Airport Capacity

Lord Soley Excerpts

Monday 14th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

If I may, I will write specifically on the issue of cost, but it is not being ignored; estimates have been made of that. The important point my noble friend raises is about the commission. Yes, the previous Government initiated the commission in 2012. As I have said previously from this Dispatch Box, we have committed ourselves to ensuring that the report of the commission is duly considered, which we are doing and have done since its publication, and that will form the basis of however the Government choose to proceed. We are not discarding the findings of the Davies commission—on the contrary, we are supportive of them and are ensuring that all elements raised within the Davies commission and through the Audit Committee’s recent report are built into our response. We will move forward in a positive frame in that regard in the summer of next year.

[Lord Soley (Lab)]

My Lords, this is government with a vengeance: everything to do with the date of the mayoral elections in London and nothing to do with the environment. This has been trawled over for years. I will ask the Minister two specific questions. First, if the Government are going to resurrect the Gatwick proposal, has Gatwick local authority been consulted on the amount of storage space that will be required for all the cargo that arrives? Secondly, and very specifically—this is particularly important for the rest of the UK economy—have the Government taken into account the impact on the regional airports in the regions of Britain if Heathrow does not get that extra runway, thus enabling those regional airports to link into the global economy? Without that, there will be immense damage to business.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

The noble Lord raises an important point about air freight, which of course contributes over 40% of the UK’s non-EU trade and over £140 billion in total, which is a very important part of the offering. As the noble Lord rightly pointed out, this is an important issue and one of the many factors we are considering. We will be working on the proposals in front of us from the Davies commission to ensure that the best decision is taken for expansion of airport capacity in the south-east. It is an important consideration and it will be part of our discussions going forward.

Northern Powerhouse: Airports

Lord Soley Excerpts

Monday 23rd November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

My Lords, on the noble Baroness’s second point, as I am sure she is aware, the Airports Commission has detailed quite extensively—whatever proposal is taken forward—the issue of environmental considerations, including noise pollution. On airports in the north of England, as I am sure she is aware, while there have been capacity issues in the south-east, which are being looked at, we have also seen the expansion of services in the north. Manchester International Airport is now the UK’s third busiest airport and will benefit over the next 10 years from another £1 billion of investment.

[Lord Soley (Lab)]

Does the Minister agree that the key to this is to understand that we need a hub airport, wherever it is, and all regional airports need connectivity to that because, if they do not have that, they are at a severe disadvantage particularly to continental airports? We must have regional connectivity with an effective hub airport, wherever that is.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

The noble Lord raises an important point. I agree with him: hub airports provide that connectivity and we are seeing that. I alluded to the growth of Manchester. We have seen Manchester become a hub airport for the region. Connectivity is about not just air connectivity but surface connectivity. As I am sure the noble Lord knows, I am glad to report that in terms of both road and rail we are providing just that connectivity across airports.

Airports Commission

Lord Soley Excerpts

Monday 7th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

My noble friend makes a very valid point about the detailed work done by the Airports Commission. I again put on record our thanks to Sir Howard Davies and his fellow commissioners for their work. As I said before the Recess, the Government have received the report. As my noble friend will be aware, the Prime Minister has established a Cabinet sub-committee on this issue and will announce the way forward by the end of this year.

[Lord Soley (Lab)]

Will the announcement be made before the end of the year, and if not, why not?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

My right honourable friend the Prime Minister has made clear to the Leader of the Opposition in the other place that the decision will be made and will be made by the end of the year.

London Airport: New Runway

Lord Soley Excerpts

Thursday 2nd July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

I think that it is right to say that the views of the London mayor are important views to consider. However, the report commissioned in 2012 has now reported. Any responsible Government would consider the findings of that report before coming to a final decision.

