Investigatory Powers Bill

Debate between Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb and Lord West of Spithead

3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 31st October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, I support these amendments and I strongly support my noble friend Lord Rooker in everything that he has said. This Bill is a classic example of how a Bill should come through this place. The way in which it has been built up across Parliament has been remarkable. It meets all the requirements for our security and for personal liberty, and we should be very proud of it.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I was going to speak later but I will speak now, as I am driven to do so by the comments of previous speakers.

The Bill is undoubtedly better than it was at the start. It could not help but be because of all the effort that people have put into making it better, but it is still a most appalling piece of legislation and I should like to read something to noble Lords:

“Today, an ordinary person can’t pick up the phone, email a friend or order a book without comprehensive records of their activities being created, archived, and analysed by people with the authority to put you in jail or worse. I know: I sat at that desk. I typed in the names. When we know we’re being watched, we impose restraints on our behaviour—even clearly innocent activities—just as surely as if we were ordered to do so. The mass surveillance systems of today, systems that pre-emptively automate the indiscriminate seizure of”,

private records, constitute a sort of surveillance time machine”,

“—a machine that simply cannot operate without violating our liberty on the broadest scale. And it permits governments to go back and scrutinise every decision you’ve ever made, every friend you’ve ever spoken to, and derive suspicion from an innocent life. Even a well-intentioned mistake can turn a life upside down. To preserve our free societies, we have to defend not just against distant enemies, but against dangerous policies at home. If we allow scarce resources to be squandered on surveillance programmes that violate the very rights they purport to defend, we haven’t protected our liberty at all: we have paid to lose it”.

That sums this Bill up. It was written by Edward Snowden, who, as he said, sat at that desk. It was written for Liberty.

[Lord West of Spithead]

My Lords, does the noble Baroness accept that Edward Snowden, by releasing millions of bits of classified material, has actually made all of us less safe than we were? It is a certain fact that he has done that. He is hardly someone to quote as a great and noble person.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb]

I think that we will find in the future that this legislation will return again and again to bite us, and many of us here will regret having passed it.