Calais Jungle

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Monday 10th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

The hon. Lady has an advantage over me; I have not seen that particular announcement. [Interruption.] It has been my great pleasure to be here for the past hour; naturally, she has seen it before I have. I look forward to having a good look at it, and if she would like me to, I will certainly write to her about it.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Would it not have been a good idea for the Home Secretary to make that announcement in the House, rather than a press officer doing it from her Department? However, we are talking about some of the most vulnerable children, by any objective measure, in the world: children who will have been traumatised in a way that no child should be traumatised, and children who will have seen things that no child should have seen. Will she turn on its head the budget in her Department, so that instead of spending money on a wall, she spends it on making sure that those children are protected, so that their future is as bright as that of any other children?

[Amber Rudd]

The hon. Gentleman, I am sure, will have heard my comment earlier that this is not about the budget; it is about having the absolute determination and focus to make sure that we address the need to take those children out, where there is a legal right to do so. I hope that I have reassured him and the rest of the House that we will be doing that as the French move towards their clearances.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Monday 5th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Goodwill]

We have always made it clear that the status of EU nationals is not under threat at all. Indeed, we have always made the point that, during the negotiations, so long as those same protections are available to UK citizens living abroad, they will be there for those who come here from the rest of Europe. I pay tribute to the contribution made to the British economy by those who come to work not just from the European Union, but from further afield. We want to attract the brightest and best, but we must control the numbers that come.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

10. What discussions she has had with her international counterparts on the UK’s continued participation in the European arrest warrant.

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Amber Rudd)]

Co-operation between the UK and European Union member states has continued following the referendum result, including on European arrest warrants. Officials are exploring options for future co-operation arrangements once the UK has left the European Union. We will do what is necessary to keep people safe, but it would be wrong to set out unilateral positions before that negotiation has taken place.

[Chris Bryant]

But the Brexit Secretary has always campaigned for us to leave the European arrest warrant and so has the Foreign Secretary. Does the Home Secretary agree with them, or does she agree with her predecessor—now the Prime Minister—who, when we debated this in this House, said that 901 suspected serious criminals, including paedophiles, rapists and murderers, had been extradited either in or out of this country thanks to the European arrest warrant? Would it not be far better for her to say now that she will protect British people by making sure we remain within the European arrest warrant?

[Amber Rudd]

I can reassure the hon. Gentleman that we on the Government Benches value the European arrest warrant. We know how important it has been in keeping people safe. When people voted to leave the European Union, they did not vote for a less safe country. We will make sure that, whatever the outcome of the negotiations, we protect people in a way that is as effective as with the European arrest warrant.

Preventing Violence Against Women: Role of Men

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Thursday 4th February 2016 Westminster Hall

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

My delight at serving under your chairmanship is absolutely undiluted, Mrs Gillan—unless you intervene in some way that I do not like very much. I apologise, because I know it is unusual for a member of the shadow Cabinet to take part in a debate such as this, but I remember that when you were in the shadow Cabinet you used to do so occasionally, so I am following in your footsteps. Indeed, I remember that you took forward a private Member’s Bill at one point.

[Mrs Cheryl Gillan (in the Chair)]

Mr Bryant, I have called you to speak, and we are looking forward to hearing what you say.

[Chris Bryant]

I wanted to speak in this debate for the simple reason that in my constituency, the Rhondda, probably the single biggest issue that takes up the most police time and causes the most damage to the individuals and the community I seek to represent is domestic violence against women. Every Thursday, Friday and, in particular, Saturday night is a tough night for the police in the south Wales valleys, and certainly in the Rhondda. They often have to deal with issues for many days afterwards. Sometimes things are very complicated because somebody makes a complaint and then wants to withdraw it. There are many complicated issues relating to whether and how the police should pursue such matters, let alone how the Crown Prosecution Service acts. In my 15 years as an MP, the majority of murders in my constituency have involved one partner killing another, and there have been several cases in which the man has killed both his girlfriend, wife or partner, and the child or children. There is no issue that is more important to my constituents. Unfortunately, in recent years we have seen a dramatic rise—by some 23%—in violent crime in Wales, particularly south Wales.

Some weekends are far worse than others for domestic violence in Wales. It is not because of the sport that we all love in Wales, rugby—I do not think there is a direct causal relationship—but it is a simple fact that when there are big international rugby matches on, and sometimes football matches as well, the number of domestic violence incidents rises dramatically. That is why we in Wales in particular have to look deep into our souls when it comes to domestic violence in our country. I am a great rugby fan. I go to matches and I enjoy it—I broke my leg playing rugby at Twickenham once—but we need to look very hard at the cultural issues in Welsh life that affect violence against women.

