Health, Social Care and Security

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Wednesday 28th June 2017 Commons Chamber

[Dr Whitford]

I am not saying that the local authority was scrimping and saving because it did not have money; it was because it was not spending the money. It used cheap panels and it did not put in sprinklers. Some 600-plus buildings across London and England are covered in panels that clearly contain flammable materials. We hear from Camden that fire doors were missing, despite millions of pounds having been spent. As Ben Okri says in his poem, there has been a focus on surface and appearance rather than on the substance of such buildings and the protection of people who live in them.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

I always listen to the hon. Lady with care and respect, but I appeal to her to look at the evidence base before making the remarks that she has. Words are important. We have established an inquiry that will establish the facts and make recommendations. Until then, with the greatest respect, I think that her remarks are premature.

[Dr Whitford]

The hon. Gentleman may feel that my remarks are premature with regard to Grenfell, but they are not when it comes to Lakanal, Irvine or other terrible fires that were clearly shown to relate to cladding and where sprinklers could have made a difference.

We have been repeatedly warned over the past 18 years and we have not taken action. The people in Grenfell died not only because of fire regulations, but because of inequality. They lived in the richest borough in the richest city, yet they were among the most poor and vulnerable. That tower stands like a black monolith shadowing the whole city and this place. The people in it were not well served.

We see people dying in Grenfell, suddenly—the drama and the horror. Yet people die of inequality, poverty and deprivation all the time. There is a 20-year gap in longevity between the richest and poorest, both in life expectancy and healthy life expectancy. Some 1,400 children under 15 die every year as a direct result of poverty—that is like the roof of a secondary school collapsing on them every year. If that happened, surely we would take action.

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[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

It is good to see you back in your place, Madam Deputy Speaker.

We have been treated to a range of excellent maiden speeches from my hon. Friends the Members for Gordon (Colin Clark) and for Hitchin and Harpenden (Bim Afolami), and the hon. Member for Stockton South (Dr Williams). They obviously have the measure of this place already, because not one of them is left in the Chamber, but in his absence, I reassure the hon. Member for Stockton South that we can never have too many doctors in the House.

I welcome the commitment in the Queen’s Speech to improving social care, and I welcome the plans for a consultation. All of us who have gone through the general election process—certainly on the Government Benches—will be aware of the importance of this issue. We may even recall the 2015 manifesto commitment, on which we stood, to implement something that looked a little bit like Dilnot. Most of us at the time thought that was a jolly good idea.

Our public services are all about pooled risk. That is what the NHS and our social services are all about—in everything, it seems, except for dementia and other chronic and long-term conditions that require ongoing care. For most of us, they will not actually be that expensive. Mercifully, for most of us dementia care will not be expensive. It is a condition that affects us right at the very end of our life and very few of us will require institutional care. For a few of us, however, it will be expensive. For those people and their families it will be a matter of huge importance, as many of us, particularly those of us on the Government Benches, found out a few weeks ago to our great cost. It seems reasonable that we should indeed have a Dilnot-style cap on our liability for these extraordinary costs that affect a few of us—a number of our families. It is surely right that we should do so, and I have no doubt that that will come out loud and clear in the consultation.

I very much welcome the commitment to mental health in the Queen’s Speech. I am particularly interested in mental health so far as it relates to the criminal justice system. It is welcome that we should be revising the Mental Health Act 1983. It has been a good piece of legislation and has served us well, but it is due for revision and updating. Some 10% of women and 30% of men in the criminal justice system have had some involvement with mental health services, or had to access acute mental health services prior to their incarceration. Ninety per cent. of people in the criminal justice system have some form of mental health problem. That is a huge indictment not, I would suggest, of the service, but of all of us. It is absolutely right that in our general attempt to reduce the rate of incarceration in this country, which is far too high, we focus particularly on the people in the prison system who have serious and significant mental health problems.

I very much welcome the focus on general practice articulated by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and his Ministers. The service, it has to be said, is under pressure. It is certainly running hot, and my worry about the medical workforce—GPs, hospital doctors and nurses, and everybody who works in our NHS—is that we risk allowing the well of good will not just to get low but to run completely dry.

It is absolutely right that we should now look at removing the cap on pay for public sector workers, and that we should think in particular about those working in our health services. These people give far more back to the service than we give to them, in terms of the package, and those of us who go into medicine, healthcare or social care understand that. We do it because we want to give something back. We are altruists, but that only goes so far. When we have to support our families, pay the mortgage and deal with everything that bears down on people in their working lives, it is pretty rotten to see salaries increasing, rightly, in the general economy but not in the public service. It is absolutely understandable that the Government, as a big employer, should seek to contain cost. As an evangelist for reducing our deficit, I will support that, but there comes a point—I welcome the Government’s indication that it is rapidly approaching—when we have to look at pay settlement for those who work so well for us in the public sector.

I am absolutely obsessed by outcomes in healthcare; the Secretary of State will know that, because we have discussed it. Healthcare outcomes in this country languish behind those of countries with which we can reasonably be compared, and I do not mean the OECD average. I mean countries such as France, Germany and Holland. On Britain’s disappointing position in the league tables, we must do more to improve on things such as bowel cancer and cervical cancer, on which we are overtaking France and Germany respectively. We need to do that right across the board. I am left with the conclusion that because money, inputs and outcomes are causally related, we have to get the funding right.

I hope very much that the Government will consider again the proposal put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) and my right hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Sir Hugo Swire) that we should achieve consensus through a cross-party commission on this issue, so that we can discuss, in the NHS’s 70th anniversary year, how to get sustainable funding for our NHS and make sure that this great national institution is fit for the next 70 years.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

Rural Policing and Hare Coursing

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Tuesday 7th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[John Glen]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s intervention: I absolutely agree. Again, I will come on to set out more examples and give the Minister some suggestions on what could be done to deal with the problem.

I want to outline some of the implications of hare coursing. First, when entering these private lands, hare coursers and poachers regularly cause criminal damage to gates, hedgerows, fences and growing crops. This creates financial costs arising from repairs to the damage and the need to increase security infrastructure, probably involving CCTV cameras. It also wastes a huge number of man hours as farmers are forced to look for damage and repair it. This is extremely time consuming, frustrating and upsetting for many farmers, whose land is the single most important asset of their business and their livelihood.

My constituent Chris Swanton, whose family have farmed on his farm for several generations, has regularly experienced at first-hand on his farm in South Wiltshire the problems I have described. He wrote to me saying:

“I get upset because I am very passionate about my farm and I have a certain amount of pride in the appearance of my fields and crops. I find it gutting and very depressing to drive around my farm after hare coursers have been all across my fields.”

It is totally unacceptable for farmers like Chris who have worked 80 hours a week preparing seed beds and planting crops to find them ruined by mindless vandals. His experiences are by no means unique, as this happens right across my constituency, and, from what colleagues have been telling me in the past few days, over large tracts of rural England.

The impact for victims is not merely economic. Many face unjustifiable intimidation and antisocial behaviour on their doorsteps. Hare coursers will often threaten and behave violently towards landowners who attempt to challenge them or collect evidence to report to the police.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[John Glen]

I would be delighted to give way to my hon. Friend and neighbour.

[Dr Murrison]

It is a great pleasure to contribute briefly to this debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend and neighbour on bringing this matter to the House’s attention. Does he agree that these are not good people and that these groups probably contain within them individuals who are intent also on acquisitive crime? Not only are they violent people, but they are probably also eyeing up the property of our rural constituents, which, as he will know, is very much under threat at the moment from bespoke criminality focused on thieving to order. The suspicion is that this population and the hare coursing population are very often one and the same thing.

