Investigatory Powers Bill

Debate between Lord Vaizey of Didcot and Andrew Murrison

Tuesday 1st November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Dr Murrison]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that there is some help for us in this extremely big Bill at clause 232, on review of the operation of the Act? Although we cannot tell what the consultation on Leveson will come up with—there are four options in the document I have just read—we can come back in five years’ time and, if we are concerned about the implementation of section 40 of the 2013 Act, in our review of the Act this Bill will become we might be able to revisit a Baroness Hollins-type amendment from the other place.

[Mr Vaizey]

No. I have read the Bill, and in particular spent some time pondering whether clause 232 could help us in these circumstances, and came to the conclusion that it could not. A five-year review of an amendment, passed in the other place, that has nothing to do with the Bill did not strike me as something the Bill’s drafters had in mind—I am sure the Minister will clarify that for us—when they put in place the five-year review. They want that review to be of the very important measures in the Bill that govern the operation of the security services and how they are able to carry out their investigations.

Regardless of one’s views on the implementation of section 40, this amendment is absolutely the wrong way to do it. It is, to coin a phrase, opening up a back door to implement section 40 when it should be for the Government to have a debate in this House on whether that is appropriate.

That brings me to my next point, which is of course about the statement made earlier in the house by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, who made it clear that there will be a consultation on the implementation of section 40. Now, to quote a former editor of The Guardian once in the Chamber is bad enough; to quote him twice may be a misfortune. But I remind the House that he wrote on Sunday in The Observer that he would like to see section 40 “mothballed”. As I said earlier, that may perhaps go too far, but the tone of his very thoughtful article was that the position we have come to on potential regulation of the press has been circumspect and perhaps tactical rather than strategic. Going forward, this House has an opportunity to talk about a regime that actually works. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale) said during the statement earlier, the current system of press regulation itself does not take into account wholly unregulated arenas such as Facebook and so on, where so many people go to get their news.

That brings me to my third point, which is a more general one on press regulation, as that is what we are debating because of this Lords amendment. We should give IPSO time to settle down. It is introducing a system of arbitration. It has something like 2,500 members. It could take into account the issue of how so much of the information we now get is available in the unregulated sphere that is the internet.

My fourth point echoes the excellent points made by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset on the impact on newspapers. I said many times as a Minister that our newspapers, and our local and regional newspapers in particular, faced a perfect storm, with both their readership and the classified advertisements that were their revenue migrating on to the internet.

I take issue here with the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry). She is quite right that regional newspapers were not affected by the phone hacking scandal, as they did not participate in phone hacking. But it is also right to say that they are the ones that have been contacting Members to point out how section 40 could have an impact on them. That is why my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State’s consultation on section 40 is so welcome.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Murrison]

Will my right hon. Friend explain how small press outlets will be impacted by the Hollins amendments? As the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) rightly pointed out, small papers do not hack.

[Mr Vaizey]

That is precisely the point. I was intrigued by what the hon. and learned Lady said. She said that they had not hacked and would therefore not be affected. This is not some retrospective legislation that will impose costs on newspapers that have hacked; it is legislation that will impose costs on newspapers in the future. Again, I hate to sound utterly feeble in holding on to the coat tails of my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset, but I could not put the argument better than he did. The key point about the clause—I would probably oppose it even it was in the right Bill—is that it gives anyone who wants to “try it on”, to use a phrase that is perhaps slightly casual for this Chamber, the opportunity to do so with a newspaper that wants to protect its source. The claimant can allege that information has come to the newspaper by means of phone hacking or interception of email. It is then, as my hon. Friend said, up to the newspaper to prove a negative. Common sense dictates that the only way it can do that is to, effectively, give up its source.

In answer to my hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison), it is precisely the regional newspapers which could be hit by this measure. A small claim, one in the tens of thousands of pounds rather than in the hundreds of thousands, can still cause them immense financial damage. As MPs, we all know that our regional papers have been through a torrid time. Ten years ago when I started as the MP for Wantage, every one of the four major towns in my constituency had their own dedicated reporter. I have seen the decimation of journalism in my constituency, although I praise my local newspapers for holding on as much as they can to their journalists.

I will not be supporting the amendment. I will support the Government in the Lobby.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Vaizey of Didcot and Andrew Murrison

Thursday 9th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Vaizey]

I certainly take the hon. Gentleman’s points on board. We will make sure that the bidding process is as transparent and clear as possible and we will make the rules as clear as possible. While we are talking about culture, it is important to mark today as the anniversary of the publication of the first Book of Common Prayer by Archbishop Cranmer on 9 June 1569, following the Anglican Church’s break with Europe—I mean Rome!

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

I thank the Minister for his email on Monday about superfast broadband which I am sending out to my parishes. May I raise with him the problem of not spots in rural areas? What is being done following the cessation of the mobile infrastructure project run by Arqiva?