Some public attitudes in the valleys do not help, such as the attitude towards alcohol—that it is best to drink lots and lots and get absolutely blotto on a Thursday, Friday and Saturday night, and if you can do it all day Sunday as well, so much the better. Then there is the belief that young people prove themselves by drinking large amounts of alcohol. Not everyone participates at all. In fact, I recently surveyed all 16 to 18-year-olds in my constituency, and the percentage of youngsters who drink alcohol to excess is lower in my patch than in many others. None the less, that strong attitude is imbued in many people from an early age.

There is a similar attitude towards the perfect male shape, which is often influenced by anabolic steroids. The use of steroids in many gyms is well documented. Successive Governments have found it difficult to deal with the problem, which perpetuates the image of what a real man should look like: physically strong, silent, not necessarily very good at communicating, but good at communicating with their fists and prepared to take physical action if they want to. That whole concept of being a real man—of manning up—is a serious part of the problem. It is bad for men as well, and not only because of the fights outside pubs on weekend nights, some of which have led to deaths in my constituency; it is also bad for them on the rugby pitch. All too often, when someone has a concussion, they are determined to go back on. We need to change that attitude to concussion in sport. It is not the manly thing to go back on or to force somebody back on. The manly thing is for people to be responsible about their own health and take sage advice: if ever in doubt, sit it out.

I raise all those points because there is one issue that particularly troubles me. The six nations starts this weekend, and that is wonderful, but when there is a rugby match, we on the Welsh terraces will all sing “Delilah”. I know that some people will say, “Oh, here we go, he’s a terrible spoilsport,” but the truth is that that song is about the murder of a prostitute. It goes right to the heart of the issues we are discussing. There are thousands of other songs we could sing. We Welsh know every song in the book—we even know some of the words. “Cwm Rhondda” is a pretty good one to start with. I have sung “Delilah” as well—everybody loves doing the “She stood there laughing” moment—but if we are really going to take this issue seriously in Wales, we have to change how we do things.

In some years, the Welsh Rugby Union has been involved in really effective campaigns. Last year’s was called “Not In My Name”, and I am glad to say that several Welsh rugby clubs have signed up to the white ribbon campaign, but it is a shame that it is not every year and throughout the year. The decision about when the big internationals should be played is made entirely around money and broadcasting. Perhaps it should also be made taking into account the effect on people’s drinking habits and what they will do to their partners when they get home.

I am enormously grateful to the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands) and the other Members who have secured the debate, who are from different parties. I should also mention bullying in schools towards not only girls as a whole but lesbians and trans people. I have tried so many times before, but I want to say to the Government that we will never be able to address these issues unless we have proper sex and relationship education. I know that some people will think, “That means you’re going to teach kids how to have sex.” It is quite the reverse. It is about making sure that every young person has the self-confidence to make good decisions for themselves—whether about alcohol, or friendships, or when they want to have their first sexual experience.

All the evidence from every country in Europe and around the world suggests that where there is good sex and relationship education, kids delay their first sexual experience, the number of boys who are violent towards girls is cut, relationships between boys and girls are improved and bullying is cut. I cannot see why we are prepared to continue with a situation in this country where some schools do it brilliantly and many schools do it abysmally; and where it is the one class that a teacher dreads having to teach and kids dread having to go to. We have to have a whole-school approach, and it has to be on a statutory basis. Of course individual parents should be able to say that they do not want their kids to engage in it, but no schools or set of governors should be able to say, “Sorry, we are just not going to do that,” because in the end, when that happens we are consigning kids to bullying and more girls and women to violence in their lives. It is about self-confidence and respecting one another.

I have never wanted to live in a tolerant society, because that always sounds like people are simply tolerating those who are different from them. I want to live in a society of respect, where we respect one another’s sexuality, one another’s right to say no, and one another’s right to say yes. We will never have that unless we look deep into our souls when it comes to these cultural issues. I am deeply grateful to have had this opportunity speak, and I am glad to stand with others who seek to end the violence that has been perpetuated through the centuries, with women and children being called chattels and treated as things to be thrown around and used and abused. One day, we will put a stop to it.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Karen Bradley)]

May I start by saying what an honour it is to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts, and what an honour it was to serve under the chairship of your predecessor, Mrs Gillan? I congratulate the hon. Members for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands) and for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) and my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) on securing this important debate. I also congratulate all Members on the thoughtful and constructive points raised.

I want to start by saying that any form of violence against women or girls is absolutely unacceptable. The physical, psychological and emotional impact of domestic and sexual violence on victims cannot be overestimated. As the Minister for Preventing Abuse, Exploitation and Crime, I have the ambition to end those terrible crimes. We owe it to victims of domestic and sexual violence to do everything we can to afford them the protection and support they need. I will work closely with victim support services and police and criminal justice agencies to ensure that we are doing just that.

Many points have been raised today and I will do my best to address as many as possible, but if I fail to address any I will endeavour to respond in writing, as the shadow Minister invited me to do, and particularly as some of her questions were about technical criminal justice matters and are probably better addressed in correspondence.

