Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill

Lord King of Bridgwater Excerpts

Wednesday 16th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord King of Bridgwater (Con)]

My Lords, I join noble Lords who have expressed their regret—the noble Lord, Lord Butler, did so most forcefully—at the speed with which this legislation has come forward, and questioned whether there is a convincing explanation of why the European Court of Justice judgment, made in April, ended up with one day in the House of Commons in late July. I have my own suspicions as to how that happened. We seem to be quoting a lot from the other place, but if anybody reads Mr Jack Straw’s attempt to read the European Court of Justice judgment—which he found pretty incomprehensible and a load of porridge, as I think he described it—they will see that that may have been part of the extension of the problem. When this matter was raised in the debate on the Statement I warned the House that one is right to be deeply suspicious of emergency legislation that appears in this way. I should also say, deeply cynically, that that is even more the case when such legislation comes with all-party agreement. That is a time to fasten your seat belts and wonder what the background to it really is.

After that unhelpful opening comment for my noble friend, I should also say that I would regard it as pretty unacceptable if the Bill involved a major extension of powers. However, if it is true, as the Government maintain—and as is widely accepted, including by the Constitution Committee—that something that was lawful may now cease to be so, then a different situation obviously arises. Having said that, I certainly accept that this legislation is necessary. I absolutely recognise the critical importance of the retention of data and appropriately controlled interception in our fight against the increasing challenge of terrorism, crime, paedophilia, organised crime or whatever it might be.

The redeeming feature of the Government’s legislation is the sunset clause. I see that an amendment was moved in the other place that this should last only until Christmas, but that is quite inadequate. Having put this emergency legislation in place, we now need to have a serious look at the issues which arise out of it. I will quote again from the other place. I was impressed by the speech made by a former colleague, Yvette Cooper, who I was delighted to have serving with me under my chairmanship of the ISC. As a new Member of Parliament, she was immediately put on the ISC and made a very useful contribution to it. She rightly called for this not to be such a short sunset period, but to provide the opportunity for a major review of the issues of liberty and security. I am delighted to see that the ISC is going to conduct such a review. She also, in passing, made a comment about the many private companies that are making far more use of our private data than any police or intelligence agency has ever dreamed of doing. Some of us would be delighted to see this included as part of the consideration in any review that is conducted.

The former Attorney-General, Dominic Grieve, intervened to say that the question of interception is nothing new. This has been taking place since the telephone was invented. Alan Johnson then made an even more interesting observation that when he joined the Post Office there was a whole section in St Martin’s Le Grand post office entirely devoted to the steaming open of envelopes. Professor Christopher Andrew, in his study on this, identified that in 1969 that section opened 221,000 items. This is part of the background to some of these practices but it is not to say that any of this is justifiable unless it is strictly controlled, under proper legal authority and there is some accountability for the actions taken and the challenges that exist.

When I chaired the ISC, which goes back to when it started 20 years ago, it was clear that even then the agencies were struggling to keep up with the development of new technologies, with the amount of different systems and ways in which criminals, terrorists and others could communicate, and with how to keep some sort of effective protection against them. That was pre-Twitter, pre-Facebook and pre all the developments that have taken place.

The challenges now are definitely all the greater. Huge opportunities are offered to terrorists, to those involved in serious organised crime and to criminals who are very sophisticated in some of their methods of communication. It is a temptation for them. It is also a temptation for the agencies—not for any improper purpose but because they are trying to protect us and to keep us safe. They will be continually pushing against the limits of the constraints of legislation in the interests of trying to make sure that this country is as safe as it can possibly be. The challenges of oversight, of proper legislative authority and control, and of public confidence are very important.

Perhaps I may add one little personal note. I was delighted to see that Yvette Cooper said that if there were to be a Labour Government they would insist that the ISC should have a chairman from the Opposition, which is very wise. I have great respect for those who have been chairman of that committee, including Margaret Beckett and the current chairman, Sir Malcolm Rifkind. However, if an issue had come up that the ISC had to look at, and its chairman had been Foreign Secretary and responsible for the SIS, MI6 or GCHQ, maintaining public confidence when it produced a report would have been all the more difficult. I am delighted that that has become Labour Party policy and I encourage my noble friend to ensure that we move in that direction.

I am not sure that we have got the message across to the general public: they think that the retention of data is all about reading or listening to everybody’s messages and communications. I do not think that more than one person in 1,000 in this country knows what metadata means, which is the word that is frequently used. As my noble friend said in relation to data, we are concerned about the who, when, where and how, not about what people are actually saying. That is what we are talking about in relation to these data. I think that it is very important to do it.

I support this emergency legislation. If it goes through, it will protect our defences and ensure that they are in place in the next phase. Then we must look at the relationship between privacy and security. Although I have not heard much about it, I welcome the announcement about the privacy and civil liberties board. I welcome the work that it can do in ensuring that while we maintain our defences in a very dangerous world, the rights of the citizen, his liberty and his privacy are properly protected as well.