Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill

Debate between Lord Condon and Lord Carlile of Berriew

Monday 26th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Carlile of Berriew]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow such a cogent and interesting speech by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, who has immense knowledge of this area of work as a result of his chairmanship of his committee, which produced an excellent report. I will return to what he said presently.

I do not know how many of your Lordships have had the opportunity to watch the remarkable German film, “The Lives of Others”, which depicted the dangers that the Stasi brought on its whole country of a society bedevilled by surveillance at every level. It is a lesson to us all. Surely we all start from the position that any unnecessary surveillance and invasion of privacy by surveillance, interception of communications or looking at metadata that illegitimately affects the rights of individuals must be avoided. That is certainly the position that I start from. I think that almost everybody in this House starts from that position, whether or not they agree with these amendments, which I support.

The fact is that there is a gap in the capacity of the relevant services at the moment, as the noble Lord, Lord Blair, with his great experience of the police, illustrated very clearly. That gap has not been filled. I am not sure why it has not been filled, or why the Government are so reluctant either to take on board these amendments or to produce an alternative. I hope that it is not party politics. My plea to your Lordships, whether they belong to a political party or not, is not to allow party political considerations to interfere in an issue about national security, which surely must be judged only on the merits and without political prejudices taking part. That is certainly my approach to this matter.

We heard during the course of the very helpful opening speech from the noble Lord, Lord King, that for the country to be safe, a very limited number of relevant authorities, for a limited purpose, should have these powers. The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, as he so often does, put his finger on an important aspect of the amendments: we are not asking that these amendments should endure for ever; we are simply filling a gap that exists until the sunset clause comes into effect. That gives plenty of time after the election in May for both Houses of Parliament to reconsider these matters and to produce what may be more enduring provisions.

There is one peculiarity about what has happened in recent months. In July in this House, both the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, and the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong, referred to the fact that the Home Office—indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, said this earlier—had been very co-operative in considering and dealing with his committee’s criticisms of existing proposed legislation. As he reminded us just now, and as he said in the House in July, it had accepted 95% of the changes recommended by his committee. The noble Lords, Lord Blencathra and Lord Armstrong, told us at that time that they had seen a draft Bill, and they put that on the record. Nobody else has seen that draft Bill, but the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, said at that time that he had seen a draft Bill that by no stretch of the imagination could be called a snoopers’ charter. Those were his words. I see him nodding in agreement.

It is my view that the Government should now produce that draft, amended or replacement Bill so that we can see what was offered, and so that if they object to the provisions in these amendments we can come back next week and table amendments which the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, and others have agreed are not a snoopers’ charter, meet requirements and fill the gap of which I have just spoken. Indeed, if that draft Bill was made available, and we were able to consider it, and possibly table amendments by next Monday, there may be no need to reconsider matters after the general election, although, speaking for myself, I would still prefer to see a sunset clause requiring an affirmative resolution of both Houses so that we could be sure that what had been enacted was fit for purpose and was safe.

I close by, I regret, repeating something which I said a few days ago in your Lordships’ House, because I think it merits being repeated. I absolutely congratulate whoever thought up the term “snoopers’ charter”. Rather like the term “poll tax”, it was a piece of branding genius. Unfortunately, unlike the term “poll tax”, it does not remotely accurately describe what was being suggested. It presupposes malignancy in that distinguished service that has served this country so well and that was recently headed by the noble Lord, Lord Evans, who I am glad to see in his place opposite. The term “snoopers’ charter” implies that the noble Lord would rub his hands in the morning and say, “Now let’s have a look at Alex Carlile’s shopping list and credit card purchases—oh, and who he’s been calling and what internet sites he has been on, because it would be fun to know what he’s been up to”. That is simply a caricature of what the Security Service and the police do.

Today, some figures have been published on the number of people who have gone to take part in violent jihad in Syria in recent months, country by country. I will not trouble the House with the full table, but it is alarming because it shows that there are other countries in the European Union and elsewhere from which violent jihadists have gone in greater proportionate numbers than even the United Kingdom—the Netherlands is one example—although the United Kingdom figures are alarming. When the successor to the noble Lord, Lord Evans, Mr Parker, who has given us his warning on these matters, gets up in the morning, they are the kinds of people he is concerned about. They are the kinds of people to whom attention is given in attempting to ascertain the metadata and, as a result, their movements.

Your Lordships will recall that as a result of the Paris incident, it was revealed, as the newspapers rather naively put it, that the wives of the two brothers involved had communicated about 50 times with one another on their mobile phones. I doubt very much that it was the wives who had been communicating, although certainly their mobile phones had been used for the purpose of communication. I venture to suggest that if that information, given the history of those two brothers, had come to the attention of the Security Service here and had been acted upon—and, of course, those are two important ifs; I do not mean to criticise the French services, which I think the noble Lord, Lord Evans, would confirm are generally very competent indeed—it is just the sort of information that could have prevented an attack in the United Kingdom. However, there is a gap and it needs to be filled.

I close by saying to the Minister that if he is not prepared to accept these actually rather restricted amendments, which have been offered in good will to try to protect the national security of this country and the safety of its citizens, let him now tell us what alternative the Government have agreed to so that we can now deal with this issue once and for all, without darning the sock.

[Lord Condon (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the four noble Lords who have put their names to these amendments for renewing and re-energising the parliamentary debate about these issues. I will be relatively brief.

I think everyone agrees that there is a gap in the legislation that needs to be filled. I do not disagree with any of those who have spoken so far, not because I am vacillating but because they are all right in what they are trying to say and in their ambitions. We desperately need a clear legislative road map that leads to filling the gaps that are putting our country at risk. Ideally, that road map would lead to legislation before the general election, and that is the spirit of the amendments before us. However, I accept the reservations put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, and his committee.

The fight against terrorism and serious crime is not a police and agency fight but a whole-country fight and an international fight, and in the context of our own country we need a critical mass of public and communications industry support for new legislation. The legislation cannot be too far ahead of the wide feeling of support and that they are the right measures at the right time for what we need. I hope that the Minister in his response will be able to give us a sense of how this road map might be laid out. As I say, that would ideally be before the general election, but I suspect that more realistically it will have to be after it. We will therefore be looking to the major parties to set out just what they are prepared to do in this field.

What is absolutely certain is that there is a horrendous gap that gets bigger each day and prevents the agencies that we task with keeping our country safe from doing their best in this field. So I thank again those who brought forward these amendments. This is a vital time for our country to get this matter right.