Points of Order
Debate between Chris Bryant and Peter Bone(8 years ago)
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Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. We all like the Leader of the House and we take him at his word. Only a few weeks ago, he told the House that if not enough Members turn up to vote for a private Member’s Bill—this was in relation to the Alan Turing Bill—it should fall, and that was fair enough. We all turned up last week: large numbers of us took him at his word and the vote was carried by 257 votes—including several Conservative Members—to 35. Surely, by the Leader of the House’s own logic, the Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill should now go into Committee. Plenty of Members turned up to vote for it, and those who did not might be those who do not want it.
Wilson Doctrine
Debate between Chris Bryant and Peter Bone(9 years, 1 month ago)
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Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the operation of the Wilson Doctrine.
Let me start by paying tribute to all those who have kept up sustained questioning on this topic: my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich East (Mr Watson), the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick), the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) and, most importantly, the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), whose court case has brought so much new information to light. They have done the whole House and the country an invaluable service.
Until last Wednesday, it was thought that the Wilson doctrine was still in force. MPs and Members of the Lords—[Interruption.] I hear the Home Secretary saying that the doctrine is still in force. Well, we look forward to hearing her argument on that later on.
MPs and Members of the Lords, as well as those who communicated with them as whistleblowers, constituents and members of the wider public, thought that parliamentarians’ communications were not, would not and could not be tampered with or intercepted, and that they could rely on a guarantee from the Government that that was so. That is because the doctrine was originally laid out in unambiguous terms on 17 November 1966 when Harold Wilson, the then Prime Minister, told the House that there was to be
“no tapping of the telephones of hon. Members.”—[Official Report, 17 November 1966; Vol. 736, c. 634.]
That was our decision and that was our policy. Five days later, the Lord Privy Seal, Lord Longford, announced that the policy also applied to their lordships’ House.
Despite changes of Government and advances in technology, the policy has enjoyed remarkably consistent declarations of support from Harold Wilson’s successors. It was reasserted by Mrs Thatcher, who said in a written answer on 6 February 1980 that
“the policy remains as stated by the right hon. Gentleman.”—[Official Report, 6 February 1980; Vol. 978, c. 245W.]
The right hon. Gentleman to whom she referred was Harold Wilson.
The policy was reasserted by Tony Blair in the same terms on 30 October 1997. On 4 December that year, he said that the policy
“applies in relation to telephone interception and to the use of electronic surveillance by any of the three security and intelligence agencies.”—[Official Report, 4 December 1997; Vol. 302, c. 321.]
On 21 January 2002, he clarified:
“The policy extends to all forms of warranted interception of communications.”—[Official Report, 21 January 2002; Vol. 378, c. 589W.]
Like Wilson, Blair made it clear that he was acting on consideration. When Sir Swinton Thomas, the then interception of communications commissioner, advised him against maintaining the Wilson doctrine in 2006, Mr Blair told the House in a written ministerial statement, after consultation in Cabinet:
“I have considered Sir Swinton’s advice very seriously…I have decided that the Wilson Doctrine should be maintained.”—[Official Report, 30 March 2006; Vol. 444, c. 96WS.]
The doctrine was also reasserted by Gordon Brown on 12 September 2007. As late as 15 July 2014, the Home Secretary stated that
“obviously the Wilson doctrine applies to parliamentarians”,
as if nothing had changed—exactly as she has done just now.
I give this history merely to point to the absolute nature of the Wilson doctrine, the categorical nature in which it has been stated to this House, and the consistency with which it has been supported, at least in public, by successive Governments, despite changing security threats and changing technology. Even after the introduction of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, Governments repeatedly made it clear that the Wilson doctrine remained in place—until last Wednesday, when the Investigatory Powers Tribunal revealed that a completely different regime is now in operation under this Home Secretary. From the evidence given to the tribunal, it is clear that the Wilson doctrine has been altered beyond recognition without Parliament being told and that the Wilson doctrine is, to all intents and purposes, defunct.