[Mr Vaizey]

You will be pleased to know, Mr Speaker, that I have run out of anniversaries.

The mobile infrastructure project was a fantastic success, with 75 sites established, but it has been overtaken by the emergency services programme, where the plan is to build 300 sites to complete the network cover—5,000 km of roads. I hope my hon. Friend’s constituents will benefit. In the next few months we will have a clearer idea of where those masts are going and which not spots they are tackling, and I will keep him informed.

Mobile Infrastructure Project

Debate between Lord Vaizey of Didcot and Andrew Murrison

Wednesday 10th February 2016 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Culture and the Digital Economy (Mr Edward Vaizey)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Main. I still fondly recall my visit to your constituency to see the wonderful heritage and that brilliant museum that you have there—what a lucky MP you are!

I feel in a relatively philosophical mood as I gaze at 12 colleagues who are a sort of jury, ready to give a verdict on the programme. I must admit that I am guilty as charged. I do not think the programme has been a success, and I do not think that Ministers often say that about their programmes. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Michael Tomlinson) predicted that I would be bullish about the programme in my usual bombastic—he did not say that word, but perhaps he meant it—fashion, but I will not be bullish about it.

I think that when Ministers defend their programmes, they should have credibility. I am happy to defend the superfast broadband roll-out, which I think has been an unequivocal success despite the occasional criticism I receive. I am also happy to defend our record on libraries, despite the brickbats that I get from library campaigners, but I am fully prepared to stand up in the Chamber and admit that the mobile infrastructure project has not been as successful as we had envisaged. We set aside £150 million. We talked about 600 sites. Our heart was in the right place. We wanted to eliminate “not spots”, precisely because of the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen) raised: mobile phones are essential to many people in their daily lives. We wanted to eliminate the “not spots” that exist as best we could. I am grateful to him for securing this important debate.

[Dr Murrison]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Vaizey]

I am in the middle of my mea culpa, but I might as well give way and make this as tortuous as possible.

[Dr Murrison]

I am rather concerned, because the Minister seems to be beating himself up. The truth of the matter is that if his Department is guilty of anything, it is perhaps not having anticipated how long it takes to get infrastructure projects of this sort off the ground. All he needs to do is say that the project essentially is a good one but we need to allow it a little more time, so that projects of the sort to which my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen) alluded have a chance.

[Mr Vaizey]

I hear what my hon. Friend says, and I will address that point in a minute.

I want to start with some of the obstacles that we encountered. First, there was the issue of coverage. I said earlier that I was in a philosophical mood. What we had to try to establish, to quote Shakespeare, was, “What is a not spot?” Trying to establish where a “not spot” is—that is, exactly where we will get no mobile coverage—can be difficult when dealing with radio frequencies. For the benefit of hon. Members who have not taken a close interest in the programme, a “not spot” is where no mobile operator can get a signal. A partial “not spot” is where there may be a signal from one mobile operator but not from another.

We therefore had to narrow down what a “not spot” is. That proved a useful exercise, because it allowed us to work with Ofcom and the mobile operators for the first time to establish a much more robust system of identifying where we were not getting mobile signals. Of course, the programme was announced at around the same time as the 4G auction, so we ran smack bang into the middle of the 4G roll-out programme, which was clearly going to change coverage criteria and therefore add another factor.

The next issue was planning. My hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury makes a good point—we had not anticipated just how difficult some of the planning issues are, particularly when we were dragging four operators with us, metaphorically kicking and screaming. Although we were paying for the mast, we were asking them to meet the operating costs going forward, which include the land rental as well as the transmission costs for what is, by definition, an uneconomic area.

As an example, I will take my hon. Friend through the saga of North Hill farm in his constituency. A planning application was approved at the end of October 2015, but the council—I am sure he knows some of its councillors—then decided that even though planning approval had been given, the colour of the mast had to be subsequently approved. Apparently, if a range of colours had been given, that would not have caused a delay, but the council wanted specific approval of the mast’s specific colour. That was compounded by the fact that the council and the area of outstanding natural beauty partnership did not respond to Arqiva’s request for guidance on what colour mast they wanted, to enable the council to make an application to discharge the planning condition—in other words, the colour of the mast.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Vaizey of Didcot and Andrew Murrison

Thursday 21st January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

Given the imminent demise of the largely unsuccessful Arqiva mobile infrastructure programme, what can now be done to improve the “not spot” situation, which is wholly unsatisfactory in relation to the £400 billion rural economy?

[Mr Vaizey]

I am pleased that we should have 75 sites erected as a result of the mobile infrastructure programme. Thirty-two people living in Wales have benefited from a new mobile site that has just been erected. I am pleased that under the deal that we negotiated with mobile operators, they will increase their coverage to 90% geographic coverage.