Oral Answers to Questions

Steve Baker Excerpts

Monday 5th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mike Penning]

I am slightly confused, because the hon. Gentleman campaigned for the introduction of police and crime commissioners when he was a Conservative Member and sat on the Government Benches. Is he now saying that they should not be there? Perhaps it is just a UKIP policy: one day one thing, and the next day another. At the end of the day, local democracy means that local authorities can make decisions. If they want to amalgamate, they can submit a business plan to us. Manchester has done that, but it is the only one.

[Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

Would not regionalising policing mean either the abolition of PCCs or a multiplication of several times over in the size of their constituencies? Does the Minister agree that either course would be a terrible slap in the face for those who campaigned so hard for so long for the system we now have?

[Mike Penning]

There are many present in the Chamber—including, perhaps, one Opposition Member—who have campaigned for localism over many years and who passionately believe in it. PCCs give that to the community and I cannot understand why anybody would change their mind about them.

Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill

Steve Baker Excerpts

Monday 15th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Of course that is true. I have no truck with those who commit those barbaric acts, and nor does any other Member.

Our job is to scrutinise legislation, and that is exactly what we are doing tonight. We can vote to change some of the amendments tonight, or we can return to the issues on Report. However, I hope the Home Secretary understands that a great many of us are deeply concerned about the principle of dealing with British nationals in this way, as we would be in relation to any other country. We are concerned about the long-term consequences: about what such treatment does to those people, and about the increased radicalisation of others. My hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) talked about that.

I have encountered young people who have been attracted to what ISIS is doing. They say that what the west did in Iraq and Afghanistan was appalling, and was questionably legal in the case of Afghanistan and definitely illegal in the case of Iraq. We are living with the consequences of the war on terror of 2001, and if we continue to try to create legal obstacles and make value judgments about people without considering the overall policy we are following, we will return to legislation such as this again and again, year after year.

[Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

That is a humbling thing. It is, however, a lamentable fact that my constituent Omar Hussain appeared on the BBC to express considerable support for ISIS. Does the hon. Gentleman accept that such people need to be subject to special measures when they return to the United Kingdom?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I have no support for ISIS whatsoever, and obviously that should apply to someone who has committed crimes, but we should bear in mind that expressing a political point of view is not in itself an offence. The commission of a criminal act is clearly a different matter, but expressing a point of view, even an unpalatable one, is sometimes quite important in a democracy. We should be slightly cautious about announcing that we will start to deal with people on the basis of a general view that they have expressed. We should think seriously about where our foreign policy has brought us, and what our legislative position now is.

[Steve Baker]

I am very much inclined to agree with what the hon. Gentleman is saying, but the problem is that this particular individual expressed support for beheadings with a knife. I feel that the practical realities mean that we must take special measures in the case of such people.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I would want that person to have some kind of treatment, or I would want measures of some kind to be taken, but expressing support for something and doing it are two rather different things.

There are very unpleasant parallels in the British colonial past. I sat through the hearings in the High Court when the Mau Mau people were seeking compensation. The way in which they had been treated by the British Army in Kenya in 1955 was disgusting and disgraceful beyond belief. We are now going through a horrible, vile period in Syria. We must understand where we have come from and how we will get through this period without denying our own civil liberties and encouraging more people to join in this whole ghastly process.

Criminal Law

Steve Baker Excerpts

Monday 10th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

Today we have had a completely shambolic debate. The Home Secretary has given an excellent account of why we should support policies that are not on the Order Paper. She has given an excellent defence of the European arrest warrant, which is not on the Order Paper. I agree with her that the European arrest warrant is immensely important. It helps us to fight crime. It helps the police, in Britain and across Europe, to stop murderers, traffickers and sex offenders. It helps us to deport more than 1,000 suspected foreign criminals primarily to their own countries to face justice. Given that there is a majority in this House in favour of the European arrest warrant, why on earth are we not voting for it? Why the sophistry? Why the games? Why the dancing around? It is just baffling that the Home Secretary is playing games with something so important to criminal justice and to the fight against international crime and terrorism.

