Data Protection Bill [Lords]

Debate between Liam Byrne and Peter Heaton-Jones

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Wednesday 9th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Liam Byrne]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. What strengthens his argument is the way in which the Secretary of State has sought to bring forward one argument after another, all of which have been knocked down.

When we were first told that Leveson 2 could not proceed, we were told that there had been a day, sometime in about 2010, when magically, all of a sudden, all the abuse that we had ever heard about before categorically, unequivocally and without doubt ceased. We were all quite surprised about that. We were even more surprised, therefore, when John Ford presented his evidence to the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee on 13 March. It is worth setting out what Mr Ford said, because not everyone luxuriates in membership of that Committee:

“I illegally accessed phone accounts, bank accounts, credit cards, and other personal data of public figures… My targets included politicians of all parties. In most cases, this was done without any legitimate public interest justification.”

Mr Ford goes on to reflect on whether the practice had magically ended, as the Secretary of State asserted, or whether it was ongoing. He was asked directly to reflect on the Secretary of State’s assertion that it was all over—nothing more to see; time to walk on by. Mr Ford writes in his letter:

“I am sorry to inform you that Mr Hancock is totally wrong”.

Who can imagine such a thing? He goes on to say that

“having spent 15 years in the business, it is no surprise…that I still know people in the illegal data theft industry, and specifically,”—

this is the nub of the argument—

“that I know individuals who are still engaged in these activities on behalf of newspapers.”

The idea that magically this bad behaviour suddenly stopped and is not ongoing is argument one that has been knocked down.

[Peter Heaton-Jones (North Devon) (Con)]

As reprehensible as those activities are, the fundamental point is that they are criminal acts. They are against the law. The right hon. Gentleman is wrong to conflate that point with the question of press regulation. Those are criminal acts to be dealt with by the courts.

[Liam Byrne]

Actually, it is not wrong to conflate press regulation with these matters, because the purpose of press regulation, in case the hon. Gentleman has not spotted it, is to try to stop such offences happening again. That is how public policy tends to be made in this country.

Data Protection Bill [ Lords ] (Fifth sitting)

Debate between Liam Byrne and Peter Heaton-Jones

Tuesday 20th March 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Liam Byrne]

I am grateful to the Minister for that explanation and for setting out with such clarity the regime of oversight and scrutiny that is currently in place. However, I have a couple of challenges.

I was slightly surprised that the Minister said nothing about the additional risks created by the change in rules of engagement by the United States. She rested some of her argument on the Security Services Act 1989 and the Intelligence Services Act 1994, which, as she said, require that any transfers of information are lawful and proportionate. That creates a complicated set of ambiguities for serving frontline intelligence officers, who have to make fine judgments and, in drafting codes of practice, often look at debates such as this one and at the law. However, the law is what we are debating. Where the Bill changed the law to create a degree of flexibility, it would create a new risk, and that risk would be heightened by the change in the rules of engagement by one of our allies.

The Minister may therefore want to reflect on a couple of points. First, what debate has there been about codes of practice? Have they changed given the increased surveillance capacity that we have because of the development of our capabilities? How have they changed in the light of the new rules of engagement issued by President Trump?

[Peter Heaton-Jones]

The right hon. Gentleman is being generous in giving way. I am listening carefully to what he says. I am concerned that he seems to be inviting us to make law in this country based almost solely on the policies of the current US Administration. I do not understand why we would do that.

[Liam Byrne]

The reason we would do that is that there has been an exponential increase in drone strikes by President Trump’s Administration and, as a result, a significant increase in civilian deaths in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq, Yemen and east Africa. It would be pretty odd for us not to ensure that a piece of legislation had appropriate safeguards, given what we now know about the ambition of one of our most important allies to create flexibility in rules of engagement.

Data Protection Bill [Lords] (Sixth sitting)

Debate between Liam Byrne and Peter Heaton-Jones

Tuesday 20th March 2018 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Order. First, let me correct a possible misunderstanding. The right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill mentioned that clauses 168 and 169 will be debated later. In fact, we are debating them as part of this group, as I tried to make clear when I introduced amendment 137.