[Lord Soley (Lab)]

I do not think that there is a great deal more to be said after yesterday’s very helpful report, and I am sure that everybody wants the Government to get on with it as soon as possible. However, the Government ought also to use the time available to look at the way in which we got ourselves into a mess where it has taken—certainly since my early involvement in this—more than 20 years to work out what we do on major infrastructure projects of this type. The general rule with airports should be that they should be allowed to expand, subject to very stringent noise and pollution issues, which the report emphasises. If we do that, we will add greatly to this country’s chances of economic growth.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

The previous Government and indeed this Government have said repeatedly that it is important that we look at the capacity of airports around the south-east. It is a major part of UK plc’s offering on the global stage. As the noble Lord pointed out, this report looks at the key considerations in terms of the environment and community engagement, and due weight will be given to them in our assessment of the report.

Davies Commission Report

Lord Soley Excerpts

Wednesday 1st July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

As my noble friend is aware, we commissioned the report in 2012 during the previous Government. I believe that was the right thing to do at that time. The issue of capacity in London and the south-east is something that we have been reviewing and looking at over the last 50 years. This was an extensive report, which looked at more than 50 different options and then whittled them down to the three on which it has reported. Of course it will be a primary consideration for the Government in thinking about the way we move forward on south-east airport capacity.

[Lord Soley (Lab)]

I have been campaigning on this for years, in the House of Commons and in this House. I remind the Minister that many constituents supported my line precisely because they knew that Heathrow needed to expand if their jobs were to be safe and if the British and regional economies were to grow. I have two very quick, simple questions. First, can the Government make sure they act on this, hopefully by the end of the year? Please do not drag this out, which is what we have done before on so many infrastructure projects in this country. It is an embarrassment for us that we have not achieved this. Secondly, we have to stop this nonsense of taking years to decide whether an airport can expand when what matters is that we put down very tough conditions, as Howard Davies has suggested, on noise and the environment. Those are the issues that trouble people, quite rightly. If we do that, airports should be allowed to expand, because they are amazing economic drivers, locally, regionally and nationally. They are terribly important.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

I share the sentiments expressed by the noble Lord and commend his efforts as an exponent for ensuring that airport capacity meets the challenge not just for our country but for the global role we wish to play. I draw his attention to the penultimate sentence of the Statement I repeated: “And we must act”. I hope he takes some reassurance from that. As he rightly pointed out, the commission looked at the conditions extensively and put in various mitigating safeguards covering noise, other environmental issues and, as I said earlier, engagement with the local community. Those will be important factors in the Government’s evaluation of the report as well.

Population: International Migration

Lord Soley Excerpts

Monday 16th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

First, I pay tribute to the noble Lord for the work that he has done through Migration Watch, which is, I think, widely regarded as a balanced think tank that makes a positive contribution to the debate on immigration in this country.

The noble Lord, Lord Green, referred to a figure of two-thirds and suggested that that could rise to 80%. The figure that we have to hand on this is 53%. However, we are absolutely at one on needing a firm but fair immigration policy to protect the public services of this country and provide opportunities for those who want to come here to work.

[Lord Soley (Lab)]

My Lords, the Question is about the children of immigrants. Go outside into the Royal Gallery and you will see a picture of a black man on the ship with Nelson. There were 188 sailors of African origin in the Royal Navy at Trafalgar. I know two or three Indian citizens in the Ealing area who have the Victoria Cross. I wonder what we are saying about their children. It seems to me that their children have made an immensely valuable contribution to the United Kingdom; we ought to be proud of that and say so.

[Lord Bates]

The noble Lord is absolutely right. In fact, I see no difference whatever between his assertion and the questions that the noble Lord, Lord Green, has raised. The best service that we can show to those who come to this country is to make our public services and healthcare available to them and make sure that those who have come here legally and are making a contribution are not disadvantaged by those who have come here illegally and are taking from the state.

Refugees and Migrants: Search and Rescue

Lord Soley Excerpts

Thursday 30th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (LD)]

My Lords—

[Lord Soley (Lab)]

My Lords, a lot of these problems arise in certain north African towns, of which Alexandria is one—

[Noble Lords]

Order.