[John Glen]

Those are characteristically wise words from my hon. Friend and neighbour, and I absolutely agree. This speaks to some of the suggestions that I am going to make about the nature of resourcing of rural policing. I am delighted that the Minister is here to hear those words and, I hope, respond positively.

Lincolnshire police found that the majority of people involved in hare coursing in their county already had the criminal histories that my hon. Friend refers to and often travelled for hundreds of miles to participate. This is particularly distressing for farming communities, who are genuinely vulnerable. The average age of farmers is now 59, and they often work alone, so there are few or no witnesses to the crimes that are perpetrated on their land. Farmers know too well the repercussions of trying to deter coursers from their own land—from targeted break-ins and theft on their farms, to extremes such as arson and direct physical attacks.

Another of my constituents, who understandably did not want to be named, lives on a farm with their teenage daughter. While on their own land, the constituent was confronted by three men with dogs who threatened that they would “do over” their car and carve up their crops. My constituent’s daughter now worries for her parent’s safety and is concerned that the coursers know where they live and what their car looks like.

It is completely unacceptable that constituents do not feel safe on their own land, and these are not isolated cases. In January, the BBC reported that violence and intimidation have escalated in the recent hare coursing season. One farmer, who also wished not to be named, fearing for his own safety, stated, “They would kill us if they could.”

I emphasise to the Minister that, for rural communities and farmers in particular, hare coursing is not simply a nuisance; it is a serious blight on livelihoods and wellbeing.

I want to turn to how we can ensure that there is an effective and coherent response by the police and the magistracy. In preparing for this debate, I was struck by the exasperation of constituents who tell me that they regularly reach out to the police but feel as if nothing is being done and that they are fighting hare coursers on their own. One constituent remarked that his tactic of digging ditches around the farm to stop the coursers’ vehicles felt almost medieval—building a moat to prevent the enemy from entering.

I pay tribute to Wiltshire police force. Its officers do very difficult work in challenging circumstances, and they should be commended for the innovative steps that they are taking to improve their response to rural crime. The general quality of their work was acknowledged by last week’s report from Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary, ranking them good across the board. Wiltshire police have put in place a number of initiatives, including funding six dedicated wildlife crime officers, and I welcome the news that further funding has been secured to train another five.

I recognise the apparent logic of weighting police funding by population size and demography, but cases such as hare coursing demonstrate that rural areas require specialist resources to ensure that isolated and sparser populated communities do not feel abandoned by law enforcement.

Jamal al-Harith

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Thursday 23rd February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

I can perhaps answer the last point. Of course, the Intelligence and Security Committee now has the power, because of the 2013 Act, to properly investigate these issues. Members of that Committee will be listening to this debate and will have read the media reports, and it is entirely for them to choose what they wish to investigate. If they do choose to investigate, we will of course comply, as we are obliged to and as we would wish to. It is very important that we do that.

The right hon. Lady asks me to disclose intelligence operations concerning an individual. I cannot do that; it has never been the practice of this Government, the previous Government or the Government before that. We are not hiding behind that phrase; we are having to oblige ourselves in line with the legally binding confidentiality agreement made between Her Majesty’s Government and the parties involved. I am sure the right hon. Lady is not trying to encourage me to break the law and reveal details of the compensation.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

It is reported that around £20 million has been paid to 16 former Guantanamo Bay detainees. This morning, Lord Blunkett suggested that that sum should be formally reviewed because the public will be dismayed. They will be particularly concerned if any of that money has gone to fund terrorism. Will the Minister undertake to review the £20 million, or thereabouts, that is reported to have been paid to these individuals?

[Mr Wallace]

My hon. Friend raises an important point about the destination of, or what happens to, any money paid to individuals. One reason why only this Tuesday we took through the House the Criminal Finances Bill, which covers terrorist financing, is to give us even more powers to track money destined for terrorism and deal with it. It is incredibly important that we do that. The comments of the former Home Secretary Mr Blunkett are of course a matter for him. No doubt he may be questioned by the Intelligence and Security Committee about the role that he and his colleagues played at the time in making sure that British citizens’ interests were protected when they were in Guantanamo Bay, which may have led to these claims being made in the first place.

Investigatory Powers Bill

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Tuesday 1st November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

I am keen to move on, but merely say that how SNP Members vote today will certainly be a clear sign of whether they are embracing a new principle on how we should choose to legislate on issues in Scotland.

As I said, this clause was never intended to provide a basis for claims against newspapers for voicemail interception—so-called phone hacking. Civil claims can already be brought in respect of such activity. In any case, the Bill makes such activity a criminal offence, as is surely right for such egregious interferences with privacy.

If there is a problem to be addressed, this is not the way to do it, and this is not the Bill in which to do it. This is the wrong amendment in the wrong Bill at the wrong time. Governance of the press is an important issue, and it is right that such an issue is subject to full consultation and dedicated scrutiny and consideration. It should not just be tacked on to one of the most important cross-party Bills that this House has debated. This Bill is about the security of the nation. It is a Bill to keep all our constituents safe. Members should ask themselves whether it is appropriate to jeopardise this Bill for the sake of opportunism in the other place.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

The solution, of course, would be for the Government to accept Baroness Hollins’s amendments, and then the Bill would be secured, since all of us in this place are broadly supportive of its stated intentions. Many of us have sat through these debates at great length for a very long time.

[Victoria Atkins (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)]

Hear, hear!

[Dr Murrison]

My hon. Friend is right to say so.

Does the Minister accept that the only objection to this measure that the Government are putting forward is that it is in the wrong place? That appears to be a fairly slim argument. Can he assure people like me who are perhaps wavering on this matter that the terms of reference of the consultation that the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport announced earlier will be sufficiently robust and give a steer on the Government’s good intentions on section 40, because then we might be tempted to be a little more patient in the hope that that consultation will result in an outcome that makes Baroness Hollins’s amendments redundant?

[Mr Wallace]

I hear my hon. Friend’s comments, but this is like saying, “Because we’re being blackmailed, we should give in to the blackmail.” The Bill will give powers to our security services and our police to deal with some horrendous crimes and threats to the security of the nation. That does not mean that because someone has tacked an amendment on to the Bill that is not really anything to do with it, we should just give in. We should say, “Let us have the debate about press regulation in the proper forum.” My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has brought forward a 10-week consultation period. As the House will know, the Government have been put on notice that, at the end of that period, they will need to listen to and engage with everyone’s concerns and to come up with a position. That is not necessarily the end of this matter in Parliament—there will be plenty of other times when pieces of legislation that may be more appropriate come through.

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[Mr Rees-Mogg]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The regional press and local newspapers will simply not be able to print stories that are critical of almost anybody. Perhaps MPs do not want any critical stories to be printed about them. We would be able to bully the local papers in our constituencies by saying, “We will bring a court action against you, and, by the way, we think that you might have been hacking our telephone,” and they would risk double costs. That is absolutely ruinous to a free press at a local and national level, because such costs run into hundreds of thousands of pounds. Even the biggest newspaper groups find that level of cost very difficult to absorb. The amendment will therefore get rid of the free press. Our press will be afraid to go after the rich and the powerful. It will be afraid to go after leading politicians whose friends can lend them the money to start a case off. It will be a supine press.

[Dr Murrison]

As ever, I am listening to my hon. Friend’s comments with a great deal of interest. I fear, however, that he may be over-egging things a little bit. There are, of course, very large organisations behind the apparently small media outlets that he refers to. He probably received a note this morning, as I did, from News Media Association, pressing the case of smaller newspapers. In truth, it represents a smokescreen for the interests of larger press organisations. Does he not share my concern that we need to disentangle the very small press outlets that we heard about earlier from regional press, which tends to be controlled by larger operations?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

That is not what the amendment does. It includes all the press, so the Midsomer Norton, Radstock and District Journal will be included, as will the Farrington Gurney parish magazine. Every single publication will be included and will be under this threat.

