Offensive Weapons Bill

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 6th February 2019 Grand Committee

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, can my noble friend say how many offences are committed annually on further education premises, which are the subject of Clause 29? Further education premises are a place where perhaps a majority of the people have an offensive weapon, as defined in the Bill, as part of what they need to do their training. If someone is spending their day with a screwdriver because they are on an electronics course and someone comes up and kicks them in the butt, and they turn round with the screwdriver in their hand, under the amended provision, they will be in chokey for it. We do not seem to have incorporated in it any defence which says that the person had the weapon for perfectly good reasons and was using it for perfectly good reasons when somebody else did something which caused the threatening situation. In public, one does not come across this often, but in an FE college it is a routine occurrence. I cannot see that we should criminalise arguments in FE colleges without there being some reasonable defence.

[Baroness Barran]

I thank my noble friend for his question. As we are including FE colleges for the first time in the legislation, we do not have the data as yet, but that will be captured in future. We have the data on schools and public places, which I am happy to share with my noble friend. On his last comment, there is no intention of criminalising arguments. We are talking about people in possession of an offensive weapon and threatening someone else with it in such a way that any one of us—assuming that we are all reasonable people—would assume that there was a risk of physical harm.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, if you are waving a screwdriver about, there is a risk of physical harm, which is the point of the old wording of “serious physical harm”: to rule out such a random occurrence. In public places, in schools, by and large people do not handle physical, offensive weapons openly. In a further education college, a lot of people will be, because it will be part of what they are required to do. Nobody doing anything serious with a knife uses a blade that does not lock. Anybody using a screwdriver or other pointed implement will be using something that will be classified, or is capable of being classified, as an offensive weapon. We should make sure that somebody reasonably having in their hands an offensive weapon because they are using it at the moment when the flash of an argument starts does not become the cause for a mandatory prison sentence. There has to be the scope for a court to take a sensible view of what is going on. It is not like a school; it is an environment where offensive weapons are routine and where a lot effort goes into making sure that people use them safely. Common sense needs to be applied when considering whether it is an offence with a bladed weapon or just an argument taking place when one or both of the parties happen to be holding an offensive weapon, because that is what they were supposed to be doing at the time the argument started.

[Baroness Barran]

I hope that I can reassure my noble friend on two points: first, the spirit of the legislation is not to criminalise people in the way that he has described; secondly, the sentencing guidelines were updated relatively recently, in June last year, and give multiple scenarios for the courts to consider in sentencing—which I think would allay my noble friend’s fears.

[Lord Lucas]

I would be grateful if my noble friend could share that.

[Lord Elton (Con)]

My Lords, can the Minister remind us of the youngest age to which these provisions apply? I remind her that it is the effect of the legislation, not the intention, that matters.

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[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I share many noble Lords’ concerns about the way in which these clauses have been drafted. I hope we will get a decent opportunity to review them, and chew through them, in a way which would have been better afforded if these amendments had been laid earlier. I received scant briefing, but they need serious attention and application of time to find out how to make this idea work.

I will raise a few detailed points. If under subsection (5) of the new clause inserted by Amendment 73A we are to expand on the definition of good reason, we are opening ourselves up to dangers, as we always do when we start doing these sorts of things. In paragraph (a) of subsection (5) we ought to say “in work”, because a lot of uses are in work and not “at work”. We also ought to include those reasonable uses of a bladed article which are associated with hobbies. If you are a carver, a fisherman, a sailor, let alone someone doing anything with ropes, you are going to need a knife. That that is excluded from paragraph (a) somehow downgrades those reasons for possessing a knife. We should be satisfied with the old test of good reason. Paragraph (a) introduces the danger that a lot of good reasons for having a knife are going to be downgraded.

The scope of the order is very wide, and we should be conscious that similar orders are being used quite actively. Last month, we passed a nine-month jail sentence on a rap group for singing a song in contravention of an order, so you do not have to do much to get a criminal record under these sorts of orders. Therefore, we ought to be conscious of how this lot apply to children, particularly the disruption to their already chaotic lives that can be caused by what we order them to do or not to do and the way that interferes with their education, or the beginning of their work. Indeed, who is allowed to know that they have one of these orders, and what is a school supposed to do if is knows that one of its children has one of these orders? That children’s aspect needs to be more clearly worked out.