It is important to reflect that—the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North started with this—both women and men may be victims of domestic or sexual violence, forced marriage or stalking. It is also important that the response for all victims is as good as it can be. The hon. Member for Lanark and Hamilton East (Angela Crawley) talked about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender relationships. We realise that there is abuse in all forms of relationship and the measures we have in place are available in all forms of abuse in all relationships. However, we need to say that women and girls are far more likely to be victims of such crimes and we recognise that inequality and gender play fundamental roles in violence against women and girls. We all have important roles to play in challenging the cultural norms and stereotypes that underpin violence against women and girls.

The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) talked about women being used as chattels. When I was training to be a chartered accountant and filling in tax returns, women’s earnings were her husband’s. There was an extra column on the tax return. Only in 1990 did women have their own taxation system. It is unbelievable that I am standing here having filled in tax returns when a woman’s income was her husband’s. She was her husband’s chattel and that was how she was treated in law.

Gender inequality manifests itself in ways that can limit women’s and girl’s aspirations and life chances, and put pressure on men to act in certain ways, as the hon. Member for Rhondda said: to be physically powerful, emotionally detached and in control. The relationship between gender and violence is complex, but we must never forget that in the most extreme cases we are working to save people’s lives. It is a sad fact that over 80 women a year still lose their lives to domestic homicide. We must never think about the matter just in terms of numbers, as the hon. Members for Paisley and Renfrewshire North and for Rhondda both said. We need men, women, girls and boys to work together to end violence against women and girls in all its forms.

Before responding to the contributions to this debate, particularly those on the role of men in ending violence against women and girls, it is important to address some of the concerns about increases in domestic abuse and sexual violence. We all want the prevalence of these terrible crimes to fall and ultimately to end, but we know that they are hidden and under-reported.

At least in the short to medium term, we want increased police recording of crimes of violence against women and girls. The Office for National Statistics clearly states that increases in police recorded rape, sexual offences and domestic abuse are due to greater victim confidence and better recording by the police. We should all welcome that. That these increases are a positive development is reinforced by our best measure of the prevalence of all crimes or how many people experience domestic and sexual violence, which comes from the self-completion module of the crime survey of England and Wales. That data show both the general downward trend in sexual assaults since 2005-06 and the fact that 8.2% of women were the victim of any domestic abuse in the last year. That is the lowest estimate since these questions were first asked in the 2004-05 survey.

We need more of the increased number of reports leading to effective police and criminal justice action. Again, while there is undoubtedly more work to do to bring perpetrators to justice, it is important to reflect that the number of police referrals to the Crown Prosecution Service, the number of prosecutions and the number of convictions for all crimes were all higher in 2014-15 than ever before. For example, prosecutions for domestic abuse have increased from just over 30,000 in 2004-05 to over 90,000 in 2014-15. That is the highest level ever. However, let me make it clear that 1.4 million women experiencing domestic abuse every year is still unacceptably high. Over 300,000 victims of sexual assault is unacceptably high. We need collectively to do more to prevent these terrible crimes from happening, and the role of men is critical.

I met the white ribbon campaign—many of us are wearing our white ribbons—with my colleague, the Under-Secretary of State for Women and Equalities and Family Justice. We heard about its inspiring work with boys and its programme of actions to challenge abusive and violent behaviour by men and boys, as well as its continuing work to increase the number of organisations accredited with white ribbon status. The Government will continue to promote the campaign’s work and to support greater co-ordination between existing groups of men and boys who act as change agents, develop evidence of what works to engage men in challenging violence against women and ensure full understanding of appropriate, safe and effective action to give men the confidence to speak out and challenge unacceptable behaviour.

When I was on the Select Committee on Procedure, we looked at introducing iPads in the Chamber. I am pleased to have my iPad in the Chamber because it has given me the chance to look at the white ribbon campaign’s latest figures; 24,377 pledges have been made and I hope that that will start to go up as people watch this debate. I want to make a few points about the website. The hon. Member for Rhondda and others talked about the importance of sport to young boys and men. I know from my two young sons that if a footballer says something, they tend to listen, so it is great to see that Juan Mata has signed up. A comment on the website states:

“Most men are not violent towards women, but many of us ignore the problem, or see it as something which doesn’t have anything to do with us.”

That sums up what we have been talking about in this debate. I congratulate the white ribbon campaign. We will continue to work with it. It is great to see so many women wearing the white ribbon, but I want to see more men wearing it. I am sure that the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North and my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole, as great champions of the campaign, will make sure more of their colleagues wear it and make the point.

I want to touch on the Return of Kings group, which was raised by a number of Members and was the subject of an urgent question today. I repeat that we condemn in the strongest terms anyone who condones rape and sexual violence or suggests that responsibility rests with victims. Responsibility for such crimes always, unequivocally rests with the perpetrator. The shadow Minister and many others have made the point that the vast majority of men do not share the views of the group, which are laughable. If the individual concerned did not take them seriously, we would laugh at him because they are utterly ridiculous.