[Lord Bates]

Indeed. Just this morning, I was with the National Crime Agency, which has teams in particular areas around the world, including in Egypt. They are trying to identify just those types of people, ensuring that they are tackled and that their evil crime is stopped.

[Lord Soley]

Many of these people are coming from towns such as Alexandria; that is where the organisation is. I say to the Minister that, through the European Union, we can offer aid not only in policing those areas but in policing much closer to their shores. It is possible to work out with some of those north African countries ways of stopping this problem closer to shore.

[Lord Bates]

We will be willing to look at all those opportunities. On the subject of aid, this Government are in the lead in providing aid to some of those conflict zones, such as Syria, where we have pledged £700 million already. We recognise that there are two parts to this, and we need to work at both.

Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill

Lord Soley Excerpts

Wednesday 16th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Soley (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, who knows a lot about this area. I do not need to repeat many of the very good arguments that have been made, including the obvious case about the delay between the European Court passing its judgment in April and this Bill being rushed through now, which is right. The Government have to answer for it. I do not wish to pursue it. I agree that the legislation needs to go through and that it is very good that the Government have accepted some of the amendments dealing with reviews, the sunset clause, and so on.

I heard the Minister say in his opening speech that he accepted the second recommendation in the Delegated Powers Committee’s report. I did not hear him say that he accepted the first recommendation, which deals with the affirmative procedure being used after the regulations have been brought into effect. Will the Government accept that recommendation in paragraph 7 of the report? The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, made a number of interesting points. If I understood him correctly, as regards Clause 3 on grounds for issuing warrants and obtaining data, his question deserves an answer. Why are the Government using the words “necessary and proportionate”, which is a weaker phrase, when the European Court of Justice refers to “strictly necessary”? I am relieved to see the noble and learned Lord nodding because I did not quite follow some of the legal points that he made. That seems to be an important point.

I now turn to the issue in its wider sense, which has been very important to me for some time. I have had a long involvement in legislation, as the noble Lord, Lord Howard, will know, including in the Prevention of Terrorism Act in the House of Commons. The noble Lord, Lord King, made the point that about 30 to 40 years ago there was a department in, I think, the Home Office, which steamed open letters to see what was written in them. My memory is of making a speech in about 1979 pointing out that MI5 and MI6 did not have an existence in statute. No statute recognises the existence of those two organisations despite the fact that MI6 probably was the most famous secret service in the world, thanks in no small part to James Bond and, rather less romantically, to the Cambridge spy ring. What interested me was that they had no legal existence in the normal sense. As a result of the questions that I and others asked at that time, legislation was passed in the early 1980s which gave them a statutory basis.

It is also right to say that Bletchley Park, which was unacknowledged, emigrated after the war to Cheltenham and became GCHQ. I am not quite sure of the history. I asked the noble Baroness, Lady Trumpington, but I am not sure that she knew either at what point it became part of statute. To put this in a historical perspective, the interesting reason is that it is difficult for democratic states to deal with legislation of this type. Although everyone has been rightly saying that our security services are very good and deserve praise, it is also right to point out that the various civil liberty groups and individuals who rattle the bars at times of legislation of this type going through at high speed are absolutely right to do so. Although some people might get frustrated with them, a healthy democracy, if it did not have such groups and individuals, ought to invent them. It is worth pointing out that they are as necessary as the security services.

I strongly agree with the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra; we have discussed before how the Regulatory and Investigatory Powers Act was unfit for purpose before it hit the statute book. It was already out of date. In a sense, my main point, which also relates to the speech made by the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, is that we should be extremely proud in this country that Tim Berners-Lee invented the world wide web. We underestimate how much he is appreciated around the world. In the context of this debate, we also underestimate massively the complexity of the path before us with modern technology.