I entirely agree with the Government’s sentiments in wanting to do something effective. As always, it is the role of this House to make sure that what is proposed is effective, and to not let the Government get away with it if it is not.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

My Lords, this has been an excellent debate. As I was sitting here listening to so many excellent and knowledgeable speakers, I thought that this debate should have been in the Chamber, but that is for another day. I fully accept that knife crime prevention orders put forward by the Government today are, as the noble Baroness says, to deal with habitual carriers of knives. In that sense, we can support them in principle but there need to be some changes.

I am also clear that the present Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, as well as the previous commissioner and the Mayor of London, support the idea of a prevention order as it could be a valuable tool in dealing with the epidemic of knife crime. It is always heart-breaking to see families destroyed when they have lost a loved one, but of course the perpetrator’s life is destroyed as well. There is a huge issue with young people carrying knives and so on. I have met one or two gang members; they can be very challenging individuals to meet. Some of the younger ones are certainly very frightened.

I was on the Wyndham estate some time ago, near where I went to school, to meet some of these young people and they offered me an escort off the estate. I said, “It’s all right, I don’t need an escort—I’ve lived round here”. I was fine. I walked off with no problem at all because I am a fairly big 56 year-old bloke; I am not a 15 or 16 year-old, and I am not black. If I had walked out of there in other circumstances, I would have had a problem getting to the bus stop but, in my situation, there was no problem at all. The young people thought that I would not be safe walking on the estate, which was not the case.

The noble Lords, Lord Paddick and Lord Ramsbotham, made the point, as I think other noble Lords did, that it is a shame the way these amendments have arrived in this House. They have been tabled in Grand Committee and, as has been said, have not gone through the procedures in the House of Commons. My understanding of that House is that if these provisions had been in the Bill from the start there would have been an evidence session in the Commons with experts coming in to look at them. That has been lost and cannot happen now, which is a shame. I support the idea that they have come into the Bill very late. They were announced to the media, and here we are in Grand Committee, not the main Chamber. We will come back to them, or something like them, on Report. Having that at the end of the passage of the Bill is regrettable.

That is why we have tabled Amendment 77 in this group, which was put forward by my noble friend Lord Tunnicliffe. It attempts to insert a new clause which would require the Government within three months of the Bill becoming an Act to publish a draft Bill to bring in knife crime prevention orders. It would mean there would have to be a Bill, which I hope would start in the Commons so that it could have evidence sessions. As it would be a draft Bill, even before that there would be a Joint Committee of both Houses to look at the stuff in detail. We want to get this right. On each side of the House, we can give examples of where we have passed measures and have got them right or wrong, but most of the things that were done wrong were done in haste. If we want to sort out an issue, we all charge off and do something, and months or years later, we find that we did not quite get it right. Amendment 77 in my noble friend’s name would ensure that we could do that and look at it in detail.

I am a big fan of draft Bills. When my noble kinsman Lady Kennedy of Cradley—I suppose I should refer to her as that—was on the Committee on the draft Modern Slavery Bill, I saw the work that she and other Members did. I remember the phone calls from the Home Office when the Minister talked to her—it was Karen Bradley—and a lot of detailed work went on to get that Bill right. I think we all accept that it is very good legislation. There were one or two issues—the noble Lord, Lord McColl, made efforts to improve some of the aftercare—but generally it is very good legislation. I would contrast that, as I often do, with the Housing and Planning Act, which is terrible legislation done on the back of a fag packet. It is absolute rubbish and most of the Government have quietly forgotten about it. It has been pushed to one side, so that no one ever mentions it again. I am a big fan of draft legislation, especially when it concerns sorting big issues out. The intention behind the amendment from my noble friend Lord Tunnicliffe is to do that.