The draft regulations cover a series of measures—the 11 measures that are on the Order Paper—and we support them. The confiscation orders, freezing orders on criminal records, the European supervision order, the joint investigation teams—we support them all. We support the measures on confiscation and freezing orders because no country in the EU should become a safe haven for criminal assets. We should be able to confiscate them wherever they are held. We support the two measures on criminal records and conviction. Exchanged data on the conviction of EU nationals should be harnessed for us to identify, locate and stop EU criminals entering our country and committing crimes. We support the European supervision order as a vital reform to interact with the arrest warrant, because suspects awaiting trial should, if appropriate, be in their home state. We support the joint investigation teams because we saw with Operation Golf that co-operation in complex investigations means we can arrest 126 traffickers from across Europe and safeguard vulnerable children not just in Britain but across the continent too. We support the prisoner transfer framework, because it makes it harder for other member states to refuse to take back their nationals from our prisons. We should have that co-operation in place.

We support the rest of the 35 measures that are not on the Order Paper—the measures we do not have a chance to demonstrate our support for and to vote for tonight. We saw, with the problem of foreign criminals entering in the UK, that the Schengen information system is also vital and necessary. We need Europol to support and co-ordinate cross-border investigations. We support closer co-operation on combating child abuse imagery, because with this crime there are no borders and the police need to work with police across Europe and across the world too. We support action to tackle football hooliganism across borders, and as we have made clear many times in the House, we particularly support the EAW. The Association of Chief Police Officers has described it as an essential weapon, and distinguished legal figures, including the former President of the Supreme Court, have argued that

“Britain also risks becoming a safe haven for fugitives from justice, a handful of them British citizens, but the vast majority foreign nationals wanted for crimes elsewhere in Europe.”

And they are right.

[Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

Does the right hon. Lady believe that our country was a safe haven for foreign criminals before the EAW, and does she believe it is a safe haven now for foreign criminals from countries outside the EU?

[Yvette Cooper]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, there were cases before the introduction of the EAW when it took years to extradite suspects—for example, suspected terrorists back to France. We should not be in that situation. If we have people in our country wanted in France for serious crimes, particularly terrorists allegations, we should be able to deport them to face justice.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Kenneth Clarke (Rushcliffe) (Con)]

May I ask the shadow Home Secretary to reconsider the rather extraordinary step she has taken of presenting this archaic motion and, indeed, ask the House to consider quite where we are getting to on this issue? Nobody enjoys a good procedural row in the House of Commons as much as I do, and this is one of the best we have had for many years. It is perfectly straightforward—people are entitled to do this if they wish—but the House ought to reflect on what impression this is going to give to the outside world if we are not careful. We are discussing serious matters, yet we are all frolicking about in a rather schoolboy manner while the Whips try to get people to come back for an unexpected debate early in the evening. Let us be candid about what is happening.

Some 20 or 30 years ago, this sort of thing was quite excusable, and people just thought it was one of the things this House did, usually at bizarre hours of the night. Nowadays, that is not the mood out there and we have to be careful that we do not feed the thoughts of those who do not have a very high regard for parliamentary debate and for party politics, and who believed they were told to expect, as every Member of Parliament expected, that we were going to spend an evening having a serious discussion on how we organise our policing and criminal justice system to deal with the extremely important and growing problem of international and cross-border crime. If the whole thing collapses in time for everybody to go and have a good dinner in the early evening, that will not rise to the expectations of serious members of the public who expect us to have a proper debate.

[Steve Baker]

I disagree with my right hon. and learned Friend profoundly. I came into politics only because I was sick of the state of it, yet tonight I see the House of Commons alive. We have the opportunity to find out whether the Government are even asking the right questions. Surely he can see that this is about Parliament seizing back the initiative and reconnecting representatives with the public, who are so upset, largely because of the incompetence of the Labour party.

[Mr Clarke]

I have every respect for the strongly held views of quite a lot of Members, including a lot on my side, who do not agree with me on this evening’s measures, but I think we would win back the respect of the public if we had a serious debate on them. We will not if we bog ourselves down in arcane procedural arguments, most of which are a novelty to people sitting in the Chamber at the moment; we are going into hitherto unknown areas. I have never previously heard a Front-Bench spokesman move this motion at any stage in any serious debate, and I do not expect I will for many years to come.

