Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill

Lord Judd Excerpts

Wednesday 16th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, I am glad to follow two such courageous, perceptive and challenging speeches, with which I found myself in great agreement.

It would be foolish to deny that we live in a very dangerous world. One of the most important considerations is that we do not—deliberately or, at worst, inadvertently—give victories to the extremists. We must become resolute in defending the things that make our society worth protecting. At times I share the noble Baroness’s despair, which she was very honest about. I have an awful feeling that if we looked at ourselves from another planet and saw what had happened to the quality of our life in the past 20 years, we would be appalled at how far the extremists have won victories by getting us to restrict and undermine the whole quality of our society, of which law, as we understand it, and the operation of law is so essential.

A long time ago I dealt with security in the Ministry of Defence. I was not dealing with it in this particular context, but as a Service Minister. It struck me then that if you believe that in the reality of the world in which we live there must be security services, by definition it is crucial that they are headed and staffed by people who are second to none in their commitment to the defence of liberal democracy, and who in that context really believe that what they are about is maintaining the quality of British life. Therefore, it seems to me there has to be trust in all this. That is why it is so important to be able to be confident that the right culture operates in the security services and the Home Office.

That is why I cheered the very stern rebuke at the beginning of the debate from the noble Lord, Lord Butler, with all his distinguished experience. It is totally unacceptable and a very sad day for the quality of British democracy that we should rush the Bill through at the end of the summer Session, with all this duress. I share the view of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile. I cannot see any evidence as to why we could not have considered this earlier. One is forced to the sad conclusion that a political game is going on here: that the Government want to reduce the amount of public discussion. Let us take one statistic: 88% of the British public want their telephone communications to be private. If we move into this kind of area, it is crucial that we have the maximum public debate and discussion, starting with Parliament, about what is involved and what is at stake. We have not had that. Whatever the improvements to the legislation—I take my hat off to those who have worked very hard to get it improved—we still know we are not going to be able to begin to scrutinise it in the required detail.

I want to make another general observation. I often reflect that, in an age of advanced IT and incredibly advanced surveillance techniques, it is just possible that we in institutions such as Parliament are all trying to shut the stable door once the horse has bolted. That brings me back to trust. Unless the security services and others operate with a relentless commitment to values that matter, I am very dubious as to how far effective scrutiny can ever be ensured in the future. We can take certain steps, but there will always be potential for abuse. In recent years, there have been too many disturbing examples of the security services going off course. In saying that, I do not want to join an ill informed body of people yelling at the security services, which are doing immensely challenging work in very difficult circumstances. I have great admiration for them. However, we have to face up to the targeting, which has been seen in recent years, of benign activist organisations, of trade unions and, indeed, of my noble friend Lady Lawrence. Those are profoundly disturbing issues that raise all sorts of questions about how much trust there can be and how we can ensure we have as much accountability as possible, with all the reservations I have expressed.

In the mean time, I would like to raise certain specific issues, on which it would be helpful if the Minister was able to comment or indeed write—although I do not think there is much time to write to us before tomorrow. The Minister and the Government have repeatedly said that DRIP just maintains existing interception capability, but is that really the case? Is it not, in effect, primary legislation that is supporting and extending controversial mass interventions—let us face up to it—such as those revealed by Snowden, the use of which has been doubted by the US Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board and criticised by the Interception Commissioner? I would like to hear more from the Minister on that point.

How can I know if we come to this urgent situation because we currently have some sort of acute emergency? How can any of us know the realities of the nature of that acute situation? If we really have such a situation, why will it take two and a half years before the emergency measures have to be reasserted and positively endorsed by Parliament? That is a hell of a long time. Surely we should have a much shorter period.

If there is to be an independent review of RIPA it obviously has to be robust. I believe it must include terms of reference, proper funding, specified timescales and scope. What is really needed is a convincing board of people with relevant and impressive experience, with a credible chair.

There is one other matter. If we are trying to establish minimum requirements for a review of UK-USA data sharing, we need to clarify our goals. We need to update existing arrangements for data interception and processing by the US in the UK. We need to review the whole process of UK-US data sharing, and we have to look at the US’s use of data retention in view of new technologies and innovative practices since the original 1946 UKUSA agreement, as amended. We need a specific assurance that UK data will not be available to support activities that would be unlawful in the UK, including extrajudicial targeted killing—noting confirmation from senior US officials that “metadata kills”. That is an extremely serious issue, which we cannot skate over. We need very specific reassurances from the Government.

I conclude as I was arguing a moment ago, and some of those who serve on the same Select Committee as I do will get a bit weary of how often I find myself repeating this. Because of the nature of the IT advances and the huge scope of surveillance that we now have, we are playing around unless we are second to none in the fight to establish a culture to defend what freedom, justice, the rule of law and open government are really all about. I am afraid that we have slipped a very long way.