This might seem a bit over the top, but we have had reports of these poor people being killed and their families destroyed. Why is COBRA not meeting to discuss this? We have COBRA meetings when we have a flood or a problem with the trains. This is about young people dying, so why is the Prime Minister or the Home Secretary not convening COBRA and getting the right people in the room to ask them, “What’s going on here?”

There is an issue about youth workers, social workers and cuts to services because if we are going to have penalties to deal with the issue we need to deal with the causes as well. Why is COBRA not meeting? People are losing their lives, so I want a response on that. As I said, these are very important issues.

The noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, made some excellent points as did my noble friend Lord Ponsonby with his experience as a magistrate in youth courts. He has experience of dealing with these people when they get to court. A lot of them have form. That is an important point. The right reverend Prelate also made some good points about the work that she has done in Newcastle and in south-east London. I used to go to a youth club—the Crossed Swords youth club—which was run by St Paul’s, a Church of England church. Reverend Shaw used to run it. I am a Catholic, but I used to go there because it was a very good club. All the kids from the estate went there. It is important that we have those things. In many parts the country they have disappeared. Whether voluntary or local authority, they have all been lost, and the people are lost there. We need to get those things right.

The shame with this Bill is that it seeks to deal with the punishment of offenders but does not address any of the causes, which is one of the losses in this Bill. Generally speaking, I am not against the orders. They need to be looked at, refined and changed but in principle I am not against them. Noble Lords made valuable points and I hope that the Minister will take them on board.

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Moved by

[Lord Lucas]

74: After Clause 31, insert the following new Clause—
“Increased security measures for certain firearms
(1) The Firearms Act 1968 is amended as follows.(2) Before section 5 insert—“4B Increased security measures for certain firearms(1) A person commits an offence if, other than at times when he or she has a weapon specified in this section on or about his or her person, it is not secured in accordance with Home Office Level 3 Security.(2) The weapons specified in this section are—(a) any rifle with a calibre greater than .45 inches, or(b) any rifle with a chamber from which empty cartridge cases are extracted using—(i) energy from propellant gas, or(ii) energy imparted to a spring or other energy storage device by propellant gas.””Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is intended to enable discussion of security measures for firearms generally.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 74 I shall at the same time speak to Amendment 78 in this group.

This Bill is about where we set boundaries to protect the public from the misuse of dangerous objects. This amendment gives us an opportunity to discuss where that boundary should be set in the case of rifles. In other bits of the Bill we quite clearly take the decision to ban dangerous objects for which there is no legitimate use and to control those for which there is a legitimate use. There is no perfect or absolute formula that I have been able to discover, in any country, for where that boundary should be set. Different countries come to different conclusions at different times. The use of weapons in sports is widely allowed—for example, archery, fencing, shooting, jousting, javelin and discus. It is commonplace, up to the highest level, that sports derived from martial arts—including those using our own bodies—should be allowed, and I support that. Given that, we then have to consider what restrictions we put in place. In doing that, I believe we should consider what restrictions are necessary. What evidence is there that a restriction is required? We should start from a principle of allowing and then work to look for evidence that allows us to restrict.

When it comes to making firearms safe—meaning rifles rather than shotguns, for which you would have a firearms certificate—the issuing of a certificate to a holder is the principal means of protecting the public from the misuse of firearms.

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[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, if I might help my noble friend, it is possible that Ministers and Members in another House have been slightly inaccurately briefed. For instance, they were told that the effective range of a .50 calibre round is 6,800 metres, whereas in actual fact, it is only about 1,800 metres.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I was talking about the two forms of rifle which are specifically addressed in the Bill. These are not .50 calibre rifles, but lighter ones, which are adapted for use by disabled people and make it easier to reload the round using power derived from the previous shot. That is a .50 calibre, but again, the calibre alone does not tell you all you need to know about the rifle; you need to know whether a particular weapon is dangerous. The weapons used in target shooting tend to be heavy and cumbersome and the ammunition is not the same as that used in military operations.

