Investigatory Powers Bill

Alan Mak Excerpts

Tuesday 15th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)]

I echo the condolences the Home Secretary rightly paid to the family of the police officer in Northern Ireland who lost his life in the course of his duties. They are in our thoughts today.

Let me start with the principle on which I think there is broad agreement. From the Government Benches to the Opposition Benches, from Liberty to the security services, there is a consensus that the country needs to update its laws in this crucial area, and that, if the police and security services are to be given new powers, there must be broad agreement that those powers be balanced with much stronger safeguards for the public than have previously existed. That, it seems to me, is a good platform from which to start.

The Bill is commonly seen through the prism of terrorism, but, as the Home Secretary said, it is about much more. The parents of a young child who had gone missing would want the police to have full and urgent access to all the information they need to bring them to safety. The Bill is about the ability to locate missing children or vulnerable adults. It is about reducing risks to children from predatory activities online. It is about preventing extremists of any kind creating fear and hatred in our communities, and it is about defending the liberties we all enjoy each and every day. Despite that, the truth is that we are some way from finding a consensus on the form the proposed legislation should take.

Three months after I was elected to this House, two planes flew into the World Trade Centre in New York, with highly traumatic consequences. In the 15 years since, we have all been engaged on a frantic search. What is the right balance between individual privacy and collective security in the digital age? As of yet, we have not managed to find it. The arguments in the previous Parliament over the forerunner to this Bill loom over our debate today, as does the current stand-off in the United States between Apple and the FBI. I would say that that is an unhelpful backdrop to this debate. It suggests that privacy and security concerns are irreconcilable: a question of either/or, choosing one over the other. I do not believe that is the case. We all share an interest in maximising both our individual privacy on the one hand and our collective security on the other. As a House of Commons, our goal should be to give our constituents both.

Finding that point of balance between the two should be our task over the next nine months. As the Home Secretary knows, I have offered to play a constructive part in achieving that. The simple fact is that Britain needs a new law in this area. Outright opposition, which some are proposing tonight, risks sinking the Bill and leaving the interim laws in place. To go along with that would be to abdicate our responsibility to the police, security services and, most importantly, the public. I am not prepared to do that. Just as importantly, it would leave the public with much weaker safeguards in place and I am not prepared to do that either.

[Mr Alan Mak (Havant) (Con)]

The shadow Home Secretary rightly says that the Bill will help us to fight terrorism. Will he join me in welcoming the new powers to fight cybercrime and financial crime, and will he join me in the Lobby tonight to vote for it?

[Andy Burnham]

I will not be joining the hon. Gentleman in the Lobby tonight, because I do not believe, as I will come on to explain, that the Bill is acceptable in its current form. As he will have heard me say in my opening remarks, I am in broad agreement with the Government’s objectives. I am not seeking to play politics with the Bill or to drag it down. I hope he will find some assurance in those words.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Alan Mak (Havant) (Con)]

I welcome the Bill because the consolidated and updated powers can be used to tackle a wide range of threats, both new and old. However, my remarks will focus on a new, growing and specific threat: economic cybercrime carried out over the internet.

The internet is an enormous economic and commercial opportunity for our country, but it has also become a means of carrying out economic attack and espionage and of causing harm. That is why the National Security Council was right to categorise cyber-attacks as a tier 1 threat to national security, and why the Chancellor was right to say in his speech to GCHQ last year that the starting point for the House must be that every British company and every British computer network is at risk. Cybercrime is not simply something that happens to other countries at other times; from the City of London to the towns, cities and villages represented in this House, the threat is real and growing, and the Bill provides this country with the vital tools it needs to protect our economy from that growing threat.

The Centre for Economics and Business Research estimates that cybercrime costs the British economy £34 billion per year, including £18 billion from lost revenue. Cybercrime includes a broad range of offences, from phishing for personal and financial information; to industrial espionage, where businesses’ intellectual property is stolen; to the disruption of this country’s critical national infrastructure, such as our banks and defence facilities.

The threats come from a wide range of actors: hostile nation states, cross-border crime syndicates, company insiders and so-called hacktivists. Those threats are growing and very real, and the Bill therefore gives the police and our security services the vital tools they need to fight back in the digital age, from intercepting data to interfering with computer equipment.

I want to give the House just one example of a recent cyber-attack to show the scale these attacks can reach. Last year, Carphone Warehouse was the victim of one of Britain’s biggest ever attacks on a business. The personal details of up to 2.4 million customers, including bank details and dates of birth, were accessed by hackers. Some 90,000 customers had their credit card details accessed. The powers in the Bill will help to prevent and detect similar episodes in the future, keeping our economy secure.

At the heart of the fight against modern economic cybercrime is the asymmetry between attack and defence. It is simply much easier and cheaper to attack a business network than to defend it, and that asymmetry is growing. A few years ago, mounting a cyber-attack meant having all the skills at every stage of the attack, but in the last few years it has become possible for all the elements of the attack to be deployed more easily. The barriers to entry for attackers are coming down, and the workload of the defenders is going up. We need to give our police and security services the tools they need to fight back in the digital age and to keep our economy secure and strong. That is what the Bill does, and that is why it deserves the support of the whole House.