Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill

Debate between Earl of Erroll and Lord West of Spithead

Thursday 17th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

My Lords, I have not intervened earlier because I have been doing lots of other things, but I wanted to intervene on this amendment and say that I think that this is a sensible approach. I cannot believe that you can produce this Bill within a couple of weeks and then say that we cannot do something better in a year and a half. It seems that we are trying just to push the boundaries out, and the question is why. It tends to be the people who can see the challenges, who come from a senior executive background, who are trying to get this sorted out, and I can see their point.

We need to consider some of the principles behind the amendment, which is why I fully support it, and we need to discuss those principles very early on. The issue is not the technicalities in the Bill, the definitions of communication data and metadata; we know that we need to do this for the purposes of finding terrorists, enforcing the law and stuff like that. The real challenge is posed by that old bit of Latin—which I might as well use, as we are now using Latin—sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who watches the watchers? Who guards the guardians? We should remember the line that is supposed to come after that, which I will say in English: they keep quiet about the girl’s secrets and get her as their payment. Everyone hushes things up. That is the trouble. If corruption runs high enough, you get the Cambridge set—was it four or five by the end of it all? You get J Edgar Hoover.

That sounds as if I am painting a hugely black picture, but there is danger there, even more so now that we have rolled together—for the purpose of catching terrorists and people in serious and organised crime, which we have had to do—what used to be our external forces, GCHQ and MI6, responsible to the Foreign Office, and our internal police, which was MI5 and is now basically the NCA. In America the CIA and the FBI were kept separate. We have started to bring our forces together because of things falling between the cracks. This means that we are potentially giving huge powers to internal police. Therefore, how those at the top are to be watched is of vital importance.

[Lord West of Spithead]

My Lords, I am sure that the noble Lord is not for a moment suggesting that corruption is involved in this. I understand why there needs to be proper oversight, but surely the noble Earl does not mean to mention words like corruption in connection with the way in which this matter is being approached.

[The Earl of Erroll]

I am sorry; I am not suggesting that there is any at the moment at all. There has been historically—the Cambridge set. There are problems with people at the top from time to time.