There is a balance here. We all know that the balance is between the powers of the state and the rights of individual—freedom, citizenship, privacy and so on. It is a recognition that, because of the nature of modern weapons, the threat particularly from terrorism—although the Bill goes wider than just terrorism—is profoundly dangerous, far more dangerous than the 19th-century anarchist going around with a smoking bomb, ready to throw it. We are now talking about the death of thousands, or perhaps tens of thousands, of people.

On the other hand, there is the complexity of the technology; it brings us great freedoms and we ought to be grateful for that. I am sorry that the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, was a bit depressed by it. I find that, with the invention of modern technology, the freedoms and the ability to deal with problems accelerate. I will give a very brief example. I was out walking in the Oxfordshire countryside at the weekend and came across a cow stuck in a pool of mud and water. It was drowning. Thanks to modern technology, I was able to give the precise latitude and longitude of the position to a police officer—using the 101 number, not the 999 number. Within 35 minutes—we were 30 minutes away from the nearest track—two firemen appeared and pulled the cow out. It might seem a minor example, but you have only to think of all the examples in your life in which modern technology had been profoundly useful and had opened up all sorts of possibilities. If that had been the old days, I would have had to walk for miles to find a phone or a farm, and I probably would not have got back in time for this debate. The difference is massive and, of course, it opens up all sorts of possibilities in real life.

I come to my main point in this debate. I was very glad that the Government had accepted the recommendations about reviews, sunset clauses and so on because I believe that the challenge to us is to use this time that we have, in this House and in the House of Commons, to devise better ways of looking at legislation, particularly in relation to issues of this type. We do not have a structure for examining legislation in a way that keeps us up with technological change. I agree with all the comments that have been made about some of the committees and so on. I feel that this view applies not just to this Bill but to many Bills, which are often slightly dated by the time they come into effect because they have been overtaken by technology.

Legislation such as this is particularly important because the control of the security services evokes the Nineteen Eighty-Four argument about how much power should be given to the state and how much you risk if you take those powers away and leave yourself at risk from the activities of other groups. I wish that I had a nice, simple model to offer to the Minister and could say, “This is the sort of structure that we need to develop in this House in order to have the processes that could keep us up to date with technological change on the legislation that we are passing”. I do not have such a model, and the challenge to this House and to the House of Commons is to devise such structures. Both Houses are famous—and rightly so—for their ability to defend and speak up for freedom over the centuries, but we are in such a strange situation.

I return to what the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, said about technology. Her speech was important because it was the only one so far in this debate that put it in the context of the digital revolution. As we try to legislate now, I do not think of myself as at the cutting edge of the digital revolution; I manage, but it is more of a struggle than a great success. Yet it is so important. It affects so many walks of life and so many people, and there is a danger that the public see us as not being relevant, in part because we cannot keep up our legislative processes with the speed of technological change.

There is an opportunity here to use this Bill and the period working up to the sunset clause to start looking at more effective ways of keeping legislation up to speed with technology. The importance of this Bill is massive because of the balance between the security of citizens in the face of threats from crime and the protection of their rights, of which we are so proud both in this House and in the House of Commons. I urge the Government to acknowledge that we all need to focus on how we can improve our legislative processes so that we do not have situations like this and, if we have to rush something through, that we examine and process them in a way which does not mean that we end up losing some of the freedoms that we value so dearly.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

My Lords, this debate has been an exceptional debate, not only because we are dealing with something of great importance but also because we have heard some extremely able and interesting speeches. Some have been more supportive than others of the Bill I have presented to the House, but I found them all interesting. The debate reflects the ability of this House to recognise the importance and significance of legislation and the scrutiny it can offer. We know that these are extraordinary circumstances: we are being asked to consider fast-track legislation. However, I think that everyone understands why the Government need a sense of urgency about this legislation.