I sympathise with the shadow Home Secretary’s position; indeed, I agree with her on quite a lot of things. Her problem is that she is leading for the Opposition when in policy terms she agrees with absolutely everything the Home Secretary is proposing, and so do I. I congratulate the shadow Home Secretary on her responsible approach to the subject. Everybody in this country responsible for the fight against crime and for the criminal justice system, and wanting to protect the public, is in favour of this opt-in. I am even more closely aligned with her than with some of my colleagues. I voted with her on the Maastricht treaty. I also voted with her on the Lisbon treaty, which paved the way for these international agreements being reached. That has enabled us to be so much more effective than we used to be in dealing with international criminal fugitives, who not only thrived on the Costa del Sol but were very present in London when they fled to this country before we steadily began to develop today’s arrangements.

The shadow Home Secretary has, however, got absolutely no arguments against the Government’s proposals on the merits. She is therefore making a mountain out of a molehill of a parliamentary procedural thing, which she thinks serves her purpose. Of course she is also enjoying herself, which I quite understand in ordinary party political terms. She is allying herself with my right hon. and hon. Friends who profoundly disagree with her and with the Home Secretary, and who are totally opposed to me in my support for these criminal justice measures. The alliance between the shadow Home Secretary and some of the most dyed in the wool Eurosceptics in this House is a very unlikely one, but I go back to where I started.

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

I support the previous Question. To listen to some of the right hon. and hon. Members who have spoken, one would think that it destroyed our democracy, that it threatened our democracy or that it was bad for this debate. Not a bit of it. Of course the substantive question is a matter of the first importance to justice, security, our international relations, our constitution and the democratic control of power.

In a moment we will have a chance to answer the question, “Are the Government asking the House the right questions?” I urge everybody to vote Aye and send the Government back to reformulate the question, come back to the House and ask us the right questions about matters of the most grave importance. The motion—the previous Question—is not a motion to destroy our democracy; it is a motion to save it, and I commend it to the House.

[Mr Speaker]

As the previous Question is an unusual procedure, I think I ought to repeat to the House the effect of this motion, because several Members have come up to me, quite understandably in this unusual situation, somewhat uncertain about what is at stake and what the implications of a particular course of action are. Let me try to help.

If the previous Question—that is, the motion put by the shadow Home Secretary at, if memory serves me correctly, 7.1 pm is agreed to—the draft regulations introduced by the Home Secretary will not be further considered at this sitting. That is to say, they will not be further considered tonight. If the previous Question is negatived—that is, the right hon. Lady’s motion is defeated—the Chair would be required to put the Question on the draft regulations straight away, without any further debate.

Lastly, before I put the Question, I can say to the House, with reference to an inquiry at a very senior level that has just been put to me, that yes, of course, if the House wishes to debate a motion or a set of motions of a similar or a different character, or a combination of similar and different characters, tomorrow, it is perfectly at liberty to do so. I am not saying it should do so; I am not saying any such thing. That is not for the Chair, but the House would be at liberty to do so with an emergency business statement to explain the change of business.

I hope it is clear what the implication of agreeing to the previous Question is—no further consideration of the draft regulations tonight. If the motion is rejected, the draft regulations would have to be put to the vote without any further debate. And yes, the matters can be treated of by the House tomorrow if colleagues wish to do so. My role is simply to facilitate the will of the House. Is that clear?

Child Abuse Inquiry

Steve Baker Excerpts

Monday 3rd November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I do not believe that there was any attempt to mislead the House. The letter that I received was the letter that Fiona Woolf agreed. I believe that she intended in that letter to be as transparent as possible about the nature of her relationship with the noble Lord Brittan. I am sure that many Members of the House have proposals about individuals who would be appropriate for the chairmanship, and I will certainly look at the names that the hon. Gentleman wishes to send to me.

[Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s desire for the committee’s work to start as soon as possible, but does she share my concern that the longer its work continues, the harder it will be for a chair to pick up that work and assert themselves? May I press her to explain a little further the extent to which she has considered asking a panel member to take the chair?