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I will not support Lords amendment 15. I will support the Government, for four clear reasons. First, as the Minister put it—I could not put it any better—it is the wrong amendment, to the wrong Bill, at the wrong time. This is not a Bill on press regulation. [Interruption.] I do not know where the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington is getting her instructions from, but clearly having taken the phone call for which she has left the Chamber she will come back and no doubt elucidate the complex issue of Scottish and Westminster relations for us.

[Dr Murrison]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that there is some help for us in this extremely big Bill at clause 232, on review of the operation of the Act? Although we cannot tell what the consultation on Leveson will come up with—there are four options in the document I have just read—we can come back in five years’ time and, if we are concerned about the implementation of section 40 of the 2013 Act, in our review of the Act this Bill will become we might be able to revisit a Baroness Hollins-type amendment from the other place.

[Mr Vaizey]

No. I have read the Bill, and in particular spent some time pondering whether clause 232 could help us in these circumstances, and came to the conclusion that it could not. A five-year review of an amendment, passed in the other place, that has nothing to do with the Bill did not strike me as something the Bill’s drafters had in mind—I am sure the Minister will clarify that for us—when they put in place the five-year review. They want that review to be of the very important measures in the Bill that govern the operation of the security services and how they are able to carry out their investigations.

Regardless of one’s views on the implementation of section 40, this amendment is absolutely the wrong way to do it. It is, to coin a phrase, opening up a back door to implement section 40 when it should be for the Government to have a debate in this House on whether that is appropriate.

That brings me to my next point, which is of course about the statement made earlier in the house by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, who made it clear that there will be a consultation on the implementation of section 40. Now, to quote a former editor of The Guardian once in the Chamber is bad enough; to quote him twice may be a misfortune. But I remind the House that he wrote on Sunday in The Observer that he would like to see section 40 “mothballed”. As I said earlier, that may perhaps go too far, but the tone of his very thoughtful article was that the position we have come to on potential regulation of the press has been circumspect and perhaps tactical rather than strategic. Going forward, this House has an opportunity to talk about a regime that actually works. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale) said during the statement earlier, the current system of press regulation itself does not take into account wholly unregulated arenas such as Facebook and so on, where so many people go to get their news.

That brings me to my third point, which is a more general one on press regulation, as that is what we are debating because of this Lords amendment. We should give IPSO time to settle down. It is introducing a system of arbitration. It has something like 2,500 members. It could take into account the issue of how so much of the information we now get is available in the unregulated sphere that is the internet.

My fourth point echoes the excellent points made by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset on the impact on newspapers. I said many times as a Minister that our newspapers, and our local and regional newspapers in particular, faced a perfect storm, with both their readership and the classified advertisements that were their revenue migrating on to the internet.

I take issue here with the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry). She is quite right that regional newspapers were not affected by the phone hacking scandal, as they did not participate in phone hacking. But it is also right to say that they are the ones that have been contacting Members to point out how section 40 could have an impact on them. That is why my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State’s consultation on section 40 is so welcome.

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[Dr Murrison]

Will my right hon. Friend explain how small press outlets will be impacted by the Hollins amendments? As the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) rightly pointed out, small papers do not hack.

[Mr Vaizey]

That is precisely the point. I was intrigued by what the hon. and learned Lady said. She said that they had not hacked and would therefore not be affected. This is not some retrospective legislation that will impose costs on newspapers that have hacked; it is legislation that will impose costs on newspapers in the future. Again, I hate to sound utterly feeble in holding on to the coat tails of my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset, but I could not put the argument better than he did. The key point about the clause—I would probably oppose it even it was in the right Bill—is that it gives anyone who wants to “try it on”, to use a phrase that is perhaps slightly casual for this Chamber, the opportunity to do so with a newspaper that wants to protect its source. The claimant can allege that information has come to the newspaper by means of phone hacking or interception of email. It is then, as my hon. Friend said, up to the newspaper to prove a negative. Common sense dictates that the only way it can do that is to, effectively, give up its source.

In answer to my hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison), it is precisely the regional newspapers which could be hit by this measure. A small claim, one in the tens of thousands of pounds rather than in the hundreds of thousands, can still cause them immense financial damage. As MPs, we all know that our regional papers have been through a torrid time. Ten years ago when I started as the MP for Wantage, every one of the four major towns in my constituency had their own dedicated reporter. I have seen the decimation of journalism in my constituency, although I praise my local newspapers for holding on as much as they can to their journalists.

I will not be supporting the amendment. I will support the Government in the Lobby.

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[Ms Abbott]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his, as usual, very wise observation. There is no question but that the amendments that the Government have been forced to table, and the work of Members on both sides of the House, have made this a much better Bill than the one that was originally presented to this House.

[Dr Murrison]

It is not a question of being forced. The hon. Lady may recall that this measure was subject to a Joint Committee on the draft Bill. There can be no Bill in recent memory that has had more scrutiny than this one. Will she also note clause 232, which establishes a review of this measure after five years—a most unusual mechanism for a Bill of this sort—and give the Government credit for doing everything in their power to reconcile the need to protect our liberties with the need to protect the press?

[Ms Abbott]

Right at the beginning of this debate, I made a point of acknowledging the very hard work of hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber, including hon. Friends of mine, but perhaps the hon. Gentleman was not here at that stage. The first thing I did was to acknowledge the diehard work of Members on both sides of Chamber. There is no question but that this is a better Bill than the one that was originally presented to us. We are very grateful, and, more importantly, the stakeholders are very grateful, for the possibilities for a review, but I would not be performing my role as a member of Her Majesty’s Opposition if I did not put on the record the reservations that still exist among some of our stakeholders.

A number of stakeholders, campaigning groups and other bodies have expressed their continuing dissatisfaction with elements of the Bill. They include Amnesty International, Article 19, Big Brother Watch, the Centre for Investigative Journalism, Don’t Spy On Us, English PEN, Index on Censorship, Labour Campaign for Human Rights, Liberty, the National Union of Journalists, OpenMedia, Open Rights Group, PEN International, Privacy International, Scottish PEN, the Society of Editors and the World Wide Web Foundation. In addition, I have held meetings with the TUC and a number of other trade unions that still have concerns about this Bill. I would be grateful if the Minister explained why, despite all the efforts that have been made to improve the Bill, there continue to be concerns among such a wide array of stakeholders.

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[Joanna Cherry]

I agree that the legislation is essential. The SNP believes that it is important to give the security services and, indeed, law enforcement necessary and proportionate powers. I welcome, as I have said repeatedly in this House, the attempt in the Bill to codify the law and to provide an enhanced oversight regime. However, I will not demur from the position that I have held throughout, which is that in some respects the Bill does not provide sufficient safeguards.

The SNP and many other stakeholders mentioned by the shadow Home Secretary remain very concerned about allowing significantly unfettered collection of, and access to, communications data including internet connection records. We also oppose far-reaching bulk powers to acquire the personal and private data of our constituents when a proper case for the necessity and proportionality of those powers has yet to be made.

