Investigatory Powers Bill

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Monday 11th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Paddick]

My Lords, my name is to this amendment and I very much support it. As a former police officer, I feel I have to speak on both aspects of this. The noble Lord, Lord Black, spoke clearly and in detail about the need for very specific safeguards because of the experience that we have had with the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. Police have clearly not used legislation in the way that Parliament intended it to be used—that is, to establish who confidential journalistic sources are. I also support what the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, said about the danger to journalists, particularly camera operators in serious, spontaneous public order situations. This is an area where I have some expertise. At the moment there is a balance as experience has shown that media footage has, in certain circumstances, been useful to demonstrators in terms of misuse or excess use of force by police officers. If this were to change, and the demonstrators felt that material gathered by media operators was under the control only of the police, because of inadequate provisions in the Bill, it could tip the balance and journalists would become a target for violence in such situations.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 25 and declare an interest as the mother of a journalist. I also apologise for not having spoken at Second Reading; I was not able to be here. My only concern with Amendment 25 is that it does not go far enough and there is no “reasonable suspicion” test. We must remember that journalists often uncover some pretty heinous crimes and pretty awful stories. While we often talk about the damage they do and the crimes they commit, they also do some incredibly valuable work for our society, so I think this an extremely important amendment.

[Lord Strasburger]

My Lords, my name is also to this amendment. I shall not detain the House for very long. There is one aspect of this that I do not think has been mentioned: without protection for the anonymity of whistleblowers, far fewer will come forward and expose themselves to the revenge of their employers or others in powerful positions. There is ample evidence of whistleblowers being severely victimised, so anonymity is essential. Without whistleblowers, wrongdoing and cover-ups in the private and public sectors will go unreported and uncorrected, and that outcome is to the detriment to all of society, particularly those who lack a loud enough voice to be heard when things go wrong.

In recent years we have seen many cases of legislative arbitrage by the police in order to use powers that were never intended for the purpose of discovering journalists’ sources, finding ways to do so with the fewest protections. The “plebgate” scandal was a particularly graphic example, where RIPA was misused to find the source of a story in the Sun. Journalist’s phones on the Sun’s newsdesk were investigated by the police and their communications data were obtained. Under RIPA this was, of course, completely self-authorised; there were no external checks on what they were doing.

I believe that the Bill actually reduces the protection for journalists’ sources in the case of interception of communications and communications data. It provides no protection at all against the use of other surveillance powers, especially equipment interference. Amendment 25 seeks to rectify these shortfalls; I do not believe it is perfect yet, but it is a good start.