Mohammed Mirzo

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Thursday 19th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My noble friend makes a really important point, which is that if you are a Syrian you want to return to Syria in improved circumstances. I can give him exact figures by letter. Indeed, it is in all our interests to get a more peaceful situation in Syria so that people can return to their country of origin.

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, people of many nations fought in the British fleet at Trafalgar, but I am pretty certain that there was not a single Bulgarian. The 212th anniversary of that great battle is on Saturday, and as this is the year of the Navy, according to the Secretary of State for Defence, I wonder whether the noble Baroness will pass the best wishes of this House to the Royal Navy on this very auspicious occasion.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I can always rely on the noble Lord to say something vaguely related to the Question. I most certainly will pass on those best wishes. Thank you.

Security: ID Cards

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Thursday 20th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, the Government’s Verify system helps in regard to identity. We are certainly looking, for when the UK leaves the EU, at just what that residency document will look like.

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, as well as the very persuasive arguments by my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours, all the work we have done in the cyber world has shown that the best way of stopping identity theft is for people to have a card with biometric data that they can use when accessing things such as the Government Gateway. More work is being done digitally online. This will become something that people will almost certainly have to have. A passport does not really cover that. When you add all the other benefits—for example, recognising who people really are–surely it is overwhelmingly desirable to go down this route.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Lord mentions the Verify system, which is a very good way for people to prove who they are online. There are a mixture of different ways in which people can prove identity for different purposes, and the noble Lord is right to raise that.

Brexit: Crime Prevention

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Thursday 30th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

It depends which intemperate remarks my noble friend is referring to, but yes, I think we all have to be very careful about what we say.

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, I am afraid I disagree with my noble friend Lord Kinnock on the reading of this particular piece. For some seven decades now, the US and the UK have been the prime safety net for Europe in defence and security terms. We must not allow this very complex web of agreements somehow to be damaged in these negotiations. The security of Europe is crucial for us. Everyone knows that, and we must not be let it be damaged by some silliness in the negotiations. Does the Minister agree?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I am very pleased that the noble Lord has put this in the broader context. He is absolutely right about our co-operation beyond the EU. The sharing of intelligence with the EU and international partners is far broader than simple measures within EU laws. He is right in that broader context.

Illegal Imports: Dangerous Materials

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Monday 13th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I can tell my noble friend that we take a very robust approach to maritime security. Border Force and partner agencies use a combination of cutters, radar, onshore assets and area surveillance to detect and stop small craft. We also work closely with domestic and international enforcement colleagues on an intelligence-led approach, allowing us to tackle the criminals involved before they leave for the UK. We have more cutters on order.

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, 260 years ago tomorrow, Admiral Byng was shot for upsetting the Government. At the risk of falling into the same danger, the co-ordination of the very limited assets around our inshore waters—seven craft for the Border Force—is a complete and utter dog’s dinner. Does the Minister not agree that that there is a crying need to establish a command and control centre to co-ordinate action that the National Maritime Intelligence Centre provides, so that we can actually protect our inshore waters, because at the moment we are absolutely not doing that?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I can assure the noble Lord that I am not going to shoot him. The NMIC brings together 14 maritime security stakeholders to provide the UK with a unified picture of maritime threat around the UK and globally. As I think I pointed out in previous Questions, a multi-agency, multi-effort approach to intelligence and security and control of our borders is the way forward.

Prevent Strategy

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Tuesday 20th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

Sorry, my Lords—Berlin. It must be a terrible time for those families coming up to Christmas. As to public confidence in whether the programme is working, we are confident that it is. This country remains a tolerant and inclusive society for people to live in and we must not be poisoned by the words and actions of those who seek to disrupt it.

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, every day one can see on the web a mass of efforts by Daesh to recruit people in the West, telling them to kill people—by gun, knife, lorry, car, whatever. We have some of the best people in the world working in the web environment. Does the Minister believe that we are doing as much as we should to stop this, to take down these sites, to get attribution of those who are doing some of these things and to make actual attacks—taking down main servers and hard drives, which we are able to do, getting in among them and indeed spreading separate propaganda, dissention, worry and concern?

National Identity Cards

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Wednesday 16th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

Off the top of my head, no, I cannot.

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, one of the greatest civil liberties is to not have your identity stolen. We have found in the banking world, and other worlds, that by having biometric cards that identify clearly who you are this can be avoided; these cards cannot be duplicated easily because they are biometric. I have no doubt whatever, and I would be interested to know whether or not the Minister agrees, that we will inevitably end up having a card—whatever we call it—in order for our people not to have their identity stolen.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I do recognise what the noble Lord said, particularly in terms of identity fraud. One of the things we are doing is working with banks because it is such a huge financial loss when people fraudulently open bank accounts or take money from other people’s accounts. E-passports now have facial recognition, which is a very good system of identification—but we will not be moving to the identity card scheme.

Investigatory Powers Bill

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Monday 11th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Paddick]

My Lords, what I am trying to demonstrate here is to counter what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, said in his letter, that the Bill complied with the 10 tests put forward by RUSI. I am simply indicating where we feel that the Bill is deficient.

Moving on, we share others’ concerns that the technical capability notices and national security notices, only enforceable against UK companies, could make British products and systems more vulnerable to illegal hacking. There could be a considerable competitive disadvantage to UK companies as a result.

We are concerned about the operation of the filter. As I said at Second Reading, it creates a virtual database, and the noble and learned Lord in his summing up—

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, I share the view of the noble and learned Lord. I am a simple sailor, and I am totally confused now as to exactly what the noble Lord is trying to do. Are we trying to insert an amendment, or are we having another Second Reading? The noble Lord is continually saying, “As I said at Second Reading”, but we do not do Second Reading a second time.