[Peter Heaton-Jones]

Thank you for that clarification, Mr Streeter.

There is nothing remarkable about what I said. Quite clearly, there is still malpractice going on in the journalism industry. Is the right hon. Gentleman honestly trying to say that that is a remarkable thing to say?

[Liam Byrne]

Yes.

[Peter Heaton-Jones]

It is not remarkable at all. Of course it is going on, but establishing and carrying out Leveson 2 would do nothing to solve that problem and nothing to bring justice to the members of the public who have been done wrong by that small number of journalists who are acting in that way. I do not know why the right hon. Gentleman finds that a remarkable statement to make.

As for the statement that he made on Second Reading—that the Government’s position is to say, “Nothing to see here—absolutely nothing happening”—that is not what the Government are saying at all. The Government’s position is clear: Leveson 2 simply would not do what I think the right hon. Gentleman and probably everyone in this room would like it to do, which is to be some sort of cleansing disinfectant that solves all the problems. It simply will not do that.

[Liam Byrne]

As much as I respect the hon. Gentleman’s omniscience, how could he possibly know that?

[Peter Heaton-Jones]

It is a big gamble to spend potentially £50 million when we are not sure whether it will have the required outcome. That is the point. The Lords amendment would start the Leveson 2 process, which would cost at a very conservative estimate £50 million, potentially last for a huge amount of time and still not get to the answer that we want. There must be better solutions.

I had started to discuss the fact that the landscape has changed and that the very framework in which we work has changed markedly since the former Prime Minister made the commitment to go ahead with Leveson 2. There have been huge changes. Not only have we had the Leveson 1 inquiry, which in its own terms of reference touched on many of the issues that the proposed Leveson 2 inquiry would cover, but we have had any number of changes, improvements, and reforms in the way the police and indeed the media operate. We have had Operations Elveden, Tuleta and Weeting, which included Operation Golding, all of which have investigated a wide range of practices in the interaction between the police and members of the media and journalists. At a total cost, incidentally, of about £40 million for those operations, they have done good work and all of them have resulted in significant reform.

When I first joined the journalistic trade, way back in 1986, there was malpractice on a scale that we would not believe, and it was completely normal for journalists to pick up the phone to a friendly police contact and get whatever information they wanted to write their next report. That was absolutely normal. It is not normal now. I am sure it still happens, but it is now not the norm, which is good. That is why we do not want to turn the clock back and commit ourselves to a very long inquiry—a Leveson 2 inquiry—which would not do what we want it to do.

Where malpractice occurs in the media, where cases such as those raised by the right hon. Gentleman come to light, and where members of the public are treated in the most despicable way by journalists, I want people to be able to have the right to redress, to have their day in court, and to be able to say, “This is what has happened and it must change,” but Leveson 2 would not do that. It would not provide the means by which that happened. That is why the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport was absolutely right to make the decision and to say that Leveson 2 is not on the Government’s agenda, and nor should it go ahead. It is perhaps worth pointing out also that this Government were elected only nine months ago on a manifesto that specifically said that Leveson 2 would not go ahead. That was a manifesto commitment.

Mr Streeter, may I just seek absolute clarification from you? From your earlier instruction, are we now also talking about section 40?

--- Later in debate ---

[Peter Heaton-Jones]

Thank you very much indeed.

I do not really have much to say. To be clear, we are considering the amendment made in the other place. It seeks to enact section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act 2013, which this Government and the Secretary of State have said we will not do—indeed, they have said that we wish to repeal section 40.

It is very clear in my mind that we need to reject the amendment made in the other place. There is a very straightforward reason, which is that section 40 does one key thing: it seeks to persuade media organisations, specifically newspapers, that have not signed up to a recognised regulatory body to do so by providing a financial inducement of the most “blunt instrument” kind.

I have here a document from the House of Commons Library; for the record, I emphasise that the House of Commons Library is neutral. The document discusses why section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act 2013 was introduced. The Library says that it was intended to

“coerce or incentivise publishers to become members of a recognised regulator”.