[Mrs May]

I understand my hon. Friend’s point. We will consider a variety of names for the chair. He and others have suggested that we should look at taking someone from within the panel itself, but as the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) has said, there may be other suggestions that Members wish to make. It is a fine judgment, and I want to ensure that the person who is appointed has our full confidence and can carry on the work of the inquiry. But, as my hon. Friend has also said, that process must not take so long that it becomes difficult for the individual to pick up the work of the inquiry. We will be operating in the knowledge of both those aspects.

Child Sex Abuse (Rotherham)

Steve Baker Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point. We can have all the reports, and perhaps more, and all the action plans we want, but what matters is not whether we have something written on paper but what people are actually doing and, in particular, what people who have responsibility for the protection of children are doing in their day-to-day jobs. That is partly about the cultural issue of ensuring that people understand that this matters and that nobody should be written off.

[Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

Earlier, my right hon. Friend mentioned arrests made today—once again, by Thames Valley police—across Buckinghamshire. Does she agree that we can have much more confidence locally in our police than might be suggested by the situation in Rotherham? Since she is aware that trials have collapsed, will she agree that there is a real problem in that vulnerable witnesses sometimes face a succession of aggressive barristers? Will she take steps to ensure that that problem is addressed?

[Mrs May]

The whole question of vulnerable witnesses and how they can be supported to ensure that they can give the evidence that is essential to bring prosecutions has already been considered by the Ministry of Justice and the Home Office. The national group chaired by the Minister for Crime Prevention is looking again at the issue.

Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill

Steve Baker Excerpts

Tuesday 15th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

We have kept the Northern Ireland Executive up to speed with the proposals, sending them details and setting out our legal analysis. As this is a reserved matter, we have a slightly different relationship than might otherwise be the case if it were a devolved matter. I hope that that is helpful. It is important to state the benefits of the clause and the regulations that will sit underneath it in respect of the whole of the United Kingdom. It has effect in Northern Ireland, Wales, Scotland and England, and will be instrumental in guarding our security and bringing those who may harm us to justice. I recognise the particular interests that have, understandably, been raised by representatives from across the United Kingdom.

The clause creates a power for the Secretary of State to give notices to communications service providers requiring them to retain relevant communications data. As my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has made clear, the Bill does not enable the retention of any data that cannot already be retained by communications service providers under the existing data retention regulations.

[Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

Clause 1(2)(b) states that it will

“require the retention of all data or any description of data”.

Should the Bill have said, “require the retention of all communications data or any description of communications data”? As drafted, it seems broad and completely open to interpretation.

[James Brokenshire]

My hon. Friend needs to understand that clause 1(2) is framed in the context of clause 1, which makes it clear that it relates to “relevant communications data”. It has to be read in the context of the interrelationship between clause 1(2) and clause 1(1), which I think provides the necessary clarification and context.

The Secretary of State may give a notice only where she considers the retention requirements are necessary and proportionate for one or more of the purposes set out in RIPA. These include national security, preventing or detecting crime, and the interests of public safety. The clause also enables the Secretary of State to make regulations that will replace the existing data retention regulations. Those regulations will, among other things, set out the process for serving a data retention notice and the safeguards that must be put in place to protect the data. To give Parliament the opportunity to scrutinise the details of our proposals, we have published a provisional draft of the regulations. They are available in the Vote Office and have been made more widely available.

Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill

Steve Baker Excerpts

Tuesday 15th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

My right hon. Friend is right, and I would certainly expect the Select Committees to play an important role in that process. There needs to be a debate about the way in which the board should work. It has considerable potential. Wider, more substantial reforms of the existing framework are needed, including, for example, to the structure relating to the commissioners, who in theory have oversight of different parts of legislation, and to the role of the counter-terrorism reviewer, which is more effective than the work of some of the commissioners. We need to look at the whole framework in determining how the privacy and civil liberties board will fit in with the wider reforms that we need. That might need to be a two-stage process: the introduction of the board and reforms made to the commissioners’ structure in the light of the wider review that we are calling for. We have tabled amendments to secure such a review.

