Investigatory Powers Bill

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Ping Pong: House of Commons
Tuesday 15th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Joanna Cherry]

I rise to support the shadow Home Secretary and her motion to accept these amendments. I will keep my comments brief. I will not go into the Scottish angle because I covered that in some detail last time.

The other place is clearly seeking to use these amendments to bring pressure on the UK Government to bring section 40 into force. The SNP is happy to lend its support to that effort, particularly as these amendments would afford protection and legal redress for those who suffer as a result of the most egregious sort of interception without legal authority when phone hacking is carried out by newspapers. Those who have not hacked, do not hack and do not intend to hack have nothing to fear from these provisions. Contrary to what has been said in the newspapers by many who advocate on behalf of wealthy newspaper proprietors and contrary to what has been said by some Government Members, there is a get-out clause in these provisions where a newspaper is sued unfairly and unjustly, and that is the just and equitable exception. We have to trust that the courts will implement that properly, as we trust them daily to implement justice and equity.

In the other place Baroness Hollins pointed out what this is really about. A widespread criminal conspiracy involving more than one newspaper group lasted, and was covered up, for many years. It was combined with unexplained failures in police and prosecution action and allegations of political involvement in a cover-up. As a result, there was a public inquiry, which came to conclusions that were supported cross-party in this House. The Government committed to implementing them; they are now failing to do so. As I said in an intervention, they are seeking to replace the public semi-judicial inquiry that was Leveson with a consultation in which the Government will consider proposals behind closed doors without the benefit of submissions and evidence being given in public, and that is not right.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

Does the hon. and learned Lady recall that the reason we reached the agreement we did was a determination that politicians should have no role in this, so does she share my frustration that we are here again in November 2016 still discussing this?

[Joanna Cherry]

I agree. I was not here when these matters were previously discussed in this House but I followed that closely and it was all about taking politicians out of the mix. The Government’s consultation is putting politicians into the driving seat—and Government politicians at that. That is exactly what many of us did not want to happen, and it is what Leveson said should not happen.

I support these amendments because they now stand alone and do not impinge on the other provisions of the Bill. As Lord Pannick said in the House of Lords, these amendments are now in scope. They are supplementary to what is there already and they do not detract from the security issues in the Bill. I believe these two points meet many of the objections put forward by Ministers.

The amendments are on point and relate to the subject matter of the Bill because they deal with the consequences of unlawful interceptions of communications. At the risk of tooting the SNP’s trumpet too often, I simply remind the House again that new clause 8 came into the Bill as a result of a suggestion made by me and my colleague in the Bill Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands).

These amendments will apply to new and old phone hacking claims alike, but they are not objectionable, as being retrospective, because in considering how to deal with costs the court must look to the issue of whether the defendant was registered with an approved regulator at the time when the claim was commenced.

I believe the remaining objections to the amendments are misplaced. If the Government are concerned about these amendments causing delay to the passage of this important Bill, all they need to do is bite the bullet and implement section 40 and then we can forget about the amendments, and I invite them to do that.