Investigatory Powers (Amendment)Bill [Lords]

Debate between Lord Beamish and Dan Jarvis

Report stage
Monday 25th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Dan Jarvis]

That is a very useful clarification, and I thank the Minister for it.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

I accept what the Minister has just said, but where is the threshold for publicity? As he said, the Panama papers were widely distributed in the public domain, but somebody’s Facebook feed might be put into the public domain. If it gets into the national newspapers and on the internet, or it is shared by a certain number of people, do we then determine that it is in the public domain? We need to be very careful about this.

[Dan Jarvis]

My right hon. Friend is undoubtedly right: we do need to be very careful. In the end, the Government have to take a view about where they draw the line. These are very difficult decisions that have to be made. We had really useful and constructive debates in Committee about where the line should be drawn, but the issue will no doubt continue to be debated in the future.

Before I draw my remarks to a close, I will briefly speak to other amendments on the Order Paper, including those tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham, other members of the ISC, and the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Sir David Davis). We support amendment 23, which stands in the name of my right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham. It is very similar to the amendments we proposed in Committee regarding the Prime Minister’s delegation to a Secretary of State to issue a warrant to interfere with equipment relating to a Member. The amendment sets out that the Prime Minister must be informed of a decision taken by a designated Secretary of State on their behalf as soon as the circumstances that prevented the Prime Minister from approving a warrant in the first place have passed.

We believe that the Prime Minister’s overall involvement in those warrants must be retained, even if it is retrospective in designated cases, so it was a positive step that the Minister said he would look into including such a provision in the statutory guidance, in response to the very sensible points made by the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings. However, we believe this does not go far enough, when this important notification arrangement should be on the face of the Bill.

This House should consider as many scenarios as possible when it comes to arrangements for prime ministerial power delegation on investigatory powers, even if scenarios of Cabinet members desperately trying to undermine the Prime Minister by any means possible perhaps belong more appropriately in “House of Cards” or “The Thick of It”. [Interruption.] I am sure that Conservative Members would have no idea about those kinds of activities; I am happy to take their word for that. But these are important matters, and we must seek to legislate carefully. The amendments tabled by the ISC are thoughtful and constructive, and I hope that, even at this late stage, the Government will consider accepting them.

Investigatory Powers (Amendment) Bill [ Lords ] (Second sitting)

Debate between Lord Beamish and Dan Jarvis

Committee stage & Report stage
Thursday 7th March 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Dan Jarvis]

I rise to speak briefly to Government amendments 3 and 4, which Labour welcomes. The principle of the appropriate Secretary of State giving approvals under section 26 of the Act was raised in the amendments proposed by Lord Coaker and Lord West in Committee in the other place. The amendments are an important further clarification regarding which Secretaries of States are eligible to be delegated the prime ministerial authority on investigatory powers relating to members. Necessary operational awareness demonstrated by the right people is, of course, crucial to ensure that the right decisions are made on what are, after all, very sensitive matters. I am mindful of the remarks made by the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings, so it would perhaps be helpful if the Minister could say something about how recent—mindful of the debate about whether “recent” is the right word—this operational awareness should be.

[Mr Jones]

I thought we had had a victory—one of those rare things we get with this Government—from the ISC in the House of Lords, but clearly the Minister has found a way of clawing that back.

Investigatory Powers (Amendment) Bill [ Lords ] (First sitting)

Debate between Lord Beamish and Dan Jarvis

Committee stage & Report stage
Thursday 7th March 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Dan Jarvis]

The issue of closing the gap between adding a bulk personal dataset to an existing category authorisation was raised on Second Reading by my right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham, who has a long-standing interest in these matters. I agree with the argument he made on Second Reading and the simple solution he proposed to close the gap: a one-line email to the Investigatory Powers Commissioner as soon as reasonably practical.

Any such email would not be seeking real-time approval and would not necessarily be reviewed by the Investigatory Powers Commissioner in isolation, but rather as part of a wider trend of what is being added to existing category authorisations. Labour does not seek to create additional work for the men and women who serve in our police and security services. On the contrary, a simple arrangement —to send a single-line email—would enhance wider oversight arrangements, while keeping extra requirements for the police and security services to an absolute minimum. In response to my right hon. Friend on the matter on Second Reading, the Minister said the IPA 2016

“allows the collection… with prior authorisation”

and that

“This is intended to speed the process up.”—[Official Report, 19 February 2024; Vol. 745, c. 556.]

