Investigatory Powers (Amendment)Bill [Lords]

Debate between Angela Eagle and Lord Beamish

Report stage
Monday 25th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Dame Angela Eagle]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes), and indeed all the fellow members of the ISC who have spoken on both sides of the House in our debate on seeking to improve this important piece of legislation. I must say that it is very rare, when one is called towards the end of a debate, for there to have been concessions on most of the areas at issue, leaving very little else to say. It makes me happy that I did not write my speech in advance, since I would have had to rip most of it up following the Security Minister’s very welcome concessions on a range of issues during our debate. They are on the record, and they are indeed extremely welcome.

However, there is one area of detail that I want to comment on, which is about the triple lock amendment—amendment 22—on the qualifications and experience of the Secretaries of State who, under the widening of the triple lock, could if the Prime Minister of the day is incapacitated for some reason, be drawn into making a warrant to intercept the communications of a Member of this Parliament, or indeed a Member of any of the devolved legislatures in the UK. The right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Sir David Davis) was very explicit about why that particular protection should be in existence, and I completely agree with his analysis. One of the ways we defend our democracy is by allowing Members of Parliament to do their unique jobs without interference unless it is for an exceptional and a very good reason, and has been authorised at the highest level.

There has been a lot of to-ing and fro-ing while the Bill has been going through its parliamentary stages about precisely how this widening of the power to make such a warrant away from the Prime Minister, if he or she is indisposed or unable to be near secure communications, should actually be defined. We have got down to the stage where everybody agrees that to make the system robust there should be an expansion, and we have even come up with a number of Secretaries of State—five—who should be authorised in such exceptional circumstances to make that warrant.

We are now down to the last piece of disagreement between the ISC and the Minister, which is about what the qualifications of those Secretaries of State should be. In seeking to try to draw out precisely what the Government mean, we have asked as a Committee that the relevant Secretaries of State who may be down to do this duty ought already to be responsible for warrantry, or have had previous responsibility for it. Thus far, however, the Government and the Minister have been unwilling to be that deliberate in the arrangements they have made.

As the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright) said in his contribution to the debate, the only qualification apart from being a Secretary of State that the Government appear to have admitted is that the person standing in for the Prime Minister ought to have had a 20-minute security briefing about warrantry.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Does my hon. Friend agree with me that this is so important, because the Secretary of State will be acting as the Prime Minister at that time? Once that decision has been taken—even though we now have the commitment from the Minister that the Prime Minister will be told, not should be told—they will not be able to overturn or review it in any way, so that person is acting as the Prime Minister at that stage.

[Dame Angela Eagle]

Yes, and it is clearly important that there is a reassurance that the Secretary of State who is picked to do that job in these exceptional circumstances will either have previous experience of being responsible for warrantry and issuing warrants, or have current experience. I do not see why the Security Minister cannot concede that that is where we should be. I do not understand why, over all of the parliamentary time spent on this Bill, the Government have not been able to give us that assurance, which just shores up the important nature of the commitment to widening the triple lock.

Clearly, the Minister’s very welcome decision to make the concession on amendment 23, as my right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) has just pointed out, strengthens the situation, because that means the Prime Minister will have to be notified of such a warrant. However, my right hon. Friend is also correct in pointing out that the warrant cannot be rescinded if it has already been granted. I therefore gently ask the Security Minister whether he will not take the opportunity, in responding to the debate, to give the ISC members and the public we all represent the reassurance that the Secretaries of State who may have this power delegated to them either will already be responsible for warranting, or will have previously had responsibility for warranting. I do not understand why he cannot just get up and give us that final assurance. If he does, I think we will have done extremely well on Report and in Committee. I am rather disappointed that the Minister is not leaping to his feet, since he has been leaping to his feet a lot while my colleagues have been making their speeches. I see no such flicker in him as I am making mine. I suspect and hope that that is because he is just thinking about how he will wind up the debate and give us that final assurance that we need.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

The measure is doable, because we are not asking for something in the Bill; it could be done in the guidance. The Minister has already agreed on changing the “should” to “will”, so this measure could be reflected in the guidance that goes alongside the Bill.