I consider it a matter of deep regret that the review of bulk powers by David Anderson, QC reported not to this House, but to the House of Lords. This House—the democratically elected and accountable Chamber—has not had an opportunity to debate that review. It is an excellent review as far as it goes, and I would not dare to undermine much of what it says. It is what is missing from the review that is important. It makes out a case that bulk powers can be of use to the state, but it does not address the necessity and proportionality of those powers. Those matters are yet to be addressed, and we will not get to debate them here. As the shadow Home Secretary said, they are very likely to be the subject of litigation in the future, and they are likely to be addressed by courts in the United Kingdom and in Europe—for as long as we have the sense to remain part of those European systems.

[Dr Murrison]

On the question of proportionality, does the hon. and learned Lady agree that the proposals must be put into some sort of context? As Lord Rooker pointed out yesterday, the problem is that we have a commercial sector with a large number of commercial providers who are busy harvesting data all the time in order to advertise things to us. Since the powers that the state is taking to itself are similar in some respects, it is important to bear that in mind when trying to ensure that we have some level of proportionality.

[Joanna Cherry]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman that at some point the House needs to look at the mass harvesting of data by private companies, but there is a big difference between a private company harvesting personal data and the state doing so. A private company does not have the coercive power of the state, and that is the crucial reason why the Bill must be scrutinised so carefully.

It is a matter of the deepest regret that the review on bulk powers did not report to this House and has not been scrutinised in this House. I would not wish the SNP’s position on the Bill to be portrayed as irresponsible, because it is not. It is an attempt to make sure that the Bill fulfils its purpose while remaining lawful and proportionate. As has been alluded to during this debate, the Scottish Parliament has given legislative consent to the consolidating and enhanced safeguard provisions in the Bill, so far as those matters fall within its legislative competence. If Members care to read the terms of the legislative consent motion, which I do not believe was opposed by anyone in the Scottish Parliament, they will see that concern was reiterated about the potential impingement on civil liberties by internet connection record collection and bulk data collection.

I want to correct something that the Minister said about Liberty. Liberty has scrutinised the Bill in detail and provided detailed briefings—one might not agree with them all—on every aspect of the Bill. It is unfair to say that Liberty is mistaken about anything. Liberty is quite correct to say that, in reality, all that the double-lock system means is that a judge will check that the correct procedures have been followed; the Minister will still make the initial decision.

In previous debates, I have said that I would not use the phrase “mass surveillance”, because it is a bit too broad, and I have instead talked about suspicionless surveillance. That is the problem with the Bill: SNP Members and many others with concerns about the Bill believe that surveillance should be targeted and based on suspicion. There is a deal too much suspicionless surveillance in the Bill, even as amended.

Rights of EU Nationals

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Wednesday 19th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Nuttall]

rose—

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

rose—

[Joanna Cherry]

I intend to make some progress.

I will say a little about the valuable contribution that EU migrants make to our society across the UK. As we all know, about 3 million EU migrants live in the United Kingdom, about 173,000 of them in Scotland. Data produced during the EU referendum show that, contrary to popular myth, EU migrants to the UK make a net contribution to the economy. Indeed, the EU citizens who come to live and work in Scotland are critical to key sectors of our economy. More than 12% of the people who work in the agricultural sector in Scotland are EU migrants, and 11% of people who work in our important food, fish and meat processing sector are EU citizens. There are two major universities in my constituency, Edinburgh Napier University and Heriot-Watt; they would be gravely affected by a decrease in the number of EU nationals choosing to study, research and teach in Scotland.

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[Joanna Cherry]

I cannot speak for the hon. Gentleman’s constituents or the mail that he receives, but SNP Members are all receiving a considerable weight of mail and emails from concerned EU citizens. I am sure that Members on the Opposition Benches will speak to the same later in the debate. This is not fearmongering—and believe you me, Madam Deputy Speaker, we in the SNP are experts on fearmongering having been on the receiving end of it during the 2014 referendum.

[Dr Murrison]

rose—

[Joanna Cherry]

I am not going to give way; I will make some progress. This is a valid issue about which many constituents are very concerned. We would be failing in our responsibilities if we did not raise it, no matter how embarrassing it is for those on the Government Benches.

I want to get back to the contribution that migrants make to our economy. The hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) has already mentioned the NHS. As he said, 6% of doctors in Wales are EU migrants; it is just under 7% of doctors in Scotland. The British Medical Association and the Scottish Government say that 5% of the total NHS workforce were born in other EU countries. Put bluntly, our NHS would struggle to cope without them.

There are very valid concerns that pushing EU nationals to leave because of uncertainty about their future would have a devastating impact on the NHS, the hospitality and agriculture sectors, higher education and science, all of which rely heavily on labour from the EU. I also share the concerns raised by the Trades Union Congress, which has said that the longer we leave EU workers uncertain about their future, the greater the likelihood that they will leave, creating staffing shortages that will particularly negatively affect our public services. That will serve only to increase the concerns felt by those who voted to leave the EU in order to increase resources for public services—and there is not much sign of that happening, is there?

--- Later in debate ---

[Joanna Cherry]

The motion is as framed advisedly. If Conservative Members felt it could have been improved, it was open to them to bring forward an amendment. We would have looked at it carefully, as we always do. I am now going to make a little bit more progress. I am conscious that I have taken a lot of interventions and I want to wind up fairly soon.

I want to say a little bit about what the Scottish Government have been doing since the referendum. Members will recall that immediately after the referendum result the First Minister moved very quickly to give EU citizens in Scotland reassurance that

“the Scottish Government is pursuing every possible option to protect Scotland’s position in Europe and, by extension, the interests of the people from across the European Union who live here.”

Indeed, at an event unprecedented in my constituency in August, the First Minister held an open question and answer session with EU nationals. I can tell Conservative Members that it was extremely well attended by EU nationals living and working in my constituency and in other parts of Scotland. They had many concerns and questions for the First Minister about their status in the United Kingdom following the vote. At our conference last weekend, the SNP passed a motion condemning xenophobia and prejudice in all its forms, making it very clear, in no uncertain terms, that international citizens are welcome in Scotland. In her closing address to the SNP conference in Glasgow on Saturday, the First Minister talked of the “uniting vision” of

“an inclusive, prosperous, socially just, open, welcoming and outward-looking country”

and contrasted that with the xenophobic rhetoric of the UK Government. The difference between the SNP conference and the Tory conference could not be starker.

I am very well aware that the desire for inclusivity, openness and being welcome and outward-looking is not the preserve of the SNP and the Scots. It is shared by many people across these islands. It is about time that Conservative Members lived up to the good aspects of British tradition and the good aspects of our reputation abroad, and stopped undermining them by encouraging the sort of xenophobia we have seen in recent months as a result of some of their rhetoric. [Interruption.] I am absolutely delighted to get such a reaction.

[Dr Murrison]

I am very grateful to the hon. and learned Lady for giving way. Nobody is suggesting that anybody is going to be ejected from the United Kingdom. She is simply setting hares running. Does she understand and admit that there is a layer of complexity that she has completely ignored? If she is giving rights to people, which I think we would all accept, what effective date is she going to choose? What then happens when people go outside the UK and seek to return? All these things are also relevant to British nationals, on behalf of whom the Government have to negotiate.

[Joanna Cherry]

I must admit to deriving some satisfaction from the fact that my speech is touching such a raw nerve with those on the Government Benches. What I would say to Conservative Members is that actions and rhetoric have consequences, and these are the consequences of some of their actions and rhetoric.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Gordon (Alex Salmond) has often said that Scotland’s problem is not immigration but emigration. We in Scotland would like immigration powers to be granted to Scotland in recognition of the differing needs across the United Kingdom, and the fact that in Scotland we require immigrants to help to boost our economy and skills, particularly in remote areas. Both Australia and Canada pursue sub-national immigration policies that respond to the needs of skills and expertise across the regions within their states. Now is the chance for the United Kingdom to do likewise, but I shan’t hold my breath.