The review of the legislation is particularly important. For some time, we have been calling for an independent expert review of the legal and operational framework and in particular of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. As a result of the communications data revolution, the law and our oversight framework are now out of date. As my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) has said, new technology is blurring the distinction between communications and content, and between domestic and international communications, as well as raising new questions about data storage. We therefore need to reconsider what safeguards are necessary in an internet age to ensure that people’s privacy is protected.

We need stronger oversight, too. We need to know how far the new technology is outstripping the legal framework, and what powers and safeguards are needed for the future. We need to determine how warrants should operate, who should have access to data, and whether the police and intelligence agencies have the lawful capabilities that they need. The police need to be able to keep up with new technology, but the safeguards need to keep up, too. All those elements should be included in the scope of the first stage of the independent review by the counter-terrorism reviewer, David Anderson.

[Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

I congratulate the right hon. Lady on the long list of considerations that she wishes her party to look at, but has she considered the easy availability of strong cryptography? What is her party’s position on that?

[Yvette Cooper]

I will not pretend to be an expert on individual technologies or on the legal framework that is needed to safeguard them. That is exactly why we need an expert review. The honest truth is that most of us here in Parliament are considerably less expert on these technologies than our children, and we therefore need technological expertise as well as legal expertise as part of the review. That is the kind of review that David Anderson needs to lead.

We have tabled an amendment to put the review on a statutory footing and to outline some of the issues that it must cover, so that the House can be reassured that a sufficiently wide-ranging review will take place. It will need to look at the practice as well as at the legislation. We will also need to have a serious public debate about David Anderson’s conclusions, through the Joint Committee of both Houses and through taking public evidence. A public consultation must form part of that process. This is about getting the balance right, but it is also about ensuring that we have public consent. We cannot have any more sticking-plaster legislation; we need a serious and sustainable framework that will command consent for years to come.

Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill (Business of the House)

Steve Baker Excerpts

Tuesday 15th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

The subject of the Bill is of profound importance to members of the public who care about such matters, and no wonder because it is the paradigmatic example of the conflict between the rights of the individual and the power of the state as enabled by technology. The Bill can be understood only in the context of the very worst crimes that our country and society face, but it is not hysterical for those who flatly oppose these kinds of measures to do so. The very worst crimes in all human history were perpetrated by states against their citizens, and we must be extremely careful about how we allow technology to infringe on our rights. If anybody wishes to see just how important that is, I recommend that they look at the transcript of the trial of Albert Speer at Nuremberg, which I put online with Big Brother Watch some time ago.

In any event, if somebody supports this Bill as an emergency measure, the key problem is that the timetabling will undermine the public’s confidence. Many people across the country think that the state is advancing too far and too fast in putting everybody under surveillance, and banging through this measure so quickly will undermine their confidence further. The Government will have more work to do to win them back, and I very much wish that they had given us far more time to discuss this measure.

Oral Answers to Questions

Steve Baker Excerpts

Thursday 31st October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Let us try to get through the full list. I call Mr Steve Baker.

[Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

T6. I am extremely grateful to the Minister for the detailed correspondence that he has had with me on the technical issue of radio spectrum use for DAB, but on my constituents’ advice I remain concerned that successive Governments may have wasted some radio spectrum. Would he please arrange a meeting between me and my constituents and the relevant technical staff to try to lay this issue to rest?

[Mr Vaizey]

I will.

2014 JHA Opt-out Decision

Steve Baker Excerpts

Monday 15th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

A few moments ago my right hon. Friend talked about a number of serious offenders whom she said might not have been extradited were it not for the arrest warrant. As that seems to be part of her positive case for opting into the arrest warrant, can she be clear what the difference is—for those of us who are perhaps not experts in this area—between the arrest warrant and other extradition arrangements?

[Mrs May]

Following the introduction of the European arrest warrant, there is a clear difference between the extradition arrangements in Europe now and those that previously existed, which came under the banner of the Council of Europe. One of the key issues is the level of delay that occurs; the European arrest warrant can be exercised much more quickly. I cited the case of the failed 21/7 bomber who was extradited from Italy in eight weeks. Before the introduction of the European arrest warrant, that could have taken a considerable period of time—many months and potentially years. The ability to extradite more quickly is one of the advantages of the European arrest warrant.