Investigatory Powers (Amendment) Bill [HL]

Lord Anderson of Ipswich Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 20th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Anderson of Ipswich (CB)]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords who have referred kindly to my independent review of earlier this year, a short sequel to the much longer reviews, A Question of Trust and the Report of the Bulk Powers Review, that I was commissioned to conduct, with all-party agreement, in advance of the Investigatory Powers Act 2016.

Given the controversy surrounding electronic surveillance at that time, in the wake of Edward Snowden’s disclosures, the IPA had a remarkably smooth parliamentary passage—although I say that as someone who was outside Parliament at the time. I put that down to the detailed preparation that preceded that Bill, including reports from the ISC and from RUSI, and of course to the work of the draft Bill committee, chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Murphy of Torfaen, who I am delighted to see in his place. I remember being questioned by its members, including the noble Lord, Lord Strasburger, and Suella Fernandes MP, as she then was. That committee made 86 detailed recommendations, practically all of which found their way into the Act. How much time and testosterone can be saved—and was saved in that instance—by debating these important issues before a Bill is published in final form.

The IPA replicated and, indeed, enhanced the very considerable powers conferred by its predecessor, RIPA, on our intelligence agencies and police. However, its emphasis on transparency and effective oversight, in particular by the judge-led Investigatory Powers Commissioner’s Office—IPCO—with its excellent technical support, brought it into the modern age. I believe we have seen the tangible benefits of that in recent years; I will give three short examples.

The UN special rapporteur on the right to privacy, who had previously described our arrangements as “worse than scary”, reported in 2018 after an inspection visit to the UK that, thanks to the balance struck by the IPA, the UK

“can now justifiably reclaim its leadership role in Europe as well as globally”.

The English Court of Appeal overwhelmingly rejected an extensive series of challenges to the IPA in August this year, citing the authority of the European Court of Human Rights, which, rather more than the EU’s court in Luxembourg, has shown itself impressively ready to accept the use of bulk collection powers, properly safeguarded.

In addition, judicial approval of warrants, introduced here by the IPA but long familiar in North America, was instrumental in securing our data access agreement with the United States—a world first, which, given the American ownership of so many big internet platforms, is of particular significance to law enforcement on this side of the Atlantic.

Therefore, the IPA has been good for this country, including by helping to secure the international acceptance and co-operation that are ever more essential to the fight against organised crime and threats to national security.

However, the Minister is right to say that in limited areas, the IPA is in need of what I call running repairs. The Home Office invited me earlier this year to look at some of those areas which it had identified as in need of attention. Other parts of the Bill, including elements of Parts 1, 3 and 4, fell outside the scope of my review. In my report published in June, I largely accepted the Home Office diagnosis, although my prescriptions were in some respects different from its. In particular, in relation to the bulk dataset issues that occupy Part 1 of this Bill, I thought it important that the borderline between Part 7 and the proposed new Part 7A of the IPA, concerning datasets in which there is a low or no expectation of privacy, should be patrolled at the moment of decision not just by the intelligence agencies themselves but externally by independent judicial commissioners.

Since my report was submitted in April, there has been a convergence of views on this issue and on others, one of them in relation to the NCA and Clause 14, which was touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Coaker. I am grateful to the Security Minister and to the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, for our discussions and the open spirit in which they took place.

The Minister knows that it has not always been my habit to give an unqualified welcome to Home Office Bills; judging from the Statement that was debated earlier this afternoon, I cannot guarantee that things will be any different in future.

I understand that Ministers like to come to this place with a few concessions in their back pocket, and there is no harm in that. But too often, elements of the Bills that arrive with us have a lopsided look; one suspects, rightly or wrongly, that they are the opening gambit in a concession strategy, whereby the energy of this House is occupied with the tabling and discussion of amendments, only for the Government eventually to concede what they had a good mind to do all along. This can be both frustrating and counterproductive; those who mistrust the Government see their worst fears confirmed by the initial version of the Bill, while those who trust them are reluctant to express that support, lest the ground be cut from under their feet.

It is to the credit of those concerned that I do not believe that such an approach has been taken with this Bill. No doubt it is capable of improvement; I welcome the challenges that have been made by NGOs and by the noble Lords, Lord Coaker and Lord Fox, not least because I was not able to consult in quite such specific terms as I would have liked on the proposals that were put to me by the Home Office. Indeed, there are a few points that I may seek to probe in Committee. But I consider that the Bill is an honest attempt to strike a fair balance in these difficult areas. We risk reversing the operational gains that it promises if we overload the Bill with unnecessary safeguards, or seek radically to reshape the judgments that it makes.

We need powerful weapons to combat the scourges of hostile state activity, terrorism, fraud, people trafficking and child sexual abuse, and we need to embed them in a strong framework that includes the gold standard of prior judicial authorisation for the most intrusive powers. This Bill gives us both those things, and we should not discard or devalue either.

History suggests that the lifespan of investigatory powers regimes is no more than 15 years or so, and technological developments mean that we are likely to be working towards a more fundamental revision of the IPA by the end of the decade, if not before. My report contains some ideas on what these technological developments are and how the process might be started, but for the time being I am glad that time has been found for this necessary Bill. I am happy to give it my support.