essential element of ensuring that we were kept safe. I speak as somebody who has been on the receiving end of what could be described as profiling or as a general concern about keeping us safe. I probably get more random checks than many Members of this House and my husband is never going to catch an internal flight in the US. He never arranges a meeting on the day he arrives in the US, because he knows he is going to miss his first internal flight. It is, therefore, important that whatever powers come into play are effective, and that they do not send out a general sense of alienation among those communities which we need to keep on board. I made that point in my piece at the weekend, saying that we must seriously look at how the Government start to engage in a much broader and deeper way with the British Muslim communities, who are going to be part of the solution.

A recent radio phone-in asked whether, if your husband, wife, partner or “relevant other half” asked you to hand over your mobile phone to him or her right now so that they could look at absolutely everything on it, you would be prepared to hand it over immediately. Or would you think: “I probably need to delete a few things from this phone before I hand it to them”. Perhaps that is a question that we should all go away and think about. If we cannot just hand things over to those whom we consider to be our “relevant other halves”, knowing that our data are completely safe with them, although there may be consequences, then we should be much more careful about handing over that power to government—the different colours of government—who could, over time, go into realms that we would not want them to go into.