Investigatory Powers Bill

Lord Henley Excerpts

Report: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 11th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness (LD)]

My Lords, I added my name to the amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, and spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill of Bengarve, whose name is also on the amendment. While it is probably not an interest in terms of the register of interests, I declare an interest in that between December 2012 and March 2013 I spent copious hours, along with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, trying to put together the cross-party agreement in the immediate aftermath of the report from Sir Brian Leveson. It took a long, long time. Even beyond 18 March 2013 there was still more work to be done.

I was not present in the early hours of 18 March because of family engagements in Scotland, but I well recall coming back to Westminster during the course of that day and the efforts that were made to ensure that effect was given to the cross-party agreement. Some tweaking was required and agreements had to be made within the usual channels that certain amendments, such as the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, had to be withdrawn. Indeed, I think the record will show that this House delayed consideration of the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill to allow the Prime Minister of the day to make a Statement in the House of Commons on the cross-party agreement. Indeed, at a later stage, the Defamation Bill had to be unamended in the House of Commons to take out an amendment in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Puttnam and Lord Fowler, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, and the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, which this House had agreed to in response to the Leveson report. In the House of Commons, amendments were made and withdrawn and new government amendments were brought in to the Crime and Courts Bill to give effect to the cross-party agreement. One of the amendments which the Government brought in became Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act 2013.

Those of us involved in this were never in any doubt that this was a package intended to be delivered in full, and not one from which a Government at a later date could pick and choose which bits to implement and which not. The commitment on commencement was done in the common way. It was for the Secretary of State to bring in the provision, but, again, it was never anticipated that a future Secretary of State would try not to bring into effect that particular provision. I was not present when the agreement was reached, but I am advised that there was a proposal from the Conservative Members in the cross-party talks for a version that would have expressly required that commencement of this costs provision should not take place until after recognition—but that was not agreed cross-party and the final cross-party agreement was that what became Section 40 should be commenced to provide a pre-existing incentive to join a recognition candidate regulator, not one that would bring jam tomorrow.

I hear that it has been suggested that the Government think that it is better to consult further before they commence Section 40 and that somehow or other Parliament has given the Government the discretion on whether to commence Section 40. All I can say is that those of us who were involved never anticipated that. Indeed, what was put to your Lordships’ House did not anticipate that happening. That is why I very much hope that, when he comes to reply, the Minister will indicate that the good will and spirit of that agreement and the undertakings that were made will be honoured. It would be far better for Section 40 to be commenced. This amendment does not go quite that far, but, if it is not commenced, we need to have some way of forcing the Government’s hand on this to ensure that what Parliament understood is given effect.

[Lord Henley (Con)]

I do not think that I was in my place for the bit of Committee when the precursor to this amendment was discussed. However, I sat on the pre-legislative scrutiny committee on the Bill under the able chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Murphy, so I have some status in this matter. I stress to noble Lords—as the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, and possibly the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, said—that this should really be about what the Minister says when he comes to respond. I do not think that the amendment is appropriate for the Bill at this stage. This is something we want to hear from the Minister on; the amendment should not be pressed at this stage.

The Investigatory Powers Bill itself is crucial legislation to give the police and security services the powers that they need. Noble Lords on all sides of the House who have taken a very constructive approach to the issues in the Bill would find it unfortunate for Parliament to be distracted at this stage by an amendment that, I have to say, seems to be only barely related to the substance of the Bill before us—important though the amendment might be in its own right. I am sure the debate itself will send a clear message to the Government about the importance of this issue, which is why we want to hear from whoever of my noble friends is going to respond to this. But now is not the time for noble Lords to press this amendment on the Bill, because it is not relevant.

[Lord Prescott (Lab)]

My Lords, I intervene to support the amendment that has been moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, and supported by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace. This is an issue of confidence in this place and in government. We are not seeking to change a Bill but to implement what the Government and all parties have agreed: that the Section 40 concept, which has just been discussed, should be included in this Bill. The Government have agreed the law but are not prepared to implement in statute this right to justice and financial support for people who have phone-hacking complaints against the press.

I declare an interest, as I did in relation to the Policing and Crime Bill, in that I am one of those who was hacked—46 times for my phone messages. However, the police and the Crown Prosecution Service denied it, and the Press Complaints Commission sided with the police and the prosecutor. In those circumstances, the only way I could seek any redress was to sue in the civil courts. I could not afford it, even though I have come here to the Lords—I still cannot afford it—but how else could I seek justice? We are talking about people who cannot afford to get justice in cases in which they have been offended against by phone hacking. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, has pointed out, the Government and all parties agreed we should do this. We passed the legislation, but the Government have refused. I wait to hear what the Minister is going to say. I had hoped we were going to hear beforehand, when we met him yesterday, whether the Government’s position had changed and whether they intended to bring that element of justice into statute. I wait to hear what he has to say about that, but it is essential that we have it.