I have asked for evidence. There may be evidence out there, but it has not made its way to me. My particular arguments are about the guns addressed in the Bill, as there is no evidence of misuse of those guns or available evidence showing that these are fundamentally more dangerous than other rifles. There is also no evidence that they cannot be properly secured through a mixture of physical security and the systems we have to ensure that firearms are only held by the people who ought to hold them.

[Lord Robertson of Port Ellen]

Before Hungerford and Dunblane, there had not been evidence of legally held handguns being used to massacre people. However, Hungerford and Dunblane happened, and after that, we passed legislation and the country is much safer as a result.

[Lord Lucas]

Absolutely. We need to keep these things under consideration. However, if one took the noble Lord’s argument to its logical conclusion, we would ban cars because they have been used deliberately to kill people. Any kind of weapon, including knives, presents a danger to the public. Because there is a legitimate use for these objects, we choose to look at how to balance the potential danger with the potential good. I hope that we will choose to do it on the basis of evidence, which says, yes, these things are dangerous, but we have systems in place which negate that danger. Rules on the weapons the public may hold legitimately, plus the safeguards we take, mean this is not the route through which weapons reach the people who will misuse them. In society as a whole, we have adopted a system which is safe and which allows us to live with the existence of those weapons. It seems to me that the evidence says that is the case at the moment. We do not have a recent history of misuse—of any degree at all—of the weapons which are currently allowed.

It is important to keep these things under review, but it is also important to be sensible. A lot of what is in our lives is dangerous. It is the business of legislators to balance that danger with utility and reach a conclusion; there are lots of different conclusions that can be reached. If we say that people are to have weapons of any description, it seems to me that the current arrangements for allowing people to have firearms are working very well. There is no evidence that incremental banning of particular types of firearm will produce any benefit at all and, as a matter of principle, we ought to take those sorts of decisions based on evidence, rather than because someone feels like it somewhere and no one quite knows why because it is buried in the decision-making processes that created this Bill.

My appeal to my noble friend is that we ought to be looking at where this process is going in the long term, at what we should be doing to make sure that firearms can be legally held, and at the security we want around that. Then, when we arrive at that conclusion, we can show that the weapons which fit within that are not a source of danger to the public, by their nature, because they are not what people who wish to commit crimes will go for.

A lot of guns are being recovered by the police, and by and large they are illegal guns because the guns that are being brought in are much more suitable for use in crime. People will not go for a hunting rifle to commit crime with. We are not talking about hunting rifles in the Bill, but the same considerations apply. If hunting rifles were being widely used in crime, we would be fussed about it, but they are not. The rifles that are the subject of this Bill are not used in crime. There is no instance of them being used in crime. There is nothing obvious about them which makes them more dangerous than other firearms in the context of the controls that we have. As a result of the deliberations in another place, our concerns about .50 calibre are under review. We ought to do the same with the other rifles that are mentioned here and come to a coherent, evidenced conclusion about where in this society we now choose to draw the line on the firearms that people may legally hold and on the purposes for which they may legally hold them. I am not saying that there is an absolute value to any particular place to draw the line; I am saying that we ought to do this on the basis of evidence, and nothing that my noble friends have been able to provide me with at the moment offers evidence that the rifles we are discussing pose any greater danger than the many other rifles that we permit people to hold. I beg to move.

[The Earl of Shrewsbury (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to support my noble friend’s amendment and to speak to my Amendments 78B, 79A and 79B. Additionally, I want to refer to an earlier comment about the Dunblane massacre and the handguns that were banned afterwards. I was chairman of the FCC at that time and remember it very well indeed. The only effect of the ban on handguns at that stage and of the incoming Government’s Bill to ban other handguns below .32 calibre was to drive those handguns underground. Since then, it is fair to say that there are many fewer legally held handguns because it is illegal to hold them, but nine out 10 of the guns used in crime are illegal, and the number of illegally held handguns has ballooned over the years since Dunblane.