Harold Wilson joked that his postbag suggested that
“a very high proportion of the electorate generally are under the delusion that their telephones are being tapped. This delusion spreads to hon. Members and I should say that I used to suffer from it myself at one time.”—[Official Report, 17 November 1966; Vol. 736, c. 636.]
He, of course, was joking, but as one who knows for certain that his phone was tapped by The News of the World, I say to the Government, “Do not take us for fools. We in this House are not naive. Be open and honest with the House and with the public.”
Last year, the former police officer Peter Francis said that he had seen old security files on Jack Straw, Peter Hain, Joan Ruddock, Ken Livingstone and my hon. Friends the Members for Bolsover (Mr Skinner) and for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) and my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott). The Government tried to silence Peter Francis then, but it now seems that his revelations were probably just the tip of the iceberg.
Most worryingly, last week’s IPT ruling included the partial disclosure of the Government’s official guidance to the three security agencies, which includes a lengthy piece on the Wilson doctrine. The official guidance states categorically: first, that
“it is not, and has never been, Government policy that Parliamentarians’ communications may not be the subject of interception”;
secondly, that the Wilson doctrine does not apply to requests for communications data relating to parliamentarians, nor to the communications of a Member of the European Parliament or of a devolved Administration; thirdly, that parliamentarians are not exempt from bulk interceptions of communications under section 8(4) of RIPA and that any such material that relates to parliamentarians can be interrogated within MI5 and can be disclosed to an outside body; fourthly, that the Wilson doctrine protects only
“the communications of Parliamentarians in the performance of their Parliamentary and constituency duties without fear that their communications are being targeted other than exceptionally where there is a compelling reason for doing so”;
and, fifthly, that the Home Secretary can, having consulted the agencies and the Prime Minister, via the Cabinet Secretary, issue a warrant for the deliberate targeting and interception of parliamentarians’ communications.
That blatantly flies in the face of successive Prime Ministers’ statements to this House. Why would the Government need a separate warrant process for the interception of MPs’ communications if they were still abiding by the Wilson doctrine that MPs’ communications should not, could not and would not be intercepted? How can it be right that the process depends on three highly subjective judgments: first, about what constitute parliamentary and constituency duties, which is a notoriously difficult matter in determining parliamentary privilege; secondly, about what constitutes a sufficiently significant exception; and, thirdly, about what would count as a sufficiently compelling reason? How can it be right that under the Home Secretary’s new dispensation all those judgments are made solely by the Home Secretary, with one politician deciding on the targeting of another politician?
One other element of the Wilson doctrine was that the Prime Minister, “on his own initiative”—those were the then Prime Minister’s words—would notify Parliament of any change to the doctrine. No such statement has been volunteered by this Prime Minister, yet the tribunal makes it very clear that the doctrine has been changed. It states that
“changes in the Doctrine…have resulted in its operation as now described by Mrs May”.
Those words are “changes in the doctrine”. It adds:
“It is clear to us that the Wilson Doctrine as now constituted is as explained by Mrs May”
and goes on to point out that the Wilson doctrine is not in operation.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
I am grateful to the shadow Leader of the House for his explanation. We hear about changes, but could those changes have been made a very long time ago and not just by this Government?
Chris Bryant
Of course, the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. It is perfectly possible that changes have been made previously, but we cannot judge that. All we can judge is the decision of the IPT, which has been able to review substantially more evidence than this House would ever be able to review and concluded that “changes in the Doctrine” have resulted in its operation as it is now. I suspect that it would be impossible for us ever to know whether changes were made prior to this Government taking office, but we certainly know that the doctrine as previously espoused by every Prime Minister since Wilson is not that which is in operation under the present Home Secretary. In other words, the Wilson doctrine has no legal effect. It is no longer in force. It is no more than a self-denying ordinance that could easily be rescinded and has already been ignored, all without notifying Parliament.