[Dame Angela Eagle]

I can see that the Minister is looking pensive, so I hope that means he is thinking of some way to reassure us on this final, important point with respect to the triple lock and the widening of those powers to other Ministers who are not the Prime Minister.

The whole debate around the Investigatory Powers (Amendment) Bill demonstrates that when threats evolve, the requirement to meet them also has to evolve. We know that this area is rapidly developing, and we know also that we will probably be back in the not-too-distant future to see how these powers can be changed again to defend our democracy and meet some of the threats of serious organised crime and terrorism, which our security forces help us deal with day in, day out. We also know that if our citizens are to give us effective permission and consent to take some of these powers, any increase in powers has to be accompanied by an increase in proper oversight, to reassure them that democracy is being defended, not undermined. That includes oversight by the ISC, which is why I am a big supporter of new clause 1 as tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis). It is important that that can be an ongoing reassurance.

I do not want to repeat a lot of the arguments made by colleagues, and it is important now to listen to what the Minister has to say. I thank him for the concessions he has made, and I hope he can make just a slight move towards us on the warrantry issue in the instance of the triple lock, so that we can be even more content than we are now.

Budget Resolutions

Debate between Angela Eagle and Lord Beamish

Wednesday 6th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Dame Angela Eagle]

I think that the costing of the policy in the forecast ought to be more honest and it should be taken out of the scorecard if it is not to be put into effect.

Taxes are still higher than they have been since the second world war, and the Government have continued to fritter billions on fraud and waste. Only today, we learned that taxpayers have had to pick up the bill for the legal costs of the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology and for the damages in a libel case. How much has that debacle cost us?

First, the Conservatives gave us the catastrophic mini-Budget with its unfunded tax cuts, which spooked the markets and sent mortgage costs and rents soaring for millions; and now the current Chancellor has decided to fund his election giveaways with the fiscal fiction of huge cuts in planned departmental spending scheduled to last the whole of the next Parliament. There are no detailed plans for how those cuts in spending can be safely delivered, because we are not to have a spending review. Today, the Chancellor confirmed that there will not be a spending review until after the next general election. He pencilled in a so-called increase of nearly 1% for departmental budget spending, but has not compensated for higher than expected inflation or population growth, or any extra cost pressures.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Departmental spending is not just flatlining at 1%; if my hon. Friend looks at capital on page 27 of the Red Book, she will see that most Departments are staying still or, in some cases—such as the Home Office, Education and Defence—having their budgets cut by 2024-25.

[Dame Angela Eagle]

My right hon. Friend must be able to read my mind, because that was exactly the point I was coming on to make: in real terms, there are cuts of up to 18% in unprotected Departments, going all the way through to the end of the next Parliament. That has been described by David Gauke, the Tory ex-Treasury Minister as the height of “fiscal irresponsibility”.

The legacy of this Government is burgeoning Government debt, up from 64.7% of GDP when Labour left office in 2010 to 95% now. The Chancellor will barely meet his own self-imposed fiscal rules by the tiniest of margins. Meanwhile, his neglect means that NHS waiting lists have soared, with 7.8 million treatments outstanding, and despite publishing 11 plans for growth since 2010, the trend growth rate is down from 2.3% in the 2000s to 0.8% this year. There is no regional plan, no working industrial strategy and no sign of levelling up—regional disparities are widening, not closing—and GDP is now £400 billion less than expected from the 2010 OBR growth rate forecast. Wages have stagnated, and the Government have delivered deepening levels of poverty, caused by low wages and real-terms benefits cuts, which have reduced the incomes of the poorest 20% and seen the number of people relying on food banks go from 60,000 to nearly 3 million. We have seen the last desperate throw of the dice from a failing, discredited Government, who have long since run out of ideas and are finally running out of road.