I wish to address lever-release and MARS rifles which are the subject also of my noble friend’s amendment. They are used in general by disabled shooters who find it extremely difficult to use a standard rifle. These disabled shooters normally have big problems, such as arthritis in their fingers and hands, or mobility problems so they have to shoot from a sitting position. Prohibition of these two types of guns would cause those shooters considerable hardship and probably leave them unable to take part in their chosen target disciplines and competitions. I am certainly not aware of any evidence that MARS or LR weapons have ever been used in crime, and I feel strongly that they could easily be held on Section 1 certificates with level 3 enhanced security, which comes in guidance to the police. I have no problems with that provision whatever. These people look after their guns incredibly safely in any case. I look forward to my noble friend’s views on those matters.

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[Earl Howe]

It was in an endeavour to address the general concern put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, that I undertook for the Government to consider seriously my noble friend Lord Attlee’s amendment and my noble friend Lord Lucas’s arguments. However, I take his point. I am sure that it will not be lost on Home Office Ministers or officials. Of course, we will give that further consideration.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I am grateful for my noble friend’s calm and consideration, as ever. He would make an excellent target shooter. I will try to persuade him to join the Lords’ team for our battle against the Commons in July. I am grateful for what he said about Amendment 74, but when it comes to what my noble friend referred to as rapid-firing rifles, I would be grateful if he could share with us the evidence on which the Government have based the conclusion that the lever release rifle, in particular, is in practice a rapid-firing rifle.

I am not trying to pose as an expert in these things, but in terms of the evidence I have seen from people outside government, that matter is in question, and that is what lies behind my noble friend Lord Shrewsbury’s amendment. If my noble friend felt able to share the information or opinions on which that conclusion was based before Report, I would be immensely grateful.

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, in so far as the security classification of the advice that the Government have received is not confidential, I would be happy to see what information we can release to my noble friend.

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[Lord Lucas]

I am always very grateful to my noble friend and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 74 withdrawn.

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[Lord Ribeiro (Con)]

My Lords, I apologise for not having been present for Second Reading and for speaking from the wrong side of the Room.

I will give you a medical perspective, as medicine has been mentioned and is very much part of this. I am holding a letter I got from the Hampshire Constabulary when I applied for my firearm renewal. It says:

“Thank you for your application for the renewal of a firearm and shotgun certificate. In your application you have disclosed that you have glaucoma.


To suffer from a medical condition of any kind does not preclude you from possessing a firearm. When considering application for Firearm or Shotgun Certificates the Chief Officer of Police has a statutory responsibility to ensure that people wishing to possess firearms can do so without being a danger to public safety or to the peace.


To enable the application to progress we require a medical report from your General Practitioner … detailing the background to your condition, the effects it may have and a description of the medication or treatment you received and are currently receiving”.


That is pretty clear on what the police require. It goes on to say:

“Any physical or mental condition that may affect your ability to possess and use firearms safely should be declared”.


Here it diverges slightly from the nine conditions listed in the 2016 Act, in that it includes,

“mental health disorder, epilepsy, stroke, stress related illness, depression, alcoholism, substance use or dependency”,

which are all in the nine conditions, but it then mysteriously adds heart disease and cancer. I could not really see the relevance of that. It goes on to say:

“This list is not definitive”.


I read that out because we already have a pretty stringent process with the police.

In answer to the question about the cabinets, I remember that when I had my cabinet inspected by the police, they came to the house, had a look and asked, “Who has responsibility for and possession of the key? Does anybody else have access to this key? Yes, you can put your wife’s jewellery in there”—I do from time to time—“but technically she should not know where the key is”. That addresses that point.

I have permission from my GP to give noble Lords some idea of the process that GPs go through in doing this. First, the GP will see you—my GP is a senior practitioner in her practice. All the requests are initially screened by the administrative staff, who then pass them on to the GP. The GP makes time to review the patient’s records and checks the history and the paper records—increasingly, these are electronic—for any relevant correspondence or letters that come through and any prescribed medication. The GP then has to make a judgment as to whether there is a risk. If no risk is identified, a relevant code is added to the notes. Administration then takes over the case. It is filed away and an invoice is made—in my case, for £15; we have heard the variations in the cost. If a risk is identified, a report is produced and sent to the police. GPs inevitably get the blame if the application fails. The patient’s record is flagged with an encoded reminder or marker. Should a relevant medical condition occur over the five years of the licence’s term, there is a visible reminder that the patient has a firearm or shotgun certificate.