I hope that where noble Lords have expressed reservations about that, I will be able to reassure them. I appreciate the concerns of some noble Lords about the constrained timetable, given the time that has elapsed between the ECJ judgment and this Bill being introduced. I hope that the House will understand and accept that we have had to make sure that our response both addressed the needs of law enforcement and intelligence agencies and provided the appropriate safeguards and public reassurance. This inevitably required careful consideration, in order to create a package to which all parties could agree.

We feel that it is important that the Bill has been widely supported across the parties, and indeed passed through the House of Commons with a very large majority. Building that consensus was important in a matter that was clearly as important as this.

In the absence of a clear legal basis for retaining communications data, the police stand to lose access to vital information, which—as has been pointed out—contributes to 95% of serious crime prosecutions. Unless we make clear the obligations that RIPA imposes on companies based overseas but providing services here in the UK, the security and intelligence agencies stand to lose their ability to monitor terrorists and organised crime groups in this country. Indeed, as a number of noble Lords have said, and have agreed with the Government, the Bill does not provide new powers. It does not alter or extend existing powers. It simply provides a clear legal basis for powers that the police and intelligence agencies have always relied on to keep people safe, which for different reasons—and there are different reasons within the two parts of the Bill—are now in question.

We have been clear that the Bill is not a permanent solution to the challenges we face in the future. We had a brilliant speech from my noble friend Lord Blencathra, who talked about the scrutiny he had given to previous attempts to find a solution to these problems. It is quite clear that in this Bill we are not attempting to address the future proofing of which he talked. It does not address the growing gap in relation to communications data that the draft communications data Bill sought to resolve. Nor does it address the wider question of the powers that law enforcement, and the security and intelligence agencies, will require in the future.

Those issues will have to be addressed. That is why the provisions in the Bill fall away at the end of 2016. A number of noble Lords have said that we need an earlier sunset. However, if we are to have a proper successor to RIPA, if we are to have a proper evaluation of this matter and if we are to have the public debate about these issues that noble Lords have called for, we need time to do so. Although there have been suggestions that we are being governed by the political timetable—the electoral timetable—I think it is important that we recognise that legislation is dependent on Governments, and Governments have to be elected. Governments have to develop programmes that they are able to communicate.

It is to the credit of this Parliament that we have been able to agree on this issue. I do not know who will form the Government after the election. I do, however, know that it is important that, whichever Government are elected, they have the responsibility of finding a successor to this law and future proofing this sort of issue in the ways outlined so ably by my noble friend. That is why the provisions will fall away. There will be a public debate. I want a public debate. It will have to take account of not only the threats we face but the safeguards required to strike the necessary balance between privacy and security.

[Lord Soley]

This is a very important point. I am sympathetic to the longer sunset, but I do not understand what sort of structures the Government want to put into place to enable that public debate to inform the changes.

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

For a start, not only will there be a review of this piece of legislation on a six-monthly basis, something that has been agreed and now forms part of the Bill, but David Anderson, the independent reviewer—that is the very paragraph I was turning to, the noble Lord, Lord Soley, will be delighted to know—will lead a review into these issues. The Bill now provides a clear basis in law for that review. The noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, suggested that Mr Anderson look at his report as a starting point for addressing this sort of issue. That will be available before the election, and will help inform public debate during the election. The wider safeguards and assurances that sit around the Bill are also important. I am glad that noble Lords have taken account of those safeguards, which build on the extensive safeguards that already exist.

However, there are wider issues, and I will do my best to go through some of them at this stage. I am going to demand a lot of my officials, in the sense that I will ask them, to the extent that they are able, before Committee tomorrow morning, to draft a letter which can be circulated to all noble Lords who have participated —if I do not get time, because I am conscious of time.

In a very interesting speech, the noble Lord, Lord Knight, asked whether there was compliance with the European Convention on Human Rights. The Home Secretary and I have signed on the Bill a declaration that it is so. We have also made available the memorandum to the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which explains how our Bill satisfies the ECHR. I hope that that reassures the noble Lord.