The point has been made that we need to engage with young men. Our “This is Abuse” campaign was talked about during discussion of the urgent question and included specific messages to boys about abusive behaviour. It is an approach informed by research into what works in changing boys’ behaviour, like the Boys to Men project of Professor Gadd at Manchester University. It is vital that those of us in a position to speak out about violence and abuse do so, but we also need to realise that, sad as it may seem, teenagers may not listen to politicians. We must engage credible voices that young people will listen to.

Our previous campaigns accordingly used vloggers—video bloggers—to produce online video blogs to reach thousands of young people through social media and online platforms, and to help young men to understand what constitutes abusive behaviour. I will talk later about some of the other work we have been doing to deal with perpetrators and to change that behaviour. We have also worked through the campaigning partnership with MTV to develop adverts with a wide range of high-profile celebrities to act as a counter narrative within the sometimes highly sexualised environment of music TV.

Evaluation of the campaign’s impact showed that 67% of boys who saw its adverts were more likely to seek consent as a result, 70% said they felt more likely to recognise if someone does not want to have sex and 80% agreed that the videos made them understand that abuse is not always physical. We have invested £3.85 million in the next phase of the campaign, which will continue to build teenagers’ awareness of key issues, such as consent and healthy relationships, including engaging with boys and young men.

I also want to make the point about young women. One thing that we have been working on through our ending gang violence and exploitation programme—that is the new stage of our original ending gang and youth violence programme—is about the exploitation, including sexual exploitation, of young women by gangs. It is incredibly important that we educate young women that they should not expect to be treated in that way. Being part of a line-up is not acceptable. They should not be made to perform sex acts on boys. That is something they should say no to.

It is also important that we treat the young men and make them understand that. Last year, I had a powerful visit to one of the London gang charities. A young man who had been in a gang said that until he was spoken to by that charity, he had never understood that such behaviour was wrong. No one had ever told him that it was not the way to treat women. No one had ever said to him, “Women need to be respected.” That was because unfortunately he had grown up in a household where domestic abuse was the norm. It was what he had seen all his family and friends do. He thought that it was normal. Only when there was an intervention did he understand that it was not the way to behave. It is so important that we do all we can to educate both young girls and young boys, and I will say more about education shortly.

My hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), who I know cannot be here now because she is taking part in the debate in the main Chamber, talked about prostitution. We debated that topic at length during the passage of the Modern Slavery Bill last year—we are approaching the 12-month anniversary of that becoming an Act—and of course we now have new measures to protect victims of trafficking and criminalise those who traffic them. We are looking at the evidence that is available. My hon. Friend referred to, and the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley is a supporter of, the Nordic model. There is no unequivocal view on that; there are different views on it, and we need to understand how it works. Northern Ireland is a Province that we will be looking at carefully—because it has a very similar legal system to the UK—to see how it works, but there are conflicting views on the Nordic model. I will also be taking a great interest in the inquiry by the Select Committee on Home Affairs on this topic, because I know that many hon. Members are very interested in it.

How can we effect change? How can we change people’s views? In every area of life, we need to see everyone, including men, playing their part in challenging violence and abuse. I am encouraged by the many promising initiatives to engage professionals, friends, family and the wider public in tackling what is unacceptable and criminal behaviour.

These are just a few examples of what is happening. Citizens Advice has trained front-line staff to ask about violence and abuse. I visited Citizens Advice in Harlow recently. The volunteers are asking questions of people who have come in to talk about debt problems, because the debt problem could be the result of domestic abuse. It is very powerful to be able to see the training that volunteers at Citizens Advice have had to enable them to recognise what might be a domestic abuse situation.

Public Health England and the University of the West of England have been working on a bystander programme to help to challenge sexual abuse on campus. Housing providers can play a critical role in identifying those carrying out domestic abuse and those at risk, including children, and a nationwide alliance is working to improve the housing sector’s response. The alliance is arming professionals with the necessary knowledge and skills to support residents to live safely and free of abuse.

I am pleased that, as this debate has definitely demonstrated, our understanding of what constitutes abuse is becoming more sophisticated. For example, the new offence of domestic abuse, which was commenced on 29 December 2015, not only addresses a gap in the law to tackle controlling or coercive behaviour but can be used as a vehicle to build wider public awareness that domestic abuse extends beyond episodes of physical violence, and that patterns of psychological manipulation and control can be just as harmful. I am interested to hear that the Scottish Government are looking at introducing a similar measure.

Refuge, in partnership with the Co-operative bank, has launched a powerful new campaign called “My money, my life” to raise awareness of financial abuse in intimate relationships. Its research found that one in five people in the UK report that they have experienced financial abuse within an intimate relationship. That campaign is informing those experiencing financial abuse about their rights and empowering them to make positive choices about their own financial future.