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)]

Unless you are a Liberal Democrat.

National Identity Cards

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Tuesday 5th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, one of the main reasons to have the card is for a person to protect their identity and get access to all the things that can now be done digitally online. When I started the cybersecurity policy and we did all the work with the banks and stock exchanges, we found that it was best to have cards for individuals, with biometrics that can be used with computers—for people’s own security. All this other stuff about checking up on people and everything is a sideline as far as I am concerned. It is actually to save the identity and personal details of the individuals in this country and enable them to get digital access to all the new systems that are coming. The only way of doing that, as we found with the banks and stock exchanges, is to have some sort of card—calling it an identity card gets everyone terribly excited—that has biometrics on to let them do it safely.

[Lord Keen of Elie]

With respect, it would appear that matters have moved on because we are now in the realms of digital identification, where cards are not required. Indeed, the Government’s own site makes provision for digital identification.

Investigatory Powers Bill

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, I first congratulate the many people who have worked so hard to ensure that the Bill is nearly fit for purpose. Interception of communications and civil liberty are uncomfortable bedfellows but we are within a hair’s breadth of a sensible compromise. Indeed, I believe—unlike the noble Lord, Lord Strasburger—that this will be a benchmark for security legislation globally. Certainly, on talking with my old counterparts in a number of countries, I found that they also feel the same.

We live in a more dangerous world than at any time in my 50 years on the active list, notwithstanding the Cold War. It is more unstable and more dangerous. We must not forget that all the numerous terrorist plots thwarted in the UK over the last 10 years—the seven referred to by the noble Lord, Lord King, were only last year, and there were 10 while I was a Minister, so the number is a lot greater than that—were initially discovered by intercept. Intercept has kept our people safe. We clearly cannot allow terrorists, such as Daesh, serious organised crime syndicates, murderers, paedophiles and so on to exchange information, plan and operate, safe in the knowledge that law enforcement is unable to monitor or get at their activities.

I also hope—as was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, and the noble Lord, Lord King—that the politically loaded and seriously misleading phrase “snoopers’ charter” has been removed from our lexicon. I pay tribute to those of our security services and agencies who work tirelessly to protect our people. I have worked cheek by jowl with them over many years, and they are basically ordinary British men and women doing an extraordinary job. They are not some Stalinist or Gestapo group intent on oppressing our people. My only complaint is that too many of those at GCHQ are Guardian readers and seem to dress rather casually. Too many people in the civil liberties field see them as fascist bogeymen: they are not.

The lead-up to this Bill has been tortuous but it is needed urgently, and there was an overwhelming requirement to replace the outdated legislation and ensure the correct safeguards for our civil liberties.

What is absolutely clear is that the Bill is certainly not part of a “dangerously rushed parliamentary process”, which is what Amnesty International has said. It is the result of highly detailed scrutiny, over a very prolonged period—I suggest that it has taken longer than two years in its various guises. That was not least as a result, as was mentioned by the Minister, of the report by David Anderson, A Question of Trust; the detailed work of the Joint Committee on the Draft Investigatory Powers Bill; the independent surveillance review from RUSI; the ISC study; the work of the Science and Technology Committee; and so on.

The Bill has been pored over in the other place and the Government are to be congratulated on their willingness to accept so many necessary amendments. There are still a number of areas where the Government have promised changes, and we need to wait and see what they come up with. Those include, as has been mentioned, issues that relate to protecting journalists and source confidentiality, and, as the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, mentioned, lawyer-client confidentiality.

The web is transnational and knows no boundaries. Therefore, I ask the Minister whether we are moving towards a more predictable, transparent, usable and coherent legal framework for providers overseas, as was endorsed by David Anderson QC, the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation; by Sir Stanley Burnton, the Interception Commissioner; and by Nigel Sheinwald in the study that the Prime Minister asked him to do.

I also have concerns about clarity over compliance costs, where I believe businesses will be unable to make the necessary financial planning for storing internet connection records.

From all my experience in this area, I know that equipment interference is absolutely crucial to law enforcement and our security. We need to be very wary and very careful of constraining our agencies too much in this area.

I have concerns also about authorisation and the double lock in certain circumstances, particularly political issues to do with some sort of monitoring overseas. I will be interested to see how that develops over the next few months as we debate this.

Lastly, I know from personal experience how crucial to our people’s safety bulk collection is, primarily for terrorist purposes. I await David Anderson’s review of all bulk powers with great interest, but hope that he will not try to constrain that too much. It is not about prying on all those data; it is about getting the key little points that enable us to get after the people who wish to do us harm and kill us.

We still have a way to go, but I look forward to hearing the debate in this Chamber over the next few months. We have a lot of people who know a lot about these issues. My initial impression is that this is a timely, valuable and necessary piece of legislation, which gives us the powers we need. It is infinitely better than the flawed legislation that it is replacing.

Migrants

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Thursday 9th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Keen of Elie]

I reiterate that the agreement we have with France is not predicated on our membership of the Union, as the noble Baroness herself acknowledged. Nevertheless, we cannot carry out the protection of our borders unilaterally; we depend on co-operation with our neighbours.

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, who exactly is responsible for the recognised surface picture in our territorial seas, both down the North Sea coast and in the channel? There has been talk of three hubs being set up and of the Border Force working with the Navy. There is talk of working with HMRC. There are many agencies. Who is actually responsible for knowing which ships are coming across, with migrants, terrorists or whatever, and making sure that they are properly intercepted? Which department has that responsibility?

[Lord Keen of Elie]

I am obliged to the noble Lord. The National Maritime Information Centre brings together information and intelligence provided by Border Force, the coastguard, the police, the Armed Forces, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Marine Management Organisation, as well as by the National Crime Agency. It co-ordinates that intelligence for the benefit of all these agencies.