Investigatory Powers (Amendment) Bill [Lords]

Debate between Angela Eagle and Lord Beamish

2nd reading
Monday 19th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Dame Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

In common with all the speakers who have made their contributions thus far on Second Reading of the Investigatory Powers (Amendment) Bill, I will not say that I oppose the Bill or that these powers should not exist or be updated in this rapidly developing area of technology. As others have observed, the rapidly evolving technology is creating threats about which we could not have dreamed when the original Act was introduced after an ISC report on privacy and security in 2015. Although the issues are evolving, some things stay the same, namely that in a democracy it is important that the security services and all the agencies, whether they relate to police or security, can be held to account by the democratic structures that are created to make our democracy real.

I emphasise a point that has not been stressed by others: we are living through an era during which authoritarian governments across the world are beginning to challenge the openness of democratic structures and test whether those who live in a democracy have the political will to maintain their democracy, keep it vibrant and protect it from threats. Against that background of being challenged—we do not have to look much further than Europe and the borders of Ukraine to see how some of those challenges are beginning to develop—we are being asked whether we rate the health and strength of our democracy enough to protect it. We are also being asked, which is the nature of this debate, to justify the powers we are giving to the security and police services to our constituents and those citizens of our country who wish to see their democracy protected, as well as having a proper balance between democratic oversight safety and the powers we give our security services to do their jobs.

As others have mentioned, there is a balance between the effectiveness and speed of those powers and the safeguards that this Parliament puts in place in order to ensure that there is proper oversight and use of them. We have heard how that balance and safeguarding has been developed in law. We are looking now at amendments to the existing law in order to update and modernise those powers to make them more effective, efficient and easier to use, and to ensure protecting our security, be it from criminality, terrorism, paedophilia or state actors who wish to our country harm, is balanced correctly with safeguards, openness and transparency oversight. Then we can protect our society and values, while respecting the privacy of every individual citizen who enjoys the freedom of living in our democracy.

The Bill seeks an expansion in investigatory powers and some of those powers available to agencies to deal with the evolution of this area. Our job, not only in the debate tonight, but in the scrutiny of this Bill in Committee, is to test and ask the appropriate questions about whether the right balance has been struck by Ministers and the relevant agencies in the extra powers that they want to introduce. As the newest member of the ISC, I believe that, as the investigatory powers evolve, it is also important that the powers of the Intelligence and Security Committee to do its job in these new areas are properly developed and resourced. I shall just leave that on the record. It is not a surprise to those who have read the Lords debates that this is an issue.

I draw attention to an area of the Bill where amendments were agreed in the Lords: what is known as the triple lock, rather than the double lock. That is the mechanism that protects the communications of Members of this Parliament and other relevant legislatures from being arbitrarily intercepted by agencies for no reason. In fact, it is part of the protection that one would expect in a robust democracy for those people who are elected to represent their constituents. They have a reasonable expectation, I think, to be allowed to go about their business without being subjected to that kind of intrusive power, unless there is an extremely good reason for it. Members will know that the underlying principle is that the communications of Members of this Parliament and other relevant legislators should be intercepted and read only where it is absolutely essential to do so—in the most serious of circumstances. In the Investigatory Powers Act 2016, which this Bill will change, Parliament recognised that that was an issue by adding a third layer of safeguards to the approval process for warrants for targeted interception and targeted examination of communications. Those warrants are issued only by a Secretary of State and reviewed by a judicial commissioner, which is the double lock, but they are also approved by the Prime Minister personally. As my right hon. Friend said from the Dispatch Box, there is an issue if the Prime Minister is unavailable to do that. It is important that there is not a gap in security protection, which would happen if the Prime Minister is unable to be the third part of that triple lock.

Nobody disagrees with the idea that that process should be made more robust, but there is also an issue about how wide the power to issue that final approval—currently, that final approval rests only with the Prime Minister—should go. There were debates about that when the Bill went through its stages in the other place. The question of balance is how the new Bill deals with ensuring that the triple lock is robust while not creating a lacuna should the Prime Minister be indisposed and unable to issue warrants without that power going too wide. The ISC supports the intention behind this, which is to provide resilience around the current arrangements. It is important that the Prime Minister is the person who approves these things, but this may affect the operations of the intelligence agencies when they are seeking a targeted interference or a time-sensitive warrant. None the less, there was agreement that, in truly exceptional circumstances, it may be appropriate for a Secretary of State to temporarily deputise for the Prime Minister. The Committee considered that it was important that decisions in this area should be delegated only in the most exceptional circumstances, and delegated only to a limited number of Secretaries of State who are already responsible for authorising relevant warrants. We want the Prime Minister to retain sight of all warrants relating to Members of a relevant legislature. Most of that was agreed in the other place, although there is an issue about whether the relevant Secretaries of State—there can be up to five of those—are ones that already issue warrants.