In these circumstances, doubts have constantly grown about the Government’s position. The last Secretary of State for Culture, Mr Whittingdale, actually went to a press dinner and cheered them all up by saying, “I am inclined not to do this”. Is that the Government’s position? We want to hear today whether it is still the same. We have a new Prime Minister, a new Secretary of State and a new Government—are they going to carry out what the previous Government promised in an all-party context? This debate is about the intention of the new Government. The Prime Minister said that she wanted to help weak and poorer people against the big rich ones, and by God, there is an example here. All these people who have told us time and again that they cannot afford an action are looking to us to make the adjustment and to implement the statute so that they can pursue cases.

My main concern is that we have no justice from the police or the prosecutor. They work together. I cannot call it a conspiracy, but they happened to agree that there was no evidence. But as the courts pointed out, when I took the case to them on human rights grounds, I was right: they did have the evidence, but together they conspired to not look at it or to ignore it. That is not acceptable. If that was past history, I could perhaps think that we had at least learned the lessons. But we have not. We are still not implementing this essential part, which would provide money to allow people to secure justice in our court system. If it was only that, okay, but have we not noticed the Times even this week? The press are completely ignoring most of the actual requirements under the editors’ code.

I raised the editors’ code in a previous debate. I thought I would go to the Press Complaints Commission; rather foolishly, I hoped to get some sort of judgment from among the press at least, but I could not get it. After that debate, I got letters from the Associated Press and the judge in charge of the inquiry saying my complaint, that most inquiries dealing with press complaints are dominated by the press, was wrong. However, I have checked it all out. The emphasis in the criteria is different depending on whether journalists are employed by papers and magazines or are working in TV or other areas, where suddenly the balance changes. That was my complaint. I will deal with the industry—I have been invited by the judge to come and talk to him, so I look forward to a cup of tea with him to see what he has to say—but as to whether or not these bodies are independent, including the new body, IPSO, we have to make a judgment. That came out of Leveson.

My main complaint is that part two of Leveson was meant to look at the relationship between the press and the police. There are still offences every day; today’s Daily Mail says:

“How top QC ‘buried evidence of Met bribes’”.

There are a number of such cases, such as Orgreave or the football scandal at Sheffield. There has been co-operation for a long time between the press and the police. What worries me most is another story that appeared in the Telegraph—these are not my favourite papers, as your Lordships have probably guessed—about the new body that is coming in, which is covered partly by the Bill. It says that the investigatory powers that the police will now have will allow them to monitor every phone call and every text. All this information is now going to be brought in, and seven of our police forces have already invested the money to buy it. That means they are going to get even more information.

We are told that this is to deal with terrorists and criminals—I am not going to be against that; I think we all understand that—but I am talking about the victims of their actions. Why are they not considered to deserve some justice? They are the ones who really suffer, but they do not have the money or the power to intervene. Now there is going to be more information about them; I think an earlier debate mentioned credit card information of people in America. A massive amount of information is given to public institutions that we have to have trust in but I am afraid that, given their record at the moment, even since Leveson, I have no reason to believe that the co-operation between the police and the press has stopped. Mass information is going to make the situation even more difficult.

For God’s sake, can the Government tell us what they intend to do? If they are not going to do it, why do they not tell us? Then we would know where we stand. Let the victims know; they have been promised by Prime Minister after Prime Minister, “Don’t worry, we’re going to look after you”. All parties agreed to that and passed the legislation in the other Chamber, where we have done nothing since. It is in our hands to do something. When the Minister comes to reply, I hope he can say something more fruitful than, “We’re thinking about it”. It is three years since we passed the legislation, so thinking about it just means avoiding it. Let us have a statement from the Government for the victims, not for anyone else, acknowledging that they have a right to justice when the press have abused them, whether by phone hacking or otherwise.

The victims need money to go to court, make no mistake, particularly after the Government got rid of legal aid in most areas. They have no chance. Can we in this House think of the victims? I understand that we are extending powers to try to deal with criminals and terrorism; although I have worries about them, I am prepared to accept that. But who is thinking about the victims? That is our job. The Government should get on with the statute now, not just give us, “We’re thinking about it. We’re talking about it”. They should put it in language that the victims understand, as they are the ones who need to be considered here.

Rural Communities

Lord Henley Excerpts

Thursday 15th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Henley)]

My Lords, I also declare my interests as set out in the register. I echo the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, who referred to the recent unhappy events in Rothbury, in paying tribute to the Northumbrian police for all that they had to endure in dealing with that matter.