It is clear that the situation is unsatisfactory and I believe that it is time that the Government were straight with the House, so let me ask the Home Secretary some simple questions. What did she mean when she said that the Wilson doctrine “obviously” applies to parliamentarians? Will she now finally admit that the Wilson doctrine is no longer? Will she tell us when she resolved to change the Wilson doctrine? Was there any discussion of these changes at Cabinet, as notified in the IPT judgment? Will she tell us how often warrants have been issued for the targeted interception of parliamentarians’ communications? Has she issued such warrants herself, and did she have any direct correspondence with the Prime Minister about this?
Let me be clear that I am not calling for individual warrants or interceptions to be identified. It is a long-standing policy of both parties of government that we will not comment on individual applications for interception. Indeed, it is an offence under RIPA to reveal that information. Neither do we want the operational security of ongoing investigations to be undermined, but we need to know the truth about whether parliamentarians have been spied on, and on what authority that happened.
Let me end by laying out the parameters for a possible new Wilson doctrine. First, there may be situations when it is necessary for a parliamentarian’s communications to be intercepted in the interests of securing the nation and preventing serious criminality. MPs cannot ever be above the law, but our democracy cannot function properly without the freedom of MPs to communicate with their constituents, whistleblowers, or the wider public without fear of interception. Just as, in the interests of a free press and a sound justice system, journalists and lawyers are granted enhanced protection from warranted surveillance, the legal presumption should be that parliamentarians are not to be targeted, nor their metadata interrogated, without good cause. That means that, as the Anderson report of the investigatory powers review, “A Question of Trust”, concluded, a judge, not a politician, should make the decision on a warrant. It means that the bar for granting a warrant should be high. Agencies should be required to show due cause and specific suspicion of serious criminality.
Chris Bryant
For the avoidance of doubt, I want to make it absolutely clear that my personal objection is not that MPs’ phones might have been tapped—there might be circumstances in which that is perfectly legitimate in order for Governments to defend national security or prevent serious criminality—but the continued pretence and repeated assertion that their phones have not been tapped.
Mr Bone
I almost agree with the shadow Leader of the House. What I am saying is that I have no objection to the tapping of MPs’ telephones for national security, alongside all the safeguards we have mentioned, but we should be told at least once a year how many times that has occurred. We should know not who is involved, but how often it has occurred so that the House knows what is going on. That, however, is the information that we cannot get, which is why we have to put the Wilson doctrine into law. It expands, of course, into e-mails and all the other forms of communication that are now in place.
Let us have the debate. The shadow Leader of the House seemed to take an assurance from the Home Secretary, but I was not sure whether I was listening to Richard Nixon again. It was not clear to me whether legislation will definitely be brought forward, or if that would be only considered. It is essential that we get clarity about that.
I was very attracted to what my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Tom Pursglove) said when he talked about a treble lock. If an MP’s phone is to be tapped or another form of their communication is to be intercepted, yes, that should be authorised by the Home Secretary and by a judge, but I think it should also be authorised by whoever is sitting in your Chair, Mr Speaker, as the Speaker should also have a role in this. That triple lock would make the process more difficult because if any of those parties disagreed, the proposed intervention would not happen. We need to debate such issues in detail. We cannot pretend that MPs are not having their communications intercepted when clearly, by the omission of a response from the Government, that is exactly what is happening.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Chris Bryant and Peter Bone(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
You always say that before I start, Mr Speaker. [Laughter.] And you know about shortness, don’t you?
I have already welcomed the new Secretary of State, but I welcome the new sports Minister very warmly. I liked her predecessor enormously, but when she was appointed I just wanted to run around and give her a hug. I am very pleased. It is a delight to see the new arts Minister, the hon. Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey), in his place. He looks remarkably like the old arts Minister, except that he has lost his beard. Perhaps that is how he managed to survive. Honestly, it is a delight to see him in his place.
Chris Bryant
No, he does not get a hug. If he really wants one, he can ask for one later, and so can the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone).