Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill

Charles Walker Excerpts

Tuesday 15th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Watson]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hood, and to take part in this debate and speak to amendment 2, which has been tabled by about 25 MPs across the House, representing seven different parties.

We have been told that there is a legal emergency and this Bill needs to be passed through both Houses of Parliament in three days. This huge Government steamroller has revved up the engine and driven into town with my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) in the back seat and Liberal Democrat Members in the passenger seat, and we have been told we have very little choice. It has been hard to have time to consider this Bill, to pass amendments and to have proper debate and scrutiny, yet a curious thing will happen when this Bill is finally steamrollered through on Thursday or Friday, which is that the Government will take out the keys of the steamroller and say, “Relax, this legal emergency will only last for two and a half years.” That seems peculiar to me.

A little earlier the shadow Minister, who went to the same university as me, but many years before—I will not share the rumours about him that were passed down for many years—said he was new to social media and that his metadata footprint was smaller than those of many other citizens in this country, but many people are deeply concerned about their data being held in this way and they are following this debate. What they might not know is that if we do not complete this debate by 9 pm, even on the timetable we have, the amendments we are discussing now will fall, so I cannot speak for too long without jeopardising an amendment that has been supported by MPs representing seven different parties and a significant minority in this House.

What our amendment does is say to the Government: “Okay, we’ve not seen what you’ve seen; we will compromise with you. We will let you say you have a legal emergency and give you these powers for the summer.” That would allow the time for proper debate and scrutiny in the normal way that this House debates legislation. Earlier my good and hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) made a powerful case for why we have the systems we do in this House—proper Bill Committees that can scrutinise, pre-legislative scrutiny, Select Committee scrutiny, Second Reading followed by a period in which people can reflect on the debate, a decent time for people to table amendments, Third Reading, and the like. A six-month sunset clause would allow for that.

A six-month sunset clause might also allow for a little bit of research to be done over the summer and for civic society to engage in a public debate. The shadow Home Secretary declared that this was the start of a debate in the country about the lines that could be drawn between privacy and liberty, and security. For me, six months is a long time for us to do that.

[Mr Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. What our constituents really want is proper scrutiny of legislation in this place. Having scrutinised the Bill properly, we may find ourselves in disagreement with our constituents, but at least we would have the opportunity to exercise our judgment and to reflect on that exercising of judgment.

[Mr Watson]

I completely agree. It has been mentioned that there have been few MPs in the Chamber for some of the debate—the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert), who has been in his place all day, reflected on that. The honest truth is this: are we really surprised at that, when Back-Bench MPs have been treated in this way by the Executive, when MPs did not even know that this Bill would be published until last Thursday and when they had 47 minutes to table amendments when the business motion was passed last night? Thankfully the Speaker has said that he would accept manuscript amendments today, under these unusual circumstances. If it is baffling for Back Benchers, how on earth can our constituents have any comprehension or faith in today’s process?

What our amendment would do is simple. It does not ask for a report—I know that the shadow Minister has said we can have a report, but that is not the same as discussing clauses in Committee and allowing elected representatives to tease out the issues. He knows what this is: it is a fudge, and it is an unacceptable one. What I am saying is that we should give the Government the benefit of the doubt tonight with a six-month sunset clause, which would give us plenty of time to discuss a Bill in the proper way.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Straw]

Of course I accept that the public are concerned, but from my long experience they have a clear view of how to balance the interests of liberty and their own personal security—that is what this is about, not the security of the state—and they implicitly acknowledge that, although the systems that we have built up during the past 30 years may not be perfect, they do provide that balance. They provide a level of control over Ministers and the intelligence, security and police services, which is pretty unparalleled in most other countries.

Let us consider the abuses that take place in Europe. I think of what has happened in France in recent years, where one Minister intercepted the telephone calls of another Minister—all kinds of abuses by Ministers and the judiciary. That has never happened here and it could never happen here under our system—[Interruption.] Yes, it used to happen. It is right that trade unions were wire-tapped. Many others, thousands of people, were subject to intrusive surveillance. I know that to be the case because an officer of the Security Service told me that and showed me my file. I know that to be the case in respect of my family as well. But that was under a system where there was no statutory regulation whatsoever of telephone intercept, or data retention, which was available then, and when the very existence of the security and intelligence agencies was itself denied. That has rightly changed to take account of our duties and public concerns. It is not perfect, but we are much closer to a system that properly balances those things.

