Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill

Lord Paddick Excerpts

Thursday 17th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the amendment of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope. After what he said yesterday I did some swotting last night. It is important for the legislation to get this sort of wording right. It is quite divisive legislation because of the speed at which it has taken place. This is a sensible amendment.

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, I also support the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead. At Second Reading, the noble and learned Lord made a compelling case for addressing the precise wording in the European Court judgment. With the greatest respect to my noble friend the Minister, his response to that assertion did not quite come up to the level of the case made by the noble and learned Lord. I also support the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, in that it would not only help lawyers to avoid court cases as a result of not addressing strictly the wording in the judgment but it would also be reassuring to the public to have the wording as suggested in the amendment.

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, for tabling his amendment as it gives us a chance to talk about these issues. Perhaps he will not mind if I turn first to the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, and thank him for his kind words about the work that has been done by my officials overnight. They exemplify the sort of support that the Civil Service can give to Ministers. It has been greatly, I hope, to the advantage of noble Lords to have this information available.

I will deal with the issue that the noble Lord raised, which was the point in the Constitution Committee’s report about why we are dealing with these provisions now rather than in 2012. As the Government made clear last week, some companies have already now started to question whether they are under a duty to comply with their obligations under RIPA. The details are obviously sensitive but, as the Prime Minister made clear, we are approaching a cliff edge. A failure to legislate could result in a damaging loss of capability. We were discussing earlier, when I was dealing with the Urgent Notice Question, an area where that capability was necessary. If companies cease to comply, the security agencies will lose the visibility of what targets are saying to each other and in turn could lose the ability to understand the threat that they pose. The Opposition have been briefed in detail on the issue and the Intelligence and Security Committee is well aware of the challenges that we face. Indeed, I happened to meet the chairman of that committee, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, in the street on my way to work this morning.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Earl of Erroll]

Yes, treason rather than corruption. I do not mind what you want to call it—whatever. All I am saying is that we in Parliament are here to protect the people. We happen to have the senior members of the Executive here as well, which is very useful for holding them to account. But they have to be double-hatted and remember that they are putting in place processes for their successors.

The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, made the point about the public needing to be reassured that the people at the top are being watched. We are seeing enough conspiracy theories emerging in the press at the moment about rings protecting themselves. We do not need any more of those suggestions. That is why I think we need an earlier debate on this. It is not about the technical part of it; it is about reassuring the public that we have the right checks and balances at the top. That is not technical; it is about how we watch people.

[Lord Paddick]

My Lords, I want to say just two things. The majority view of this House yesterday at Second Reading was dissatisfaction with the lack of time for public consultation and parliamentary scrutiny of this legislation, not dissatisfaction with the sunset clause. The last thing we need to do is to recreate that problem by not allowing enough time for public consultation and parliamentary scrutiny of the whole area of RIPA and the associated legislation.

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the amendment to have the timetable brought forward because two and a half years is a very long time. While I want to put to one side ideas of conspiracy theories, I do think that there is a hope that somehow the current high level of interest in this will dissipate and that the usual British torpor about what happens with the security services will settle itself back on to our society and we will become unquestioning again. This is about kicking it into the long grass; this is really about postponing it for as long as possible because by that time people will have forgotten the disclosures that we recently had through Snowden and others. We should be concerned to ensure that we act while people are interested and concerned about these issues because they are pressing and very important to a vital and vibrant democracy.

It is important that we have proper scrutiny of the activities that are done in our name at whatever level in our society, and we have to have proper controls. What I am concerned about is when I hear about the setting up of Joint Committees and so on because we always know that the people who are put on to such Joint Committees are hand-picked. There was a period in my life where I remember this happening with the vetting of juries. They are hand-picked to be people who are already very much on the side of protecting the security services.

The security services are vital to the interests of our nation but they need to be questioned. They need to be questioned with some scepticism at times and I am not sure that we get that when people become comfortable in the security committees, as we have seen, and scrutiny is not of the level that it should be. So if we are going to set up these committees and so on, I hope we will see on them the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, and some of the people who have been niggling at these issues and asking the questions that were not asked about rendition and so on. There was a complacency in this House and elsewhere about some of the things that happened, which we should have been much more scrupulous about. I hope that when we come to set up committees we will see a greater variety of presences than the ones we have seen until now.

I do not think that two and a half years is the right period of time; 18 months would be perfectly satisfactory and I urge that we look to a shorter period because it concentrates minds while minds are concentrated on this issue.