Investigatory Powers Bill

Debate between Lord Beith and Lord Murphy of Torfaen

Tuesday 19th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Murphy of Torfaen]

My Lords, I do not support the amendment, I fear. I entirely agree with the noble Baroness with regard to the correspondence of Members of Parliament. But the Joint Committee looked at whether Members of Parliament should be under surveillance and it agreed with the recommendations before it; that is, that there should be a double lock at that stage. That is consistent with the whole Bill: it should be not only the Secretary of State who signs a warrant but a judicial commissioner.

During the passage of the Bill in the House of Commons, that was made into a triple lock so that the Prime Minister, who originally was only to be informed of the warrant, now had to approve it as well. That seems to be an extremely wise thing to do. As a Member of Parliament—or a Member of this House or any of the devolved Parliaments and legislatures—who was going to have their communications intercepted, it would be important to know that it went as far as having the Prime Minister, the head of government, involved. Having just a judge doing it goes completely against the spirit of the Bill. The double-lock system is what everybody has said is absolutely the right thing to do. This is now a triple lock and I fear that I cannot support the amendment.

[Lord Beith]

My Lords, I am very glad the noble Baroness has tabled this amendment because it enables us to clarify the extension of the things we were discussing on telephone interception into this area, which the Government are now seeking to ensure is covered in other respects and that the same principles should apply. Having said that, I am inclined to agree with the noble Lord, Lord Murphy, that what is now in the Bill is probably about the best set of safeguards that we could reasonably construct from the very important principle—I agree with the noble Baroness on this—that we should protect the ability of constituents and whistleblowers to contact elected Members to raise matters of concern. They may be matters which affect the very organisations, whether it is the intelligence services or the police, that might seek the power to initiate interception.

The noble Baroness mentioned the Wilson doctrine, which came up earlier. That adds no clarity whatever to the situation but simply obscures it. It is even further complicated now by the fact that the last Prime Minister to make a Statement on the subject is no longer the Prime Minister. It is not even clear that his successor will consider herself bound in any way by what Mr Cameron said on the subject. As I think we teased out in the previous discussion, the Wilson doctrine does not really mean anything now. There is now a statutory basis for considering how to deal with a situation where there are reasonable grounds to believe that a Member of a legislature is involved in very serious crime or associated with terrorism. That is the procedure set out in the clause that the amendment addresses.

That there should be a bizarre principle now that the Government generally have a policy of not using these sorts of powers but will come along to Parliament some day and say, “We’ve changed our minds and now we want to use these powers very widely indeed” just does not make any sense at all. Since no Prime Minister has ever come to the House to satisfy the requirements of the Wilson doctrine—that if government policy changes, you should make such a Statement—the whole thing has become absurd. We should give it a decent burial and satisfy ourselves that the provisions we put in place for governing interceptions of any kind of the communications of a legislator are satisfactory. I am of the view that the clause we have now, following the various interventions that the noble Lord, Lord Murphy, described, is a good basis for doing so.