I hope that the Committee will not accept, for the reasons I have suggested, what my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich East suggests, which will lead to a truncated, abbreviated review that will not work, and that instead we will have the longer review, proposed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn, and sober consideration of a new Act to replace this one and RIPA before the end of 2016.

[Mr Charles Walker]

I rise to support amendment 2, tabled by the hon. Member for West Bromwich East (Mr Watson). This really is a ridiculous way to transact legislation in this place—to sit here and listen to a lot of nonsense from some quite respectable people. The idea that we should put something so important and worth while through in a day just takes the biscuit.

I am sure that there is a huge amount of worthy content in the Bill, and I am sure that it is extraordinarily important that business is transacted as quickly as possible, but we have a duty of scrutiny and reflection in this Chamber. We represent 65 million people. This is not simply a rubber-stamping process. The idea that doing this in a day is somehow no worse than revisiting it in December just does not hold water. That argument will have no resonance out there with our electorate.

There is a slight undertone in the debate that those in the Chamber who express concern about the way business is being done today are somehow complicit in putting the nation’s safety at risk. That really is the last hiding place of scoundrels. I do not mean that anyone in this place starts from that basis, but we have a moral duty here to scrutinise legislation. I totally and honestly agree with the hon. Member for West Bromwich East that we need to revisit this sooner, rather than later.

[John McDonnell]

I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich East (Mr Watson) has formally requested a vote on amendment 2. If he has not, I would like to do so. I will deal quickly with some of the points that have been made. I think that the House is open to derision in putting such important legislation through in this time scale. The argument that the time is limited because we are abutting the summer recess and MPs are about to go on holiday opens us up to even more derision, so we will be held in contempt yet again. I say to the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert), for whom I have a lot of affection, no matter how infuriating he can be at times, that the argument that a piece of legislation that could be undertaken in the next five months is somehow not as good as one that we will put forward in 24 hours simply does not hold water.

The point is that we are appealing to the Government today to give us the opportunity not only to have a thorough debate in this House, but to go back to our constituencies, as the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) said, and consult the people who put us here. With such a technical piece of legislation, I want to ensure that I consult my constituents and all those voluntary organisations and experts in the field. That includes taking expert legal advice on its exact meaning, because I no longer accept the argument—it has become confused today—about there being no new powers. I think that there are new powers, but I would like that to be verified by external advice. We have had no chance to do that. We have received, at best, a couple of briefings and a curtailed Select Committee hearing. My hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Dr Francis), who chairs the Joint Committee on Human Rights, appealed to the Government and said that all we need is the original judgment from the European Court of Justice and the points it raised, matched with the legislation and with clarification on which points the legislation addressed. We do not even have that.

Furthermore, we have the draft legislation before us, but not the guidance, which is the really meaningful part. It will specify who will be included and how it will be implemented in detail. That is still to come, so we are passing this legislation virtually in the dark. On the argument that there will be review after review, the Government’s new clause 7 simply means that a report of the review will be sent to the Prime Minister, but if it

“appears to the Prime Minister that the publication of any matter in a report under subsection (4) would be contrary to the public interest”—

not just prejudicial to national security—the Prime Minister can ensure that it is not given to this House. The definition of the public interest can be as wide as the Prime Minister determines. That is unacceptable. That is not open or transparent.

We have all been in this House long enough to know that having review after review is almost meaningless unless, at the end of the day, the Government decide to legislate or change legislation. A review process is usually used to put something on the back burner so that we can all ignore it as though it has gone away. The reason for a sunset clause is to give the whole exercise of reviews some bite. Without that bite, I am afraid that Governments do not act. The idea of having some bite at a distant point at the end of the following year means that this country will labour and languor under what I think will be an unjust piece of legislation for a long period, which could result in miscarriages of justice and an imposition on our freedoms. It is too long to wait. That is why the short curtailment of the sunset clause is critical to ensure that we give the matter serious attention; otherwise, it will drift further away.

The next five months give us the opportunity for full consultation, proper advice and full display of information, particularly on the Government’s statutory code. We could then come back after the recess and examine new legislation in detail, which may address some of the points that have been raised about the operation of RIPA. As the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) has said, this is no way to legislate and create laws that could have significant consequences for our constituents.

I have raised the issue of the secrecy of professional advice, which was provided for in the European judgment. That is supposed to be covered by the code of practice, but we have yet to see it. That advice could relate not just to lawyers, but to the operations of journalists who wish to expose matters of public interest and to trade unionists and others. This is a risk to civil liberties that I am not willing to support. That is why I support amendment 2.