A number of hon. Members raised the Istanbul convention, and we also discussed it during the urgent question today. The UK Government signed the Istanbul convention in 2012 and have since been putting in place all the measures that are required in order that we can comply in full. There is one article—article 44—that we are not yet in compliance with. That is the extraterritoriality measure, which basically means that the criminal law in the UK would extend to conduct abroad. I hope that hon. Members from Scotland and other devolved Administrations will understand why there may be some problems in ensuring that the two jurisdictions’ legal systems work with that particular issue. We will need to introduce primary legislation in the UK to put that in place, but when we have done that we will be able to ratify the Istanbul convention. We do not wish to ratify a convention until we are absolutely confident that we comply with it 100%.

A number of contributors raised the topic of PSHE, and it is fair to say that there were slightly different views about whether it should be on a statutory basis. My hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole perhaps disagreed with the hon. Member for Rhondda as to whether—

[Chris Bryant]

Well, he was wrong, and he left.

[Karen Bradley]

My hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole is a teacher with great experience of such things.

We do need there to be education. The Government have made it clear in the introduction to the framework for the national curriculum that all schools should teach PSHE, and we are committed to working with schools and other experts to ensure that young people receive age-appropriate information that allows them to make informed choices and stay safe, but the point is that it must be good-quality PSHE across the board and not, as my hon. Friend said, the add-on that no teacher wants to do.

It is probably worth mentioning the tools that we have introduced for prevention and protection, which, as I have said, apply to all relationships—LGBT, men to women and women to men. Domestic violence protection orders and the domestic violence disclosure scheme were rolled out across England and Wales from March 2014, and those tools put the responsibility for violence and abuse squarely with the perpetrator.

DVPOs can prevent the perpetrator from returning to a residence and from having contact with the victim for up to 28 days. Latest figures show that magistrates have granted more than 2,500 DVPOs. The domestic violence disclosure scheme, also known as Clare’s law, which a number of hon. Members have referred to, enables the police to disclose to the public information about previous violent offending by a new or existing partner where that may help to protect them from further violent offending. The latest figures show that more than 1,300 disclosures have been made. The Government will build on those achievements by evaluating Clare’s law and DVPOs to identify how we can strengthen those important tools.

We have also strengthened significantly the law on female genital mutilation, including through FGM protection orders, and last year we introduced two new measures—the sexual harm prevention order and the sexual risk order—to make it easier for the police and courts further to restrict and monitor the activities of individuals who pose a risk, including when they have not been convicted of a previous offence.

I want to touch on the issue of stalking. Being stalked by a stranger can have terrifying consequences, so we are consulting on the introduction of a stalking protection order. That will explore whether positive requirements can be placed on perpetrators at an early stage, to help to stop their behaviour. By that we mean a perpetrator being forced, for example, to attend mental health sessions so that we can try to stop the behaviour before it becomes criminal. We are ensuring that new measures include a focus on the perpetrator—disrupting their activity, removing them from the home where necessary and ensuring that they engage with appropriate interventions to help to stop their offending before it escalates.

Hon. Members have made a number of points about the right approach to take. The question is, what is justice for a victim of domestic abuse? What will help that person to get control of their own life, and what is the right outcome for that individual? There are many different ways to tackle the problem, and it is clear that one size does not fit all.

Refuge provision has been discussed at length. The Government are committed to refuge provision. We have announced £40 million between 2016 and 2020 for domestic abuse services including refuges, and a £2 million grant to Women’s Aid and SafeLives to support early intervention, but refuge is not the answer for every victim. The hon. Member for Bradford West (Naz Shah) talked about victims being turned away from refuges. I have spent time with refuge providers, who have told me that often a victim has such complex needs and so many difficulties that the refuge they go to is not the right place for them, and they may need different provisions and support.

I am committed to ensuring that refuges provide the appropriate safety net for people. However, for some families a better outcome might be achieved if a woman can stay in her home with her family, and if the perpetrator is removed from that home and is not just allowed to move in with the next partner to start the cycle of abuse all over again. I do not pretend that that will always be possible, but it is a better outcome for some victims. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley knows better than anybody that there are many different needs, and I have enjoyed our conversations on the matter. We need to think about how we can tackle the problem and break the cycle, and that means dealing with perpetrators.

Wilson Doctrine

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Monday 19th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the operation of the Wilson Doctrine.

Let me start by paying tribute to all those who have kept up sustained questioning on this topic: my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich East (Mr Watson), the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick), the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) and, most importantly, the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), whose court case has brought so much new information to light. They have done the whole House and the country an invaluable service.

Until last Wednesday, it was thought that the Wilson doctrine was still in force. MPs and Members of the Lords—[Interruption.] I hear the Home Secretary saying that the doctrine is still in force. Well, we look forward to hearing her argument on that later on.

MPs and Members of the Lords, as well as those who communicated with them as whistleblowers, constituents and members of the wider public, thought that parliamentarians’ communications were not, would not and could not be tampered with or intercepted, and that they could rely on a guarantee from the Government that that was so. That is because the doctrine was originally laid out in unambiguous terms on 17 November 1966 when Harold Wilson, the then Prime Minister, told the House that there was to be

“no tapping of the telephones of hon. Members.”—[Official Report, 17 November 1966; Vol. 736, c. 634.]

That was our decision and that was our policy. Five days later, the Lord Privy Seal, Lord Longford, announced that the policy also applied to their lordships’ House.

Despite changes of Government and advances in technology, the policy has enjoyed remarkably consistent declarations of support from Harold Wilson’s successors. It was reasserted by Mrs Thatcher, who said in a written answer on 6 February 1980 that

“the policy remains as stated by the right hon. Gentleman.”—[Official Report, 6 February 1980; Vol. 978, c. 245W.]

The right hon. Gentleman to whom she referred was Harold Wilson.

The policy was reasserted by Tony Blair in the same terms on 30 October 1997. On 4 December that year, he said that the policy

“applies in relation to telephone interception and to the use of electronic surveillance by any of the three security and intelligence agencies.”—[Official Report, 4 December 1997; Vol. 302, c. 321.]

On 21 January 2002, he clarified:

“The policy extends to all forms of warranted interception of communications.”—[Official Report, 21 January 2002; Vol. 378, c. 589W.]

Like Wilson, Blair made it clear that he was acting on consideration. When Sir Swinton Thomas, the then interception of communications commissioner, advised him against maintaining the Wilson doctrine in 2006, Mr Blair told the House in a written ministerial statement, after consultation in Cabinet:

“I have considered Sir Swinton’s advice very seriously…I have decided that the Wilson Doctrine should be maintained.”—[Official Report, 30 March 2006; Vol. 444, c. 96WS.]

The doctrine was also reasserted by Gordon Brown on 12 September 2007. As late as 15 July 2014, the Home Secretary stated that

“obviously the Wilson doctrine applies to parliamentarians”,

as if nothing had changed—exactly as she has done just now.

I give this history merely to point to the absolute nature of the Wilson doctrine, the categorical nature in which it has been stated to this House, and the consistency with which it has been supported, at least in public, by successive Governments, despite changing security threats and changing technology. Even after the introduction of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, Governments repeatedly made it clear that the Wilson doctrine remained in place—until last Wednesday, when the Investigatory Powers Tribunal revealed that a completely different regime is now in operation under this Home Secretary. From the evidence given to the tribunal, it is clear that the Wilson doctrine has been altered beyond recognition without Parliament being told and that the Wilson doctrine is, to all intents and purposes, defunct.

Harold Wilson joked that his postbag suggested that

“a very high proportion of the electorate generally are under the delusion that their telephones are being tapped. This delusion spreads to hon. Members and I should say that I used to suffer from it myself at one time.”—[Official Report, 17 November 1966; Vol. 736, c. 636.]

He, of course, was joking, but as one who knows for certain that his phone was tapped by The News of the World, I say to the Government, “Do not take us for fools. We in this House are not naive. Be open and honest with the House and with the public.”

Last year, the former police officer Peter Francis said that he had seen old security files on Jack Straw, Peter Hain, Joan Ruddock, Ken Livingstone and my hon. Friends the Members for Bolsover (Mr Skinner) and for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) and my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott). The Government tried to silence Peter Francis then, but it now seems that his revelations were probably just the tip of the iceberg.

Most worryingly, last week’s IPT ruling included the partial disclosure of the Government’s official guidance to the three security agencies, which includes a lengthy piece on the Wilson doctrine. The official guidance states categorically: first, that

“it is not, and has never been, Government policy that Parliamentarians’ communications may not be the subject of interception”;

secondly, that the Wilson doctrine does not apply to requests for communications data relating to parliamentarians, nor to the communications of a Member of the European Parliament or of a devolved Administration; thirdly, that parliamentarians are not exempt from bulk interceptions of communications under section 8(4) of RIPA and that any such material that relates to parliamentarians can be interrogated within MI5 and can be disclosed to an outside body; fourthly, that the Wilson doctrine protects only

“the communications of Parliamentarians in the performance of their Parliamentary and constituency duties without fear that their communications are being targeted other than exceptionally where there is a compelling reason for doing so”;

and, fifthly, that the Home Secretary can, having consulted the agencies and the Prime Minister, via the Cabinet Secretary, issue a warrant for the deliberate targeting and interception of parliamentarians’ communications.

That blatantly flies in the face of successive Prime Ministers’ statements to this House. Why would the Government need a separate warrant process for the interception of MPs’ communications if they were still abiding by the Wilson doctrine that MPs’ communications should not, could not and would not be intercepted? How can it be right that the process depends on three highly subjective judgments: first, about what constitute parliamentary and constituency duties, which is a notoriously difficult matter in determining parliamentary privilege; secondly, about what constitutes a sufficiently significant exception; and, thirdly, about what would count as a sufficiently compelling reason? How can it be right that under the Home Secretary’s new dispensation all those judgments are made solely by the Home Secretary, with one politician deciding on the targeting of another politician?