To be fair, even many leavers during the campaign, said:

“there will be no change for EU citizens already lawfully resident in the UK.”

Speaking on Radio 4, the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart), who co-chaired the campaign to leave the EU, said:

“I think it would be good for the British Government to take the initiative, say that we will protect EU citizens’ rights, and then expect the same for UK citizens in the rest of the EU to be similarly protected.”

So there we have the answer to the question raised by Government Members. She went on to say:

“One of the duties of politicians is to be humane and when we deal with people’s lives, I think to show that we are open, we are a welcoming country, that we simply decided to leave a political institution called the European Union, that doesn’t mean we are ignoring people’s rights.”

It is not often in recent months that I have found myself in agreement with the right hon. Lady, but on this occasion she is right: if the British Government do the right thing, take the initiative and say that they will protect EU citizens’ right, they could hope for a reciprocal gesture towards British citizens abroad, about whom we are all so concerned. It is a question of basic humanity—human beings should not be used as bargaining counters.

To conclude, I do not believe that this failure to reassure the EU nationals living in the United Kingdom represents the best traditions of these islands. Much of what underlies that failure and, I believe, the rise in hate crime, is misinformation put about during the leave campaign. That is due also to a failure of leadership by the previous Prime Minister and many in the remain campaign to articulate the truth about the benefits that migration and EU migration bring to the UK. Sadly, that failure of leadership is being perpetuated by this new Government, as they spin rudderless in the tailwind of Brexit.

Now is the time to put things right, so today the SNP—with the support of others, for which we are very grateful—calls on the Government to provide a cast-iron guarantee for EU citizens who have made the UK their home; to reject and to continue to work on tackling the rise of xenophobia, which has been confirmed by the Home Office for England and Wales; to recognise that the UK-wide blanket approach to immigration policy is not working and disregards the national, regional and demographic differences across the UK; and, most of all, to reassure all those who choose to make Scotland and the UK their home, that their rights will be honoured, that they are welcome to remain here and that their vital contributions are valued by all of us. Until that commitment is given, people will have the sort of worry and uncertainty that leads them to flock to events such as that organised by the First Minister in Edinburgh, and to write emails to all of us on a regular basis.

Investigatory Powers Bill

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Report: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 7th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Anne McLaughlin]

My answer to that is simply that if the Bill allows for bulk data harvesting, it can still happen. We cannot sit here and say, “No, it will never happen.”

The SNP argument is not to do down our security services or anyone else working to keep our constituents safe. We argue that we would fail as a Parliament if we assert our power on behalf of our constituents and fail to place proper limitations on the scope of the state to interfere in the lives of innocent private citizens.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Anne McLaughlin]

I will not give way at the moment—I have given way too many times and others want to speak.

To use an illustrative analogy, if we were to authorise the opening, scanning and retention of all mail via a particular post office in the hope that one day we could go back once we had found, via another investigative technique, a suspicion about a certain user of that post office, our constituents would rightly be marching on this place demanding that we stop such an outrage. Do the Government really believe that people using that post office would be content to believe that all was well as long as the letters were stored in a big safe to which only the good guys had the key, or that they would be read only after a warrant was required? I do not believe so—people are not that daft and, strangely, for some unknown reason, they are not that trusting—yet the Government are asking us to focus on the issue of access and examination, and to ignore the massive combine harvester in the room, meaning bulk data collection. Government Members may well groan, but we are entitled to express our opinions on the Bill and to scrutinise the legislation rigorously.

On the Government’s own terms, that abuse of public privacy is of very limited use anyway. Targeted powers are far more effective and could resolve many of the privacy concerns. If we have a justifiable case to access information, we already know who we should be targeting for data collection. Why are we wasting time and resources using bulk techniques for that collection?

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy Burnham]

We have learned to admire the Minister greatly through this process, and we have learned that when he says something, it happens. I am reassured by the words that he has just put on the record.

If it helps—perhaps it does not, but I will say it anyway—I would favour quite a high test for ICRs, and significantly higher than six months. Alongside that, it might be possible to itemise the other individual occasions on which they could be used, be it online grooming or missing persons. The danger with trying to capture it all in a single time period is that we might open the net to other offences that we would not want to be included. I fully acknowledge that this is a complex area. That is why I want to give the Ministers leeway to see whether, working with us, they can find the right definition.

[Dr Murrison]

The Joint Committee spent a lot of time on ICRs and IP address resolution; then along came clause 222, which gave us some comfort because the matter can be reviewed in five years. Some of us are of the view that ICRs will not, in any event, prove to be as useful as we might hope and as Ministers certainly hope. The Danish experience was that they were not useful and their collection was therefore dropped. It is quite possible that that will come to pass here, and that in five years’ time we will review this matter. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that clause 222 persuades some of us who are a bit doubtful about the utility and value of ICRs that we should allow the provision because it will be reviewed in five years’ time?

[Andy Burnham]

The review is clearly a good idea, but it is also a good idea to tighten the definition and the threshold now, because we need to ensure that there is a degree of public confidence in what is being done here. I fully accept that the review is important. The point is that although ICRs in themselves may not necessarily solve a crime, they may let the authorities know where to go to ask for more intrusive information. They will identify the app, service or whatever it is that is being used, which might allow further lines of inquiry.

I would not be casual about this point—not that I am suggesting the hon. Gentleman was being so. If we were to publish somebody’s 12-month website visiting record, which effectively is what an ICR is, it would reveal a large amount of information about them. It would give a pretty decent profile of what kind of person they were and some of the information could be highly personal. That is why I say that we need to legislate with great care in this area if we are to carry the public with us.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gavin Newlands]

I wholeheartedly agree with my hon. and learned Friend.

Before I was intervened on the first time, I was saying that the Joint Committee on the draft Communications Data Bill said that

“storing web log data, however securely, carries the possible risk that it may be hacked into or may fall accidentally into the wrong hands, and that, if this were to happen, potentially damaging inferences about people’s interests or activities could be drawn.”

It is clear that the intelligence services and the police need powers that befit the digital age in order to keep us safe and to catch perpetrators. However, when seeking to introduce powers as intrusive such as ICRs, it is incumbent on the Government to ensure that their case is watertight. As my hon. and learned Friend said in Committee, we very much hope to be an independent country writing our own security policy, so we do not take our opposition to such measures lightly.

In drafting such a proposition, with such a loose definition, the Government are asking us all to trust them and to sign a blank cheque to allow the wide use of such powers without knowing what their full impact, costs or consequences will be. The Home Office has said that companies will be reimbursed for the additional costs placed on them, but that commitment does not appear in the Bill. The Government have earmarked £175 million to reimburse companies for the costs of meeting their new responsibilities. However, most in the sector believe that is a vast underestimation of what the true costs will eventually amount to. Owing to uncertainty about the extent and definition of ICRs and the extension of communication service providers that will be affected by the proposed provision, the cost is difficult to estimate, but industry figures have told me that they expect it to be anywhere between £1 billion and £3 billion.

I appreciate that the Minister, in a letter to the Committee, reiterated the Government’s intention to bear the cost of implementation, but without clearer information we cannot expect Parliament to sign a blank cheque. Between £175 million and £3 billion is a rather large range, and at a time when disabled people are losing benefits and the WASPI women cannot get the pension they were promised, this seems a rather anomalous and large black hole in potential Government spending. I have said in the past that the Government know the cost of everything and the value of nothing, but in this case they do not even know the cost.