In closing, the noble Baroness asked me a couple of extra questions. I have had rather a large number of questions put to me in the course of the debate, ranging from bees to bracken and brownfield sites to badgers, and then to bees and badgers. I have not had to deal with bees and badgers together before. The A75 from Carlisle to Stranraer came up, along with a whole host of other matters, including red squirrels. I do not think that I will be able to address all these matters now but suspect that I will be quite busy writing letters next week. However, I give the assurance that I will, as always, write to all noble Lords on individual points that need an answer.

I offer my congratulations to my noble friend Lord Greaves on introducing this debate and attracting such a high-quality list of speakers. It was good to be reminded of the industrial nature of some of our upland areas in the past. I think of the lead mining areas around Alston or the Lakes, or the coal mining areas in my part of north Cumberland, which has changed a great deal over the years.

I begin by stressing that the Government’s and my department’s remit for rural communities extends only to England. My comments will relate largely to English matters, rather than to those which relate to Wales, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Roberts; to Scotland, as raised by the noble Earl, Lord Stair; or to Northern Ireland, which we are grateful to my noble friend Lord Brooke for raising. There are three matters that are not devolved—forestry, hunting and EU farm policy. Other matters are devolved, therefore it would not be right for me to deal with them for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. I can give an assurance that we talk to colleagues in the devolved Administrations about these matters. We certainly listen to what they are doing, and I hope that they will listen to us. Obviously one wants to share good ideas and practices. I will certainly ensure that comments on matters for the devolved Administrations are referred to them in due course.

The first point that I will deal with is the abolition of the Commission for Rural Communities. I start by stressing that the Government’s number one priority, because of the position we are in, must be to reduce the deficit. However, that cannot and will not be achieved by neglecting or ignoring our rural communities —quite the reverse. We are committed to taking on a focused and active leadership role on rural issues within the Government. That means two things: first, we will work closely with the rest of government to ensure that everything we do fully and appropriately reflects the needs and interests of rural people. We will in effect ensure that things are rural-proofed. Secondly, that makes clear that there can no longer be a need for the Commission for Rural Communities to operate as a paid external adviser, watchdog and advocate.

As I have made clear, we are committed to doing what we can to ensure that people in rural areas and the uplands receive fair treatment, but we do not believe that policy advice should generally be carried out by individual departments’ arm’s-length bodies—that is a job for the department. Defra will be the Government’s rural champion and we will ensure that it is. I give an assurance that all Defra Ministers have a reasonably rural background. I stress my own, coming from north Cumberland. I am fully aware of the problems that the rural and upland areas face. I appreciate that this will be difficult news for the CRC staff. We are very grateful for all the work that they do and this action is not in any way a reflection on the commitment and quality of work that they, the commissioners and particularly the chairman, Dr Stuart Burgess—he has been referred to—have done over the past four years. As I say, we will certainly ensure that we continue to offer that role within government and throughout government.

The Government recognise that all issues affecting rural people, businesses and communities are important, but I want to highlight a few of them where we feel that particular effort is needed. The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, was the first to mention the whole question of broadband in rural areas and the need for it to help create employment as society changes. This was echoed by a great many other speakers. We believe it is essential that rural communities and businesses not only get a basic level of broadband service as quickly as possible but that they are given equal priority as the next generation of high-speed broadband is rolled out in the future. Certainly my right honourable friend the Secretary of State and my colleague Richard Benyon, the Minister for Rural Affairs, are working closely with other ministerial colleagues, particularly in BIS, who lead on the wider broadband issue, to ensure that rural areas receive the basic broadband provision that they rightly want and expect as soon as possible; and that their interests are also fully recognised and addressed in the rollout of superfast broadband across the country in coming years.

The noble Lord, Lord Cameron, and many other speakers referred to housing difficulties in rural areas. Those areas are some of the least affordable places to live in this country. We need to ensure that our rural towns and villages have the freedom to determine the scale and type of development that they want and need. We will certainly be working with the Department for Communities and Local Government to ensure that rural people and rural communities benefit from the Government’s new approach to housing and planning. The Government agree that local communities should be free to decide what they want to build, and want to make it easier for them to do so. This is part of our whole spirit of localism.

The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, underlined the need for rural transport and the noble Lord, Lord Addington, stressed how important it was to ensure that people could get around. Transport is regularly cited by people in rural areas as their single biggest concern. It is fundamental to so many other matters affecting people’s lives in rural areas. We will be working with the Department for Transport to explore ways in which the best examples of local authority practice in terms of bus services and other transport provision can be replicated by others, and how the excellent examples of community-based transport schemes that are benefiting people in rural areas all over the country can be supported, promoted and emulated in other places.