One other element of the Wilson doctrine was that the Prime Minister, “on his own initiative”—those were the then Prime Minister’s words—would notify Parliament of any change to the doctrine. No such statement has been volunteered by this Prime Minister, yet the tribunal makes it very clear that the doctrine has been changed. It states that

“changes in the Doctrine…have resulted in its operation as now described by Mrs May”.

Those words are “changes in the doctrine”. It adds:

“It is clear to us that the Wilson Doctrine as now constituted is as explained by Mrs May”

and goes on to point out that the Wilson doctrine is not in operation.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

I am grateful to the shadow Leader of the House for his explanation. We hear about changes, but could those changes have been made a very long time ago and not just by this Government?

[Chris Bryant]

Of course, the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. It is perfectly possible that changes have been made previously, but we cannot judge that. All we can judge is the decision of the IPT, which has been able to review substantially more evidence than this House would ever be able to review and concluded that “changes in the Doctrine” have resulted in its operation as it is now. I suspect that it would be impossible for us ever to know whether changes were made prior to this Government taking office, but we certainly know that the doctrine as previously espoused by every Prime Minister since Wilson is not that which is in operation under the present Home Secretary. In other words, the Wilson doctrine has no legal effect. It is no longer in force. It is no more than a self-denying ordinance that could easily be rescinded and has already been ignored, all without notifying Parliament.

It is clear that the situation is unsatisfactory and I believe that it is time that the Government were straight with the House, so let me ask the Home Secretary some simple questions. What did she mean when she said that the Wilson doctrine “obviously” applies to parliamentarians? Will she now finally admit that the Wilson doctrine is no longer? Will she tell us when she resolved to change the Wilson doctrine? Was there any discussion of these changes at Cabinet, as notified in the IPT judgment? Will she tell us how often warrants have been issued for the targeted interception of parliamentarians’ communications? Has she issued such warrants herself, and did she have any direct correspondence with the Prime Minister about this?

Let me be clear that I am not calling for individual warrants or interceptions to be identified. It is a long-standing policy of both parties of government that we will not comment on individual applications for interception. Indeed, it is an offence under RIPA to reveal that information. Neither do we want the operational security of ongoing investigations to be undermined, but we need to know the truth about whether parliamentarians have been spied on, and on what authority that happened.

Let me end by laying out the parameters for a possible new Wilson doctrine. First, there may be situations when it is necessary for a parliamentarian’s communications to be intercepted in the interests of securing the nation and preventing serious criminality. MPs cannot ever be above the law, but our democracy cannot function properly without the freedom of MPs to communicate with their constituents, whistleblowers, or the wider public without fear of interception. Just as, in the interests of a free press and a sound justice system, journalists and lawyers are granted enhanced protection from warranted surveillance, the legal presumption should be that parliamentarians are not to be targeted, nor their metadata interrogated, without good cause. That means that, as the Anderson report of the investigatory powers review, “A Question of Trust”, concluded, a judge, not a politician, should make the decision on a warrant. It means that the bar for granting a warrant should be high. Agencies should be required to show due cause and specific suspicion of serious criminality.

[Mr Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield) (Con)]

rose—

[Chris Bryant]

Of course I give way to the former Attorney-General.

[Mr Grieve]

Perhaps I might intervene briefly in my position as chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee. The hon. Gentleman will be aware that the Committee takes a close interest in privacy and security, and published a report in March. We will continue to take a close interest in these matters, particularly when the Home Office publishes the draft investigatory powers Bill. I would like to assure him that when we do so, we will look at the terms of heightened protection for certain categories of profession, such as lawyers, journalists and doctors. I expect that the Committee will consider whether additional protection should be afforded to MPs’ communications in the light what is in the draft Bill and this debate.

[Chris Bryant]

That was a helpful intervention. In the official guidance, due consideration is given to lawyers in regard to privileged material. Due regard, as provided for in the European convention on human rights, is given to journalists and the protection of their sources. The guidance includes doctors, but it also refers to ministers of religion, and I have some anxiety about the direction we may be taking. There is a perfectly legitimate debate to be had about what separate categories there might be. I am glad that the Committee will look at precisely how MPs—and, I presume, other parliamentarians —will be treated in the draft Bill, which we will need plenty of time to consider. Last year, we had one day in the House to consider some of the most important matters of personal freedom and liberty, which was wholly inappropriate. The clock is ticking on the High Court ruling, which the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden won earlier this year, so I hope that the Government will move speedily with their draft Bill.