This is a global problem and as such requires a global solution, and it is important that we reflect on what other countries have done to address the issue and that we learn any lessons from their experiences. It is unfortunate, therefore, that a similar scheme of logging data in Denmark has recently been abandoned. That scheme operated for seven years, and although I accept that there were differences in that scheme, there were many similarities. Upon its abandonment, the Danish security services expressed their view about the difficulty of being able to make proper and effective use of the large amount of data that had been gathered. It seems that, instead of spending their valuable time locating criminals, the security services will spend most of it working on spreadsheets and filtering out the useless from the useful. It should be noted that the Danish ICR model was proving too expensive and the cost spiralled out of control, that Australia considered the proposal but decided not to pursue it, and that, as we have heard, the United States is rescinding many of its intrusive powers and moving in the opposite direction.

It is for those reasons that we believe the case for ICRs has simply not been made. The Government have failed to convince us, and those working in the industry, that ICRs are necessary, proportionate and in accordance with the law. We tabled an amendment to remove them from the Bill, but it was not accepted, which leaves us no option but to vote against the Bill in its entirety. That is not a step that we take lightly, but, ultimately, it is a necessary step.

In the event that we are unsuccessful in bringing down the Bill, we will still attempt to ameliorate aspects of it in order to protect smaller companies, especially those that supply lifeline and low-profit services to rural communities. New clause 26, which I tabled along with SNP colleagues, would exclude the providers of rural or community access communication services and small service providers from the obligation to collect and retain data. I have mentioned the deep concern in the sector about the expense that the Bill will impose on industry. I am sure that the Government will not want to put any businesses in a perilous situation, particularly those that operate with smaller cash flows and tighter margins in rural Scotland in order to provide a vital service for their local communities.

The Committee was provided with written evidence stating that smaller internet service providers were still subject to the same demands as the much larger organisations that operate on the world stage. Organisations such as HUBS are supplying vital internet connections to some of the most remote communities. If the Government railroad these clauses through the House without proper regard for the impact they will have, they will seriously endanger those small businesses and restrict internet use for some of our rural communities.

[Dr Murrison]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Gavin Newlands]

I am afraid not, because I do not have time. Plenty of other Members want to speak.

You will pleased to hear, Mr Speaker, that I am nearing the end of my speech. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] Thank you.

We live in a digital age. I therefore welcome the Government’s proposed digital economy Bill, and, indeed, the Chancellor’s commitment to match the Scottish Government’s commitment to universal broadband provision. The digital economy Bill is intended to make the United Kingdom a world leader in digital provision. However, according to many in the industry, this Bill will completely undermine that goal before the draft Bill has even been printed.

It is only right and proper for the Government to consider and propose new powers that our security agencies can use to keep us safe, but in many parts of the Bill the Government fail to make the case that the powers they want to introduce will be effective, are necessary, are in line with our right to privacy, and cannot be challenged in the courts. It is for those reasons that the SNP are still unconvinced of the merits of the Bill, and will vote against its Third Reading later this evening.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Murrison]

I certainly rise to support this measure, which has improved enormously during its passage. I cannot think of a measure in my 15 years here that has been more thoroughly scrutinised than this one. Our constituents are going to be very pleased with what we have been doing over the past weeks and months. I have to say to the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), whom I respect very much, that one thing our constituents dislike most about this place is the perpetual protest in opposition, which we hear too often, particularly from his party. It does him no good. This Bill is—

[Mr Carmichael]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Dr Murrison]

Certainly not. This Bill has been characterised by consensus, and I have been heartened by the constructive attitude that the Labour Front Benchers have taken to this measure, moving from a position of abstention on Second Reading to one of support now. It does them a great deal of credit and has made this Bill very much better. The double lock was a turning point in this measure as far as I am concerned, but may I also say that the privacy clause, new clause 5, is essential for many of us? The Home Secretary pointed that out. We have not had an opportunity to debate it very much today, but new clause 14, on health matters, has also been particularly important for a number of us who had concerns.

Clause 222 has not been debated at great length, but again it is vital because it allows us in five years’ time to come back to this measure to see what more needs to be done and what might be removed. That is particularly relevant in the context of ICRs. We have heard that one outstanding issue relates to the definition and use of ICRs, and I know that the other place will debate that at some length. My right hon. Friend the Minister for Security has referred to it and he is right to do so. I firmly believe that we will want to come back to it in any event in five years’ time, as technology will have changed so much in that period.

In summary, I very much welcome this measure—it is absolutely right. I am convinced that that overwhelming majority of our constituents will be pleased with the assiduity we have applied to this measure and, in particular, with the consensual nature of our debate. It is a great measure. It will give our constituents the protection that they undoubtedly need, while safeguarding their historic liberties.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Natascha Engel)]

For the remaining one and half minutes, I call Suella Fernandes.

Investigatory Powers Bill

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Report: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Monday 6th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hayes]

As you know, Mr Speaker, practice makes perfect, and we have two days to perfect all we do and say.

We open the debate on the Bill with a group of provisions that address a matter which lies at its very heart. Throughout the lengthy consideration the Bill has enjoyed in its draft form and its final form, the issue of privacy, and the balance between security and private interest, has been frequently considered and debated. The balance that lies at the heart of our considerations and the proposed legislation is critical to the acceptance we need to engender for a Bill that is in the national interest.

The word “balance” was used by the hon. Member for City of Chester (Christian Matheson) during the Committee’s scrutiny of the Bill. He talked about the balance between national interest and personal interest— in my terms, the defence of personal privacy and the underpinning of the common good. For me, communal wellbeing and individual fulfilment are inseparable, and the national interest can only be defined as the people’s interest. It is right that we should consider how that balance is reflected in the words before us. The issues of privacy and oversight are central to our considerations, and the Government are determined to ensure that the Bill reflects the concentration on those two matters.

We are clear that, in considering and passing the Bill, we must do more—more in respect of checks and balances, more in respect of safeguards and more in respect of oversight, and that is indeed what we have tried to do in the provisions we are considering. It is important to understand that privacy is at the very core of the Bill—it runs through its very fabric. The protection of private interests and the protection of the public are at the heart of all we seek to do.

In Committee, the hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) tabled a new clause to strike a balance on this issue in sympathy with my view that privacy is woven throughout the Bill’s provisions. I have concluded that he was right to emphasise the need to make that palpably clear on the face of the legislation; to seek to reinforce the determination that I have described to protect private interest. It seemed to me that he was also right to suggest that that should be an overarching aspect of the Bill—in other words, that we should, explicitly, at the outset of this legislation, make it clear that privacy matters in the way that I have described. He therefore suggested—indeed, he has tabled an amendment today, too—that we add to the Bill just such an overarching emphasis on the defence of private interests.

By underpinning the powers and the sensitive capabilities available to our law enforcement and security services, the Bill provides—as successive Governments have, by the way—an appropriate degree of oversight of those powers. Furthermore, through the change to authorisation, we have, for the first time, and in highly significant—one might even say groundbreaking—terms, struck an important balance between the role of the Executive and the role of the judiciary. That answers the call of those who, on the one hand, made the case in our earlier considerations that it is politicians who should decide these things because they are accountable to the people and those who, on the other hand, felt that that alone was not sufficient and that it was also important for lawyers to play their part in ensuring that decisions made in respect of warranting were reasonable, necessary and proportionate. The core principle—the necessity of proportionality—therefore applies to all such powers. It is underpinned by the changes that we seek to make in the Bill.

In essence, the provisions reflect the collective consideration of the three independent reviews I mentioned briefly in our short consideration of the programme motion. The Intelligence and Security Committee’s report on the draft Bill, which was published last year, called for the inclusion of an overarching clause dealing with privacy protections, and that call was echoed by the Opposition and the Scottish National party during the Committee stage.