My GP notes that although this should be straightforward, many reminders relating to other data collections come into their systems and must be dealt with, and that GPs must cope with an element of reminder fatigue. From time to time, an alert may go unnoticed; that is human error but it does happen. I know that the BMA is reported as being against flagging notices, citing a lack of clear protocol for their removal, but the 2016 firearms licensing law requires GPs to place that reminder code in the patient’s notes. That is a very clear statement and GPs should be doing it.

My GP also noted that in the context of extending the period to 10 years for those with mental illnesses, which is being mooted at the moment, GPs would like much more prominent markers so that they can associate a developing mental illness with the person holding a firearm or shotgun certificate. Mental illness is the one real area of concern for general practitioners here. GPs want a much more prominent marker to be flagged up on their screens when this situation arises.

The firearms licences and medical evidence factsheet being produced identifies who should pay fees and when that payment should be made. Where the applicant has declared a medical condition on the application form, as I did, a fee would be expected. If a further medical report is required, the police must pay. During the normal course of validating a certificate, the GP initially checks the patient’s records. There is no current expectation of a fee being submitted, but as noble Lords will know, there has been variability in the amount of fees charged. In some cases, the charging of fees as high as £200 for just an initial check has been reported in Scotland. We must address that lack of conformity now. We should suggest a standard fee equivalent to the charge for a heavy goods vehicle licence, as mentioned by my noble friend Lord Shrewsbury, right across England and Wales.

Providing firearms reports for the police is part of a GP’s job but not of their core general medical services, so they have freedom to charge if they wish to. GPs are under considerable pressure to get this right. The system is in place and is effective. We need clear systems for flagging up critical medical problems to which GPs can respond. I support the amendment.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, as I have said before, it is crucial that the Government get this right. I hope that they will put some energy behind it. I say to my noble friend that the answer to a plague of rabbits is not a .22 rifle but a pack of Sporting Lucas terriers.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

My Lords, I will speak very briefly. The amendment is clearly a good addition. We certainly want consistency on medical checks, police checks and how people look at this issue. Without that, we will have problems. That cannot be right. We want to ensure that people’s suitability to have a weapon is assessed, and to know that this is done to the highest possible standards. We are all clear on that. Where we have inconsistency, we have problems. I support the amendment and I hope that the Minister will respond positively to the issues raised.

Register of Hereditary Peers

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Monday 9th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

The Government are certainly not averse to incremental reform, providing we can agree on what incremental reform means, which is the reason for my earlier answer to the noble Lord, Lord Grocott. As proof of that, one has only to look at the two Acts relating to the composition of the House that we passed in the last Parliament—the House of Lords (Expulsion and Suspension) Act 2015 and the House of Lords Reform Act 2014—as well as the Lords Spiritual (Women) Act 2015, which again was a measure in this bracket.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, these days, why should gender have any relevance for the descent of anything to anybody?

[Earl Howe]

My noble friend makes a point which I am sure would resonate with many of your Lordships. I am sure noble Lords would agree that once Peers reach this House, the equality principle is unquestioned.

Investigatory Powers Bill

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Tuesday 19th July 2016 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Lucas]

119: Clause 58, page 47, line 12, at end insert—
“( ) for the purpose of suppressing less serious crimes perpetrated on a large scale using the internet,”

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[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 119, I will also address Amendment 202 in this group. At Second Reading, the noble Lord, Lord Birt, made an impassioned speech which echoed my thoughts exactly. What most of us experience as crime related to the internet are the daily attempts to pick our pockets and to mug us in other ways which crowd our inboxes, even with all the filters that are in place in Parliament and much more so on one’s private email. This is the experience of the average citizen of the internet: a caricature of a Dickensian London street, a place where you always have to be on your guard, where it is not safe to be.