The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, asked: what are our plans for the timing of regulations? I understand the interest in that. The draft regulations have been published and we have informed the House that the Government’s intention is to lay the regulations following Royal Assent, so that they can be approved by both Houses of Parliament prior to recess. They have, of course, already been published, as I said, and we are liaising with both the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments and the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, ably chaired by my noble friend Lord Goodlad, to ensure that they can consider these matters as soon as possible. The JCSI will meet on Monday to consider the regulations, so that the Commons can debate them prior to recess.

The noble Lord, Lord Strasburger, asked why the measures were not part of the Queen’s Speech. When the gracious Speech was written, our response had not been finalised. The noble Baroness, Lady Smith, asked why it did not form part of the Serious Crime Bill, which she and I are seeing through this House and has finished in Committee. As she knows, we will not return to Report until October. The difficulty of the timetable for that Bill means that it will not be through all its stages before the new year, if we are lucky.

Hillsborough

Lord Soley Excerpts

Wednesday 12th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Soley (Lab)]

My Lords, in the Statement by the Home Secretary, reference was made to the abuse of press power. I remember that a number of us said at the time that the press were getting into difficulties because they were doing this sort of journalism. Can the Minister take it back to the Home Secretary that this is yet another reason why the press needs to have Leveson? It might seem out of context but, frankly, this has been going on for 30 or 40 years and Hillsborough was a particularly bad example of an abuse of press power. That is why people want Leveson and why the press should get out of the way and allow it to happen.

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

I am most happy to take that back to the Home Secretary. I am meeting her this afternoon, in fact, and I will carry that point home. This certainly was not the press’s finest hour but, having said that, I am sure that we all cherish the fact that we have a free press in this country. However, this was a situation where, as the Statement said, the conduct of the press exacerbated a grievous situation.

Security Services: Supervision

Lord Soley Excerpts

Thursday 7th November 2013 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Soley]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to review the supervision of the security services.

[Lord Soley]

My purpose in bringing this Question before the House is to try to initiate some long-term thinking on the way in which we supervise our security services, the impact of high technology, the pace of change compared to our legislative process, and, importantly, the freedom and security of the internet.

Let me begin by saying that there is no reason to doubt the importance of the security services to the freedom of the people of this country and their safety. I say that not least because of my memory of my involvement in Northern Ireland in the 1980s. Equally we have to be clear about what we are defending. We are defending freedom and a way of life, which, as we all know in this place, means that we have to have a good system of parliamentary accountability for the security services. I do not take the view that accountability has been totally useless, or whatever some people have alleged, but there is considerable room for change, and we ought to start addressing that in some detail, which is why I want a slightly longer debate than we are able to have in this one hour.

My first point to the Minister, to which I hope he will give some long-term thinking, is the pace of change in technology. It is a crucial problem and has been so for some years. Technology, particularly information technology, moves so fast that the ink is hardly dry on the Acts of Parliament that we pass before they are out of date. We really have to find a new way of dealing with this. There are a number of possible options, but the one I have looked at with some interest—and I know that this has been referred to in discussions about the data communications problem—is a hybrid between a Select Committee and a legislative Committee that looks at the constantly changing technology and how to bring changes into effect in existing legislation. We have a number of ways in which we do this in other areas in the House. The Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, which I was on, is one way of doing it; we ought to consider that. This House is very strong on science and technology, and we have here people with a great knowledge of information technology. The suggestion that I make to the Minister—although it is a matter for the House authorities as much as for him, but support from the Government would be helpful—is that he look at whether we could introduce a committee process which would enable a detailed look at the way the rapid change in science and technology affects our legislation, not just on the security services, although clearly that is the most important one in the current context.

The other issue I ought to say in opening is that although I would disagree entirely with Snowden’s release of all this information, which I think was grossly irresponsible, in my humble judgment, if he were put on trial before a jury in this country, he would probably be found not guilty on the basis of a public interest defence. There is probably enough in what he has done that revealed to us things that we did not know about which would give him a good defence in that area. I do not think the Government are necessarily thinking of it, but getting into a battle either with newspapers, Snowden or anybody else on this would likely be a losing battle. It would be far better to address the issue than to deal with it that way. I only wish that Russia and China could have a Snowden as well; actually, it might even the field up a little bit.