The Government have been clear throughout the passage of the Bill that they would listen to recommendations that would improve this important proposed legislation, and that is just what we have done. We have tabled a number of amendments that demonstrate exactly that willingness to listen and that desire to strike the right balance.

Government amendment 34 relates to clause 10, an important safeguard in the Bill that prevents numerous powers in other legislation from being used to acquire communications data. There are a small number of exceptions to that restriction, and the purpose of the amendment is to ensure that they are clearly limited. The amendment therefore makes it absolutely clear that the use of regulatory powers to acquire communications data is limited to those that are exercisable in connection with telecommunications or postal regulation.

Government amendment 35 extends the oversight provided by the Investigatory Powers Commissioner to all efforts made by prison governors to prevent the use of illegal mobile phones in custodial institutions. That is something that the Interception of Communications Commissioner has previously called for, so I am pleased to be able to amend the Bill to take account of his advice. The amendment will also ensure that the Investigatory Powers Commissioner has oversight of any interference with electronic communications.

That issue was raised in Committee by the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) and I said that we would give it further consideration. We have done so and come to the conclusion that her argument is right. Although this tort would apply only to very limited circumstances—indeed, we believe that it has never been used—I accept that in such cases a person should have the power to seek appropriate redress through the civil courts.

Probably the most important amendment tabled by the Government is new clause 5—the privacy clause to which I referred at the outset. It puts privacy at the heart of the Bill in precisely the overarching way that those who scrutinised it prior to and during Committee recommended. It responds, therefore, both to the recommendations of the Intelligence and Security Committee and to the extensive debates held since then. As we have indicated, the protection of privacy is woven throughout the Bill, but we recognise the merit in setting it out at the very start.

I do not want to indulge in hyperbole, but consideration of the Bill has been characterised by an unusual degree of co-operation to get it right across the House. All legislation benefits from that kind of considered scrutiny and co-operation. Legislation that is in the national interest, as this Bill certainly is, is far better for that kind of approach, and that is exactly the approach that the Government have adopted.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is being ever so slightly modest in relation to new clause 5, which is aimed primarily at protecting personal privacy. Clearly he has been listening, since one of the concerns expressed by industry is that interference and hacking may cause a failure of business confidence in IT. Subsection (2)(b) will go some way to protect the interests of such companies and businesses, since it states explicitly that the public authority must have regard to the public interest in such matters, including the viability of those undertakings.

[Mr Hayes]

It is true that such concerns have been expressed. Indeed, as we debate the Bill in further detail, particularly with regard to internet communication records, we will see that the capability of organisations to meet the Bill’s requirements must be met in a way that is not excessively expensive or impossible to implement, and that does not have the sort of unintended consequences described by my hon. Friend. It is partly the response to those overtures that has stimulated the changes under discussion. So it was, as he said, partly about what the Opposition said in Committee, partly about what the three reports said in respect of privacy and the consequences he described, and partly about the extensive discussions we have had with the sector on how these things could best be implemented.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I rise to speak to my amendment 1, which is, in clause 24, page 19, line 8, at the end to insert that where the subject of the snooping, frankly, is a Member of the House of Commons, that snooping must also involve a consultation with the Speaker of the House of Commons. The Member’s explanatory statement helpfully says:

“This amendment would require the Secretary of State to consult the Speaker before deciding to issue a warrant that applied to an MP’s communications.”

This is a small, but I believe important amendment. It is of course perfectly proper and pertinent that, as we all agree, the Secretary of State consults the Prime Minister before deciding to issue a targeted interception or examination warrant regarding an MP’s communication with a constituent or somebody else. We all understand that, and it is not controversial. However, the Prime Minister is the Queen’s chief Minister of Government and is, by its very nature, a political office holder. It goes without saying that we have complete confidence in the present Prime Minister that no such thing would happen, but we must not make permanent laws based on impermanent situations. Our conscientious Prime Minister, who I am sure is both aware of and respectful of parliamentary privilege, may be succeeded, somewhere down the line, by a man or woman who does not esteem the dearly won privileges of this House. They are not our privileges: they are not for us; they are for the protection of our democracy and of our constituents.

It may be that a future Prime Minister would be under intolerable pressure during a time of national crisis. It is not difficult to imagine that circumstances may come into play in which a future Prime Minister authorises a politically sensitive or even a politically motivated interception against an Opposition Member, or indeed against a Government Member if that Member of Parliament is opposed to the Prime Minister’s policies. We need only think of the intense debates that took place during the Vietnam war and the Iraq war. We remember that the present Leader of the Opposition had strong views about the importance of communicating with Sinn Féin at a time when that was considered intensely controversial—indeed, some at the time would have argued that it was a threat to national security. I am not defending the actions of the present Leader of the Opposition, or making any comment on them one way or another, but one can surely imagine that there may be future situations when there is intense debate on a matter of national security and a Prime Minister may be politically motivated to intercept communications between a constituent and a Member of Parliament.

I believe that it is important to uphold the exclusive cognisance of this House to regulate its own internal affairs, apart from the Government. This House is not the Government but the scrutineer of Government. To reply directly to the point the Solicitor General made, the amendment does not put MPs above the law—far from it. Our conduct is completely within the jurisdiction of normal criminal courts, and the criminal law applies to us as to anyone else. But it is vital that communications relating to our role—only to our role and to no other part of our life—as democratically elected representatives of the people, in a free country, under the Crown, be protected from Government observation and interference, just as it is vital to remove any temptation to politicise the work of the police.

Amendment 1 would solve that problem, by invoking the importance of the Speaker, an impartial office holder not beholden to any political party or indeed to the Government. You will be aware, Madam Deputy Speaker, that the office of Speaker is among the most important in the land. It ranks above all non-royal people in this realm, excepting the Prime Minister, the Lord Chancellor and the Lord President of the Council. The Speaker is endowed with his or her office by the trust placed in him by fellow Members of Parliament, and his impartiality is central to the proper functioning of Parliament. Once he has held the office of Speaker, never again can he re-enter politics—that is a clear convention of this House. He is utterly and completely impartial.

[Dr Murrison]

I have a great deal of sympathy for what my hon. Friend has to say, but does he share my concern that the Speaker might be seen as a rather in-house arbiter in these matters? In recent times we have seen where that leads us. Does my hon. Friend not have more confidence in the double-lock arrangement that the Front-Bench team has rightly instituted?

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I am perfectly happy—I think everyone in this House is—with the proposal that if the Secretary of State for the Home Department wishes to investigate communications with a Member of Parliament, the Prime Minister should always also be consulted. No one objects to that. But who appoints the Home Secretary? The Prime Minister does. They are both politicians—by their very nature, they are political animals—and members of the Executive. I have to ask my hon. Friends to look beyond the present situation; they may indeed have the utmost confidence in the present Secretary of State for the Home Department and the present Prime Minister, but they should always separate their view of those currently on the Front Bench from what might happen in the future.

All I am asking is that if the Government are taking the extreme step of intercepting communications between constituents and Members of Parliament, someone entirely non-political, namely the Speaker, should also be consulted. This is the point: he is no mere presiding officer. We do not call him “the presiding officer”, as is the case in other Assemblies and Parliaments. He is the upholder of order and the defender of the House’s privileges and immunities. I am absolutely not suggesting that he should be dragged into politics. But there is already a precedent. Have we not involved the Speaker very recently in consideration of whether amendments should be separately considered under English votes for English laws? Nobody—certainly not the Government—has suggested that that is dragging the Speaker into politics.

