Investigatory Powers Bill

Debate between Andy Burnham and Andrew Murrison

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

[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.

Investigatory Powers Bill

Debate between Andy Burnham and Andrew Murrison

Tuesday 15th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

I am not doing that in any way, shape or form. It is wrong for the Home Secretary to stand there and imply that. What I am talking about is the grounds on which her Bill gives the police and the security services the ability to apply for warrants. [Interruption.] Conservative Members should listen: I am saying to the Home Secretary and to them that those grounds should be as tightly defined as possible, and I do not think it helps if she is proposing that they can be brought forward on grounds of “general economic well-being”. In the past, her party has taken a different view from ours, and this opens up a much wider range of potential activities that could be subject to the most intrusive warrants. That point is both fair and, if I may say so, well made.

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

My question to the right hon. Gentleman is this: why did it not occur to him on 4 November? On that date, he stood there and said:

“Having listened carefully to what the Home Secretary has said today, I believe that she has responded to legitimate concerns and broadly got that…balance right.”—[Official Report, 4 November 2015; Vol. 601, c. 974.]

What has changed in the interim?

[Andy Burnham]

Has the hon. Gentleman been listening? I began by saying the very same thing and said that we would work with the Government to get it right, but surely I am entitled, am I not, to raise specific concerns about the wording in the Bill—in this case, wording about “economic well-being”, which I believe opens up a large range of activities that could fit under that banner. I am saying to Government Members that if they want my help, they should help us get that definition right to reassure the public.

Policing

Debate between Andy Burnham and Andrew Murrison

Wednesday 4th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

My right hon. Friend rightly says that there is evidence that violent crime—knife crime and sexual assault–is on the increase and that the Metropolitan police have seen some reductions in numbers, particularly in her community. The big worry is that if the Government proceed with the spending plans they set out at the Budget, thousands of police officers could be taken off the streets of this country, particularly in London, where the change would be most keenly felt. That should concern Members on both sides of the House.

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

rose—

[Andy Burnham]

I will make a little more progress and give way later on.

Last week, the shadow Policing Minister and I joined the Home Secretary and the Minister for Policing, Crime and Criminal Justice at the police bravery awards. As I am sure we would all agree, it was a humbling evening. It was particularly poignant this year, with PC David Phillips in the minds of many. We think of David’s family today, and we hope that they take some comfort from the huge public response and outpouring of feeling that we have seen.

As I said when I started this job, when the Home Secretary gets it right, she will have my support—I have just offered that to her on the investigatory powers Bill—but where she and the Government get it wrong, I am not going to hold back from saying so, particularly where public and community safety is at risk. That brings me to my central point: this Government are about to cause serious damage to our police service and if they do not change course, they are about to put public safety at risk.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy Burnham]

That is the point: we are already hearing that police services in England and Wales are overstretched and struggling to cover all their functions. That is because in the past five years 12,000 full-time officers have been lost—the total was about 17,000 police staff overall. Three weeks from now, the Chancellor of the Exchequer will be standing at that Dispatch Box announcing his spending review. If he follows through on what he said at the Budget, the country will soon have a very different police force, providing a much-reduced service than the one that has just been described. As it stands, the Home Office, like other unprotected Departments, is in line for a cut over the next five years of between 25% and 40%. If we assume that the Government are working to keep it to the lower end of that spectrum, it still represents a massive hit on resources. It will mean 22,000 fewer police officers than we have today. That is a massive number and the Government need to provide justification for cuts on that scale.

[Dr Murrison]

If things are as dire as the right hon. Gentleman is suggesting, why is it that crime across the country is falling? In addition, why is a 10% cut in police funding, which he said was doable at his party conference, apparently now “dangerous”, as his motion puts it?

School Sports Funding

Debate between Andy Burnham and Andrew Murrison

Tuesday 30th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

Anyone who has dealt with sports policy knows that this has been the key issue we have been working to crack. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford South (Mr Sutcliffe) for working so hard on it, by not only getting kids to play sport in schools but then encouraging them into the clubs at weekends and in the evenings. The figures show that links between schools and local clubs have increased significantly. It is very important to raise that point, and, again, it seems to be lost on the Government.

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

The right hon. Gentleman is right to laud club sport; it is very important and it largely happens outwith school. Will he therefore acknowledge the changes to lottery rules under this Government that mean that 20% of lottery receipts will now go to sport, unlike under his Government where that withered?

[Andy Burnham]

I reject that out of hand, because what happened was—[Interruption.] If Members will listen for a moment, what happened was, when we came into government in 1997 we established something called the New Opportunities Fund—I have already referred to it. It allowed for the spending of lottery money in statutory premises—in hospitals and schools. That is what the public wanted. That fund, which was additional to the sports lottery fund, paid for the first generation of active sports co-ordinators. So that shows, again, that this Government are making statements and claims about which they have no knowledge whatsoever.

The Culture Secretary stood at that Dispatch Box yesterday and told my hon. Friend the Member for Bury South (Mr Lewis) that

“in year 7, four in five children are not playing sport at all.”—[Official Report, 29 November 2010; Vol. 519, c. 520.]

That is simply wrong; it is an outrageous abuse of statistics. Will the Education Secretary apologise for these erroneous claims that Ministers continue to make? Will he set the record straight? Has any civil servant warned him or his Ministers, or Ministers in other Departments, about the way in which they are presenting these figures? I do not expect a straight answer from him on that question, but I can tell him that I will be writing to the UK Statistics Authority asking it to comment on the public presentation of statistics in this area by Ministers because I believe it to be woeful.