We do not intend to slow the process down through the amendment, as any such notification would be made after it had happened. I therefore ask the Minister whether the problem is the act of notifying the Investigatory Powers Commissioner as soon as reasonably practical, or the potential volume of notifications, that mean he deems it an unworkable arrangement. I would appreciate if he could be as open as possible in answering those questions. If the Government do not accept the amendment, perhaps a conversation could take place between my right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham, the Minister and myself to agree a practicable solution.

[Mr Jones]

As my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central said, I raised the matter on Second Reading. In no way do I or other members of the ISC want to slow down the process or give more work to the hard-working men and women of our security services. However, as I understand it, the only reason put forward by the Government was that it would impair operational agility.

The amendment proposes, and what I proposed, is not for the security services to go through an authorisation, as my hon. Friend just said; it is literally an email saying, “This is what we are doing.” Members might ask why that is important. It is important because we are giving the security services new powers in the Bill and for IPCO to be informed in real time. I accept the retrospective look at them, but at least if there was a trend, we could see it.

The Government have also tried to argue that there is no need for more oversight because it is a low or no dataset, much lower than those governed by the existing section 7 of the IPA. We have just had the argument about the definition of “low” and “no”, but it means that we are giving the security services additional powers here. I am not for one minute suggesting that the internal protocols within those security services will lead to things that are just a free-for-all, as some might suggest, but it gives that assurance that there is oversight of what is happening in real time.

If we were asking for authorisation of each one, I would accept that it would be too burdensome and would slow down the process, but this is literally a one-line email so the IPCO knows what is needed. I do not understand why the Government are resisting that, except that—let us be honest, Minister—we have form on this. With the National Security Bill, there was an idea that it would be a weakness on the Government’s part to accept any amendments from the ISC. However, there was one slight change made with Lord West’s amendment, so there is possibly a change of attitude. I accept that the Minister respects the ISC—I am not sure it is the same for many people higher up in Government. But that should not be a reason not to accept this very simple amendment, which I think would give people reassurance that there is some real-time oversight of this. If an election was called in the next few weeks, this Bill—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jones]

Their budget was cut yesterday.

[Dan Jarvis]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Bootle. I am happy to give way to the Minister if he wants to respond directly to that point.

Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill

Debate between Lord Beamish and Dan Jarvis

Report stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 3rd November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jones]

For the sake of time, I will not speak to every single amendment.

[Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central) (Lab)]

Go on!

[Mr Jones]

My hon. Friend says, “Please do,” but I am sure that other Members want to contribute to this debate.

Since speaking on Second Reading and in Committee, it has been my aim, and that of the Labour Front-Bench team, to try to improve the Bill. In my nearly 19 years in this House, I have been someone who is proud of our armed forces, considers myself a friend to them and wants to help them in any way I can. I stand up for them, and I speak passionately, I think, in defending not just them but the case for defence.

It has therefore been disappointing that the Government have not really engaged to amend the Bill. Yesterday, my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) said to the Defence Secretary that he wished to work with the Government to try to improve the Bill today, and he got a single-word reply: “No.” We then had the reply from the Minister for Defence People and Veterans in response to a question on the Bill when he said that he would be

“happy to work with anybody to improve this Bill, but we must operate in the real world.”—[Official Report, 2 November 2020; Vol. 683, c. 13.]

The only problem with that is that it is the real world according to the Minister, and that world obviously has a different colour sky from the one that we all live in. The idea that, somehow, as long as he is saying it, it has to be true, even when his evidence is counter to that put forward by various witnesses in Committee, is telling. What was sad in Committee was that all the Minister did was read out his civil service brief to us in response to the various amendments. He was reluctant to accept any interventions, even from rottweilers such as my hon. Friends the Members for Blaydon (Liz Twist) and for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck). When it comes to the Government Members on the Committee, I must congratulate the Whips Office on selecting so well, because those Members must have taken a collective vow of silence, which would have been admired by any silent ecclesiastical order. We had no contribution whatever from them, so it has been very difficult trying to engage with the Government on this Bill. The line is, clearly, that this is the answer, irrespective of what has been raised in Committee. We had some very good witnesses before us in Committee, but the Government are just not interested in changing the Bill, because the world and this Bill are perfect, according to the Minister and the Government.