I am a member of the Procedure Committee, and we examined this issue in great detail. The system—I am not defending EVEL as that is not the subject of today’s debate—seems to be working fairly well. Nobody is calling the Speaker to order or complaining about his decision, but there is in a sense a double lock that seems to work quite well.

--- Later in debate ---

[Joanna Cherry]

The Scottish National party has tabled a significant number of amendments to parts 2 and 5, and chapter 1 of part 9, which are under discussion, but given the constraints of time I will focus my fire on only a few of them, and mainly on part 2 and the system of judicial warrantry.

The Government have put their new double-lock system of warrantry at the heart of their arguments that there are sufficient safeguards in the Bill. In the SNP, we believe that the system of warrantry is too limited in scope and seriously deficient. We have tabled extensive amendments to extend the system of judicial warrantry beyond part 2, so that it would cover warrants to obtain, retain and examine communications data and police hacking warrants. We think the nature and scope of those warrants, and the grounds on which they are granted, are very important.

Amendments 267, 268, 272 and 306 to clause 15 deal with the scope of warrants. The problem with clause 15 as currently drafted is that it permits warrants to be issued in respect of people whose names are not known or knowable when the warrant is sought. This is confirmed by clause 27, which provides that a thematic warrant must describe the relevant purpose or activity and that it must

“name or describe as many of those persons as is reasonably practicable”.

Our amendments would retain the capacity of a single warrant to permit the interception of multiple individuals, but require an identifiable subject matter or premises to be provided. We have tabled associated amendments to clause 27. Taken together, they would narrow the current provisions, which effectively permit a limitless number of unidentified individuals to have their communications intercepted.

It is not just the SNP who are concerned about the scope of the thematic warrants. We heard evidence in Committee from Sir Stanley Burnton, the Interception of Communications Commissioner, and from Lord Judge, the chief surveillance commissioner. Both expressed detailed concerns about the breadth of clause 15 as currently drafted. They said it was too wide and needed to be more focused. David Anderson QC, although in favour of thematic warrants, said that clause 15 as currently drafted is “considerably more permissive” than he had envisaged. There we have three very distinguished experts working in this field underlining the necessity of the amendments.

That is a real concern, because it takes us back to our old friend, or in our case our old enemy, bulk powers. If we create thematic warrants, communications intercepted under bulk powers can be trawled through thematically to look for groups of people sharing a common purpose or carrying out a particular activity. One difficulty with that is that it provides for an open-ended warrant that could encompass many hundreds or thousands of people. That is just not right. It is suspicionless interference. It is not targeted and it is not focused. I urge hon. Members on both sides of the House, if they are concerned about supporting an SNP amendment, to comfort themselves with the fact that it is an amendment the necessity of which has been underlined by persons as distinguished as the Interception of Communications Commissioner, the Chief Surveillance Commissioner and the independent reviewer of terrorism.

I now turn to the grounds, set out in clause 18, on which warrants may be granted, and to SNP amendments 212 and 213. The purpose of the amendments is to remove the economic wellbeing of the UK as a separate purpose for granting a warrant and to require that grounds for interception are tied to a threshold of reasonable suspicion of criminal behaviour. We have tabled similar amendments to the grounds for seeking warrants in relation to communications data under parts 3 and 4, and hacking under part 5. If these amendments are not allowed, people simply will not be able to predict when surveillance powers may be used against them, because the discretion granted to the Secretary of State is so broad as to be arbitrary.

The Joint Committee on the draft Bill recommended that the Bill include a definition of national security, which, of course, is the first ground. I call on the Government, not for the first time, to produce an amendment that defines national security. The Bill is sprinkled liberally with the phrase “national security”. The Government need to tell us what they mean by that phrase, so I call on them to define it. This is not just theoretical or, as the hon. Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare) called it, merely a law faculty debate; it is a serious issue about language being precise so that there can be some predictability. In the past, the courts have responded with considerable deference to Government claims of national security; they view them not so much as matters of law but as Executive-led policy judgments. As a legal test, therefore, “national security”, on its own, is meaningless unless the Government attempt to tell us what they mean by it.

[Dr Murrison]

I am listening with great interest to the hon. and learned Lady. She will be aware that the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy has long been trying to define “national security” but has failed to come up with an answer. Will she not accept that the term must necessarily remain loose?

[Joanna Cherry]

No, I do not accept that. As I say, the phrase is sprinkled throughout the Bill to justify very broad and intrusive powers, and it is incumbent on the Government to explain what they mean by it. We have heard powerful speeches and interventions from Labour Members about how these loose phrases can sometimes be misinterpreted to enable individuals who have done absolutely nothing wrong, such as trade unionists going about their lawful business, to have their livelihoods and communications interfered with. So if the Government want these powers, they have to define the grounds on which they can be exercised.

That takes me to economic wellbeing. The Joint Committee on the Bill said that economic wellbeing should be defined, but the Intelligence and Security Committee went further and said that it should be subsumed within the national security definition and that otherwise it was “unnecessarily confusing and complicated”. It was basically saying that if economic harm to the wellbeing of the UK was so serious that it amounted to a threat to national security, it would be covered by clause 18(2)(a). That was the point the ISC made. We do not need a separate category.

Child Refugee Resettlement

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Tuesday 10th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

I have already responded and made it clear that we will make progress during the course of the year. That does not mean that we are waiting seven months to do so. I underline that very clear message once again. I appreciate the desire for clarification on numbers and expectations, but I underline again that we need to do so in consultation with local authorities. That is what the Bill says; that is what we will do.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

I very much support the pragmatic and responsible position outlined by the Minister on unaccompanied children, but does it not assert a worrying incapacity, particularly on the part of France and its structures, for maintaining the safety and security of vulnerable children?

[James Brokenshire]

The main point at issue is the children who have family here in the UK and how we can work speedily with the French Government to ensure that they are reunited with their family members here. We have been engaged in that work, but we have also supported the French Government on improving the conditions in and around the camps in northern France. We will continue to support them in their endeavours.

Dublin System: Asylum

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Wednesday 4th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for framing the question in that way. It underlines the need for each EU member state to play a part, which is precisely what the UK Government are doing. We are providing expert support, funding and a significant contribution to resettlement through the vulnerable persons resettlement scheme and the new children at risk resettlement scheme. The basic principles of Dublin are right and need to be upheld, but the question is how we can improve the practical aspects of it.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

If the Dublin convention is to work optimally, it requires the collection of biometric data from migrants. Perfectly understandably, the more savvy migrant declines to co-operate with that process, probably with the connivance of Italian and Greek officials. What can be done to strengthen that part of the Dublin arrangements?

[James Brokenshire]

It is about practical implementation, and that is why I made the point about the 75 experts we are sending out to Greece. Other European countries are doing the same, to see that the practical measure of taking fingerprints is upheld at the frontline. I think that practical support will make the difference.

Brussels Terrorist Attacks

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that we are not only sharing information and intelligence with our European partners but encouraging European member states and others to share intelligence so we can build that collective picture. The terrorists know no boundaries and no borders. We need to work together to ensure we can deal with them.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

In issuing travel advice to the public, which they rely on to make an informed choice, will the Home Secretary ensure that we have safety first, but that we do not allow terrorists to close down our way of life and are mindful of the impact of that advice on partner nations? I am thinking in particular of north Africa in recent times and of the impact that advice has had on Tunisia, specifically.

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend is right to point that out. The attack in Tunisia saw the murder of so many British holidaymakers. Action on travel advice was then taken, working with the Tunisian Government. If people do not travel, that will of course have an impact on a country’s economy. I assure him that, in looking at travel advice and in issuing guidance on travel, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office considers a range of issues, but of course what must come first is our desire to ensure the security and safety of British citizens.