In the Bill the Government are giving themselves the power, potentially, to help us do something about that. These amendments are intended to probe whether the Government have gone far enough to enable them to put those things into effect. When they talk about “serious crime”, they are talking of the equivalent of murder. But “serious” to us is small crimes, repeated in large numbers, every day, which are much more likely to have an effect on us—indeed, on every citizen.

Once the Government have the access to data that they are seeking in the Bill, they have the power to help us. They can warn us, “Hang on, you’ve been on a website that’s probably infected, you ought to do something about that”, because they know everything we have done on the internet, potentially; or they can start to do that, or they can explore the possibility of helping us.

Noble Lords who were here for the debates on identity cards will remember the great issues of principle we discussed then. But the sort of information we were afraid to give a Government we give every day to Google. You give it to Nintendo if you play Pokémon GO. We are astonishingly willing to part with our information if we get something back.

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[Earl Howe]

My Lords, Clause 58 is the first clause of Part 3 of the Bill and deals with the targeted obtaining of communications data. It provides the power for only those public authorities listed in Schedule 4 to the Bill to authorise conduct to obtain communications data. Obtaining communications data may be authorised only when necessary for one of the statutory purposes listed in Clause 58(7) and where the conduct authorised is proportionate to what is sought to be achieved. Similarly, Clause 146(2) provides the statutory purposes for which a bulk communications data acquisition warrant will be considered necessary. Those purposes mirror the statutory functions of the security and intelligence agencies, since bulk warrants are of course available only to those agencies. They are where it is,

“in the interests of national security”,

for the prevention or detection of serious crime, or,

“in the interests of the economic well-being of”,

the UK where relevant to national security.

Throughout the passage of the Bill, we have heard repeatedly of the vital importance of communications data for the full range of law enforcement activity and national security investigations. This Government are committed to ensuring that law enforcement and the intelligence agencies have the tools they need to carry out the critical responsibilities that Parliament has placed upon them. Indeed, one of the key aims of this legislation is to ensure that investigatory powers are fit for a digital age and that crime can be investigated wherever it takes place, regardless of the method of communication. However, the Government consider these amendments unnecessary for targeted communications data and an inappropriate extension of responsibilities for our intelligence agencies for bulk communications data.

The Bill already provides that communications data may be acquired for the purpose of preventing or detecting crime, wherever that crime takes place and whatever scale it is on, where an application for communications data meets the requirements for necessity and proportionality. So it would already be available for the purpose of suppressing less serious crimes perpetrated on a large scale. I commend the aim of my noble friend Lord Lucas’s amendment but I believe that the Bill already provides the powers that he seeks.

As I said earlier, the bulk acquisition of communications data is available only to the intelligence agencies, whose statutory functions relate to serious crime and national security. The inclusion of a statutory purpose to obtain communications data in bulk so that our intelligence agencies could suppress less serious crime would therefore, in my submission, be inappropriate.

I hope that my noble friend finds those comments helpful and will feel able to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for his reply. I am not surprised but disappointed, but I shall certainly seek leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 119 withdrawn.

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[Lord Paddick]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 134, which is in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Hamwee, I will also speak to Amendments 135, 142, 144 and 240 and on whether Clauses 63 to 65, relating to filtering arrangements, should stand part of the Bill.

Amendment 134 would amend Clause 63(1) to say that the Secretary of State “may by regulations establish” rather than simply “may establish”. Amendment 240 is consequent on that. Amendment 135 would amend Clause 63(1), so that while the Secretary of State may establish filtering arrangements, she would not “maintain and operate” them herself. In fact, my understanding is that the Government have no idea at this stage who might maintain or operate such arrangements.

I do not intend to speak to Amendment 138, which we will not be moving and do not consider worth debating. Amendment 140 would have added to the duties in connection with the operation of the filtering arrangements—that the Secretary of State shall, in exercising her powers under Clauses 63 to 68, have regard to the general duties in relation to privacy in Clause 2.

To the duty on the Secretary of State to provide a report to the Investigatory Powers Commissioner about the operation of the filter, Amendment 142 adds a duty to lay a report before each House of Parliament about the functioning of the filtering arrangements during the previous year. Amendment 144 requires the Secretary of State immediately to report to the Investigatory Powers Commissioner any processing errors—not just “significant” processing errors—giving rise to a contravention of the requirements of this part.