[Mr Jones]

I was a little taken aback that the Home Secretary just assumed that, once these had been agreed by a substitute, they would automatically be reviewed by the Prime Minister. Clearly, that is a big assumption. Does my hon. Friend not think that it would be better if we put it in the Bill that the Prime Minister had full oversight of this warrant?

[Dame Angela Eagle]

Clearly, putting such things in the Bill is often an important safeguard. Certainly, I do not understand why the delegation of these powers should not be limited to Secretaries of State who also issue warrants. I do not quite understand why there is an obsession with five Secretaries of State. We could have four and still have robust oversight.

National Security Bill (Fourteenth sitting)

Debate between Angela Eagle and Lord Beamish

Committee stage
Tuesday 18th October 2022 Public Bill Committees

[Mr Jones]

On a point of order, Mr Gray. I think it would be remiss not to thank the two previous Ministers—

[Dame Angela Eagle]

And the previous Whips!

[Mr Jones]

And the previous Whips, yes. One previous Minister was thrown a little more into the deep end than this one, so I want to put on the record my thanks to him.

Post Office Historical Shortfall Scheme

Debate between Angela Eagle and Lord Beamish

Tuesday 14th December 2021 Westminster Hall

[Dame Angela Eagle (in the Chair)]

I call Kevan Jones next. I hope to call the Minister at 20 past 11.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

I thank the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) for securing this debate today. He talks about culture. I have been involved in the issue for more than 10 years. It was first brought to my notice by Tom Brown, a constituent, who came to me with a similar case. A highly respected individual in the community was suddenly accused by the Post Office of stealing £86,000 because of the Horizon system. He spent two years of hell, and when he went to go before a judge at Newcastle Crown court, he arrived at the door and was told by the Post Office that it was not pursuing the case. In that time, he would have gone bankrupt and paid £86,000 back to the Post Office. In the 10 years in which I have been dealing with his case and many other cases, the culture described by the right hon. Gentleman is spot on. It is arrogant and dismissive. There is a cover-up.

We are now into a scheme that needs to be abolished. It is designed to put the onus back on the individual postmaster and postmistress and to reduce the liability of the Post Office. The scheme was open for only three months in 2020, and if someone did not get their claim in by then, they could not get a claim at all, so that was designed to reduce the numbers and reduce liability. The Post Office has no idea. In its accounts, it budgeted for £35 million of compensation. The figure is now estimated to be more than £300 million.

The scheme also excludes the 555 people, including my constituent, Tom Brown, who took action against the Post Office. We got to the truth only when the case went to court. The Government used £100 million of public money to try to stop the case going forward. They had to settle with the claimants because they ran out of money. There was a tsunami of money from the Post Office. I welcome today’s written ministerial statement about those who were convicted and who can be included in the compensation scheme. However, the scheme needs to be abolished. It should be put to one side. We need a comprehensive scheme outside the Post Office. The Government will have to put in place a scheme for everybody, including the people they have already put forward and including the 555 who took the class action. Without their taking that action, we would not have discovered the lies, deceit and cover-up by the Post Office. I am sorry, I do not accept the Government washing their hands of this and saying that the Post Office is at arm’s length from the Government. They had an active shareholder on that board who did nothing to stop the scandal. I call for the scheme to be scrapped and a comprehensive scheme to be put in place that covers everyone to be compensated. Yes, it might cost hundreds of millions of pounds, but that is because it was not the postmistresses and postmasters’ fault. It was the fault of the Government and the Post Office.