I turn now to the internet. Next year, it will be 25 years since the invention of the internet by Sir Tim Berners-Lee. I hope we will find ways of celebrating that because it is, in my judgment, by far the most important way in which the people not just of Britain, but of the world have been able to communicate, and it has been a great engine for freedom. However, what has happened recently has been a gift to some of the more authoritarian countries and some of the more authoritarian organisations which would like to close down the freedom of and access to the internet. One of the things that is most troubling about what has been happening with the security services is this business of interception of the internet services. For example, the Google fibre-optic cable being breached is a matter for concern. One has to ask whether the Prime Minister, any other Minister or the intelligence committee knew that that was about to happen. Was it ever considered by them?

This brings us straight into the third and main point of this debate, which is whether we can improve the way our security services are subject to parliamentary oversight. Much of the comment made outside has been based on an assumption—a wrong assumption—that because the security services, through the Tempora system, have been hoovering up lots of information, all of that information has been read or looked at. It has not been; it is the case that in Britain, you need to have a warrant if you are going to look at the content of these things. What troubles me is that, although you might need a warrant in the UK, you do not necessarily need it overseas. There is a particular problem here in that the communications network between Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States—the so-called “five eyes”—are interchanging information all the time and are using our systems. Therefore, it must be said that, given that the United States is now accepting that it intercepted the phone of Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of a friendly and liberal power, now with a very good constitution—not least because we wrote it—the very least that should have happened is that the British Government should have been aware of it. However, It was probably done with some interaction with GCHQ, even if they did not know about it. In other words, I suspect that the inter-linkage between the National Security Agency of the United States, GCHQ here and the other surveillance organisations in New Zealand, Australia and Canada is not really supervised by any of the parliamentary structures in any of these countries.

We have a very real problem, which is far greater than we have had in the past, about how we carry out effective oversight of security organisations operating on all our parts. The Intelligence and Security Committee is doing very good work, and I greatly welcome the way they have opened up their processes in recent times. I am sure the Minister will want to record that. I still say that it is not enough, and that we should have a long, hard look at the way in which we oversee this international co-operation, because it means we will be involved in some of the things we might say we would not do, like tapping the Chancellor of Germany’s telephone. I do not know whether that was done as the result of the ability of the Tempora programme in GCHQ, but a Minister should have known and should have been able to give a clear reply of, “Yes, we did know that” or, “No, we did not know that”. I suspect that the answer is that we did not; in fact, I am almost sure of it, but it might have been done as a result of that co-operation. That linkage is extremely important, and we cannot ignore it.

There are other areas of this supervision that are critical to us. MI5 and MI6 have been quite good recently at opening up and speaking in public, but I can not say the same about GCHQ. GCHQ needs to be much more open than it has been, with all the difficulties that implies. When I suggested a while ago that GCHQ ought to be much more receptive to visits from parliamentarians, whether of this House or the House of Commons, the answer was, “Well, we are nervous about some MPs or Members of the Lords”. My response to that is, “Well, I am nervous about some of the people who work for GCHQ”, more than one of whom I have met and would have some anxiety about. We cannot address it that way; you have to say that they must be accountable to Parliament and we must be able to have those discussions. As MI5 and MI6 have discovered, you can actually deal with the difficult questions and challenges that you face in a parliamentary system. It is that which makes us stand out above the others and makes us different from some of the other countries that are delighted about what Snowden is doing—but he is not, of course, looking at their own systems, which they would desperately hide from all of us.

I have finished slightly within my time, not least because I hope to give a little more time to others and to extend this debate on other days, but I ask the Minister to take away and look at this business of how we legislate for high-technology change in a slow legislative process.