That is language that we should be worried about. The reason we should be more worried about what section 40 will do—it is pretty straightforward—is that if a member of the public brings a defamation action against a newspaper, it goes to court and the newspaper wins the case, that media organisation is still financially liable to pay the costs of both sides.

Quite simply, that will encourage a lot of entirely superfluous and vexatious legal actions to be brought by people who just have some kind of beef against the media and pockets bulging with cash that allows them to do so. When, as will inevitably happen, the media wins the case, because it was built on sand, the media organisations concerned will be put out of business by the requirement to pay the legal costs on both sides.

[Liam Byrne]

The Minister is cheering on the hon. Member, but will he for complete clarity remind the Committee who proposed this architecture in the first place? From memory, it was his right hon. Friends the Members for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) and for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller).

[Peter Heaton-Jones]

I was not in Parliament at the time. I have only been here for two and a half years. We go back to the point that I made in relation to the previous clause. The ground has shifted. We now know what the effect will be. The other place debated this in some detail; the arguments were put extremely strongly, and by a narrow majority their lordships, as is their right, passed the amendment and asked us to consider it. It is perfectly right that they are asking us to consider it. It is perfectly right that we say: “Up with this we will not put.” Section 40 will have precisely the opposite effect to what probably anyone listening would hope it to have. It will be an extraordinarily damaging measure for the future of the freedom of the press in this country. It will have the effect of preventing publication of material which is in the public interest and which is true, legitimate, and fair, because newspaper proprietors will not be able to afford the risk of going to a court case which they win but still have to pay the costs. It will be an incredible impediment to the free press in this country. For that reason more than any other we must reject the amendments that come from the other place.

[The Chair]

One or two colleagues have caught my eye because I was not clear enough in my introduction to this section. I invite Mr Liam Byrne to readdress the Committee in relation to these clauses.

Data Protection Bill [Lords]

Debate between Liam Byrne and Peter Heaton-Jones

Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons
Monday 5th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Peter Heaton-Jones]

The hon. Lady is right that the Press Complaints Commission did fail, which is why it is rightly no longer there and we now have a new framework. While we are talking in general about regulation, I should say that I have some sympathy with the question marks raised over the regulation of my former employer, the BBC. We got that wrong for many years. There was the bizarre situation in which the BBC board—later, the BBC Trust—was acting as both poacher and gamekeeper, marking its own homework. The Government have rightly sought to put that right and we have moved a long way towards doing so.

I do not believe that the answer to the wrongs that still exist in the regulatory regime for newspapers lies in the amendments that have come our way from the other end of the Palace of Westminster. I do not believe that they would do the job that, as my hon. Friend the Member for North Herefordshire rightly said, the people outside this place want us to do: to make sure that they have a fair right of reply when something wrong is done to them by newspapers.

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who is being characteristically courteous in giving way to so many Members. Can he point to another area of public policy in which as many suspicions have been aroused, but that has been improved by our collectively deciding to just move on and leave things in the dark?

[Peter Heaton-Jones]

No one is suggesting just moving on and leaving things in the dark. That is not at all what the Government intend to do. If we look carefully at the words the Secretary of State used on Thursday, we see that there is no question of our moving on and saying, “There’s nothing to see here.” We are saying that the mechanism suggested in the amendments from the other place is not the right way to proceed. I agree with the position taken by the Secretary of State.

[Liam Byrne]

With the greatest of respect, regulations are forward looking, but the inquiry that we are seeking goes into past malpractice for the simple reason that we would like justice to be done.

[Peter Heaton-Jones]

I do not believe that the inquiry that the other place seeks, through its amendment, to impose on the Bill would do the job that the right hon. Gentleman wants done. The position that the Secretary of State laid out on Thursday is the right way to proceed. Leveson 2 would simply not do the job that many Members on both sides of the House want it to do.

I am going to move on, as I am thinking about Mr Deputy Speaker’s strictures about timing.