This feature of the Bill is almost identical to that proposed in the Communications Data Bill. The Joint Committee described it as a government-owned data mining device. I described it on Second Reading as a virtual national database. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen of Elie, said that it was not a database. I did not maintain that it was; I said it was a virtual database. My understanding is that this is a search engine that would have real-time direct access to communication databases held by every communication service provider, including, if the Bill is not amended, everyone’s internet connection records.

At the moment, the police and security services, through a single point of contact, make application to communication service providers, which assess the lawfulness of the request and, if satisfied, provide the information. The filter would bypass that important safety check and allow security services to self-authorise access to communication service providers’ data. It would allow complex queries that could provide detailed information about people’s private lives. As the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, said on Second Reading:

“We are producing a resource there that Francis Urquhart would have loved to have his fingers on: absolute knowledge of everyone’s private life”—[Official Report, 27/6/16; col1427.]

The request filter would make life for the police and the security services easier—I say the security services, but I think they have their own systems. Life without the filter would not be impossible for the police, just not easier than it is now. It is therefore not necessary, only desirable and, as such, fails the necessity and proportionality tests for the invasion of privacy.

The Government cannot say what it would look like, where it would be built, who would run it on their behalf or how it would be kept secure. It is a hypothetical virtual database. It would be a dangerous precedent for Parliament to authorise such a device without knowing who would run it and what the security implications would be. I beg to move.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I have Amendments 141 and 143 in this group. I very much share the concern of the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, about the request filter. It is an exceptionally powerful system because it will make life so easy. A casual request for data on someone who might possibly be of interest can be done in a moment—you do not have to think about it—rather than tying up resources to such an extent that you probably do not do it.

We are all familiar with the fact that those in the police service are human; doubtless, the people who run this resource will be human. The potential for casual misuse or misuse suborned by journalists will be considerable. On top of that is potential misuse by government. Given that at the moment we do not have an effective Opposition and I suspect that the Bill will effectively pass on the nod, I very much hope that my noble friend will reassure us that not only will there be exact and complete record-keeping for the filter but that those records will be independently inspected, that the results of those inspections will be publicly available and that people who find themselves tied up in nastiness as a result of information which may well have come from the filter will be able to find out whether that has happened.

[Lord Strasburger (LD)]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly on the amendments on the request filter. Along with internet connection records, the request filter is another power that first appeared in the draft Communications Data Bill and which died along with that ill-fated Bill. The view of the pre-legislative Joint Committee on that Bill, on which I sat, was that,

“the Request Filter introduces new risks, most obviously the temptation to go on ‘fishing expeditions’. New safeguards should be introduced to minimise these risks”.

The request filter was described as,

“essentially a federated database of all UK citizens’ communications data”.

I dare say that the committee would be even more worried when it said that in 2012 if it had seen how this Bill expanded the range of data to which the request filter can be applied. That expansion comes from the proposed introduction of internet connection records, which would reveal every detail of a person’s digital life and a very large part of their life in the real world. The effect of the request filter will be to multiply up the effect of intrusion into those data by allowing public authorities to make complex automated searches across the retained data from all telecoms operators. This has the potential for population profiling and composite fishing trips. It is bulk surveillance without the bulk label.

Use of the request filter would be self-authorised by the public authority without any judicial authorisation at all. The concept that the Government promote for bulk data is that they are passive retained records, which they say sit there unexamined until someone comes to the attention of the authorities. That concept is negated by the request filter. The data become an actively checked resource and are no longer passive. Will the Minister confirm that the request filter is not yet in existence and is not yet being used?

The request filter is a bulk power masquerading as an innocuous safeguard to reduce collateral intrusion. Unless and until the Government come forward with proposals to strictly limit use of the request filter through tighter rules and judicial approval for warrants, as is the case with other bulk powers, Clauses 63, 64 and 65 should not stand part of the Bill.