Justice and Security Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Butler of Brockwell and Lord Lea of Crondall

Monday 9th July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

My Lords, I wonder whether we are missing a major point in all this, which is why my instinct is strongly to support my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours. I refer to public confidence in the work of MI5 and MI6 and what we know about them.

There is a sort of closed shop mentality at the moment, as I see it, what some people call the “secret state”. People have the right to write their books and put titles on them, but when I want to find out how many of the e-mails that I write could possibly be hacked by one of the agencies, there is no way of knowing, obviously. But should there be some way of knowing the categories of e-mails that can be hacked? Is it part of national defence and security that we do not know an awful lot about what is going on? This has a tangential bearing on whether it is a parliamentary committee or whether it is the committee that we have at the moment. Incidentally, as I understand it—I will be corrected if I am wrong—there is no Labour Member of the Lords on this committee at present. Is that correct?

[Lord Butler of Brockwell]

There are Labour members, but not Labour Members of the House of Lords. There are two Members from the Lords, my noble friend and a Cross-Bencher, but there are Labour Members from the House of Commons.