The same is true of rural community services. I think it was my noble friend Lord Brooke who talked about the importance of shops, pubs and post offices. The noble Lord, Lord Cameron, stressed the extra cost of providing schools in rural areas. I certainly remember from my time as a county councillor in Cumbria the problem with one of the primary schools whose roll reduced to merely two. I gave up trying to defend it when most of the parents had moved their children away. Very often, parents want to move their children further in, to a bigger school that will offer greater services. That small school should have had between 20 and 30 pupils on its roll, but the other parents did not think it had a future. They left, and I have to say that it was very difficult to make much of a case for fighting for the school. The noble Lord can imagine the cost of a school with only two pupils. We understand that there are problems with not just schools but all other services, because fewer people use them. However, we also accept that all shops, pubs, post offices and village halls are very much the heart and soul of rural areas. Again, to identify and promote ways to maintain, support and improve these, we will work with partners in local government, local authorities and the civic sector.

It is obviously early days for us in government and there is much to do, but we will come forward with more detailed plans of how we intend to address these and other issues in the future—perhaps I should say “in due course”. The noble Baroness, Lady Quin, will upbraid me if I do not do that soon enough. However, we will certainly get on to it.

Perhaps I may say a little more about localism—something which I know the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, and I feel strongly about. I want to reassure him that we are committed to localism both in planning and in other areas. We should not be frightened that this will lead to attacks of so-called postcode lotteries. I remind noble Lords that the uplands are not just one area but a series of different areas, all of which face very different problems and are different in their needs. By localism we mean that we want all levels of local authority—whether unitary, town, parish, county or district councils—which are democratically elected to know what their areas want and how to deliver it.

I give one example from my portfolio within the department—the question of waste and how it is collected. It is quite obvious that the service that will be offered in Westminster, where I live for part of the time, will be very different from the service offered in the remote parts of north Cumberland, where I live the other part of the time. It is quite right that the two authorities—the City of Carlisle and the City of Westminster—should offer a different service, because the populations in those areas need and require different sorts of collection. It is also quite right that if we do not like the service we receive, we have a democratic chance of disposing of that authority.

There are other benefits from pursuing that policy of localism, despite the so-called dangers of a postcode lottery. Those are the advantages that, by operating in different ways, different authorities can produce different solutions which can then be copied by other authorities as appropriate. One could almost describe that as the Maoist approach of letting 1,000 flowers bloom—not that Mao necessarily in the end followed his own advice in these matters. Anyway, that policy should be followed by local authorities. Rubbish collection is just one example, and I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, will welcome that.

I turn now to hill farmers, the support that they need and the changes that will come about in the CAP. We fully recognise the vital role that hill farmers play in upland areas. I take this opportunity to welcome the recent announcement of the Prince’s Countryside Fund, which will provide an important additional means of support for hard-pressed farmers. The Government are committed to rewarding hill farmers for the environmental and landscape benefits that they provide. They provide numerous social and environmental benefits and are not fully rewarded by the market for the goods that they produce. We intend to ensure that they will receive the support that broadly reflects the value that they bring to society, and which will encourage them to remain farming in the hills so that all of us can go on enjoying the uplands in future. As has been made clear recently, we will try to reduce the regulatory burden on farmers by moving to a risk-based system of regulation, and will develop a system of extra support for hill farmers.

The uplands entry-level stewardship, which is the successor to the hill farm allowance, has now been introduced and recognises the role of upland farmers in shaping some of our most iconic areas, while better targeting funding for the delivery of those environmental and landscape benefits. If we achieve the maximum uptake on uplands ELS, that will take funding to £31 million per year. I understand that interest is in line with expectations. Some 1,800 applications have been received and 1,200 agreements are now in place. In response to a question from the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, I tell him that the area of eligible land is more than 200,000 hectares—nearly 40 per cent of England's target for uptake by March 2011. I say to my noble friend Lady Byford that we recognise that there would be an impact on farmers if the payment ceased to be half-yearly and became yearly, and I assure her that we will look at that.

Lastly, I will say a word or two about CAP reform, which is an important and very difficult matter that we will have to deal with in Europe over the next two years. We want to see a competitive, thriving and sustainable agricultural sector that is able to rise to the challenges and opportunities of the future. That means that we need genuine reform of the CAP to deliver good value for farmers, taxpayers, consumers and the environment. That will be difficult to achieve, but we are committed to working together with the European Commission, the other member states, the world of farming and all others to achieve reform of the CAP.

I conclude by saying that the rural areas of England, including the uplands and other more remote places, have been marginalised for too long. By forcing Whitehall to recognise and respect rural needs and interests, and by empowering rural citizens to solve their own problems, the Government believe that they will restore these prized national assets to their rightful place at the heart of our nation.