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

The shadow Leader of the House is telegraphing that the Opposition will support an amendment to the upcoming legislation to provide that protection of privilege. He should be aware that the revelations on the Wilson doctrine were preceded by serious breaches of the legal privilege protection, and—this has changed in the past decade, because I spoke to the previous Home Secretary about the matter—that intercepted communications between the legal representative and the suspect, as it were, are now recorded and given to lawyers who may prosecute that suspect. That is a serious breach of what is known as equality of arms in natural justice.

[Chris Bryant]

The right hon. Gentleman is correct. He does not need to intercept this communication; I am not only telegraphing, but semaphoring and using every other means of communicating to the House, that there should be a proper debate about the several categories of people that might benefit, in the interests of national security and a wider democratic interest, from a specific provision in law.

There is a separate debate to be had about whether all warrants, as Anderson suggests, should go through a judicial process anyway. In particular, the right hon. Gentleman is right that the European convention on human rights makes specific provision for legal privilege so that lawyers are able to guarantee a fair and proper hearing for a defendant, but that has been breached in the past. Moreover, if we want to guarantee a free press, there must be provisions for journalists.

We cannot have a proper debate, however, unless draft legislation is produced in sufficient time for the House to be able to consider all the issues in the round before the process of tabling amendments begins. I very much hope that the Home Secretary will come forward early and not leave things to the very last minute, as she did last year.

Secondly, it is time that we abandoned our reliance on the doctrine in favour of statute law. Apparent ambiguities in the Wilson doctrine need to be clarified. A sensible course needs to be drawn that guarantees the independence of Parliament, but ensures our national security. We argue that this can be done only through legislation and we stand ready to work with the Home Secretary on this. As I said, she has to come back by the end of March with a new Bill to replace the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act 2014, given the High Court ruling, but I earnestly hope that she will introduce new draft legislation in the forthcoming weeks.

Thirdly, it is our contention that the new legislation should apply to all parliamentarians: Members of the House of Commons; Members of the House of Lords, although not necessarily all peers; Members of the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the Northern Ireland Assembly; and UK Members of the European Parliament, although obviously not all Members of the European Parliament.

[Lady Hermon (North Down) (Ind)]

Will the shadow Leader of the House clarify whether he includes in that list Members of the House who do not take their seats—the absentee Sinn Fein MPs from Northern Ireland? Does he expect the new legislative exemption to apply to them?

[Chris Bryant]

There is a legitimate debate to be had about how that should operate. I am not arguing that any MP should be above the law or that there should be a blanket ban on any interception ever of the communications of Members of Parliament. I am arguing that in a new era we need a rational approach that involves judicial oversight, rather than political oversight, of warrants to make sure that the country is defended, but with the rights of constituents who approach a Member of Parliament protected, too. It is perfectly easy to draw that distinction. If a Member of Parliament is engaged in criminality, they should face the full force of the law—they should not be able to evade it. I hope that that clarifies the matter for the hon. Lady.

I believe that parliamentarians had a legitimate expectation that the doctrine provided an absolute guarantee. It has been stated and restated, and iterated and reiterated in this House without qualification. I note that the Government’s lawyer argued at the tribunal that the original statement of the doctrine was ambiguous because it was

“a political statement in a political context”.

I do not suppose that all of us think a political statement is of necessity ambiguous, but I am not sure how much less ambiguous a statement Harold Wilson could have made. He expressly stated that he had considered the issue; he admitted that there were opposing views; he referred to a previous report from Privy Counsellors that had recommended a different course of action; and he said that he had changed the policy and that if he were to change it again, he would tell the House. He left himself remarkably little wriggle room, and each succeeding Prime Minister relied on exactly the same formulation.

There will be those who think that the Government should be able to intercept MPs’ communications at will, saying that if we have nothing to hide, we have nothing to fear. However. I urge Conservative Members who think like that to consider two different courses of action that this country has taken in the past. In the first world war, the rule was that MPs’ correspondence could not be intercepted, even from the front. Thanks to that rule, the uncensored letters of Major Harold Cawley MP from Gallipoli to his father, who was a Member of the House of Lords, led to the Dardanelles commission that enabled the world to know the truth, which in turn led to many thousands of lives being saved. Without that provision, there would have been no means of our knowing the truth of what happened in Gallipoli.

By contrast, in the late 1930s, the Chamberlain Government tapped the phones of many of the Conservative MPs who were campaigning for an end to Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement, including Churchill and Eden’s friends and allies. Three of them died in the second world war and have their shields up on the wall. Fortunately, they were brave souls and refused to be intimidated by such practices in the 1930s.

The truth is that the security of this country has always been better served when the power of the Executive, especially the secret power of the Executive, is curbed and kept under check by Parliament. That requires openness and transparency from the Government. I am therefore asking the Home Secretary to do two simple things: first, to come back to the House with a proposal for putting a new doctrine with independent judicial approval into law; and secondly, to reveal whether, when and how often parliamentarians’ communications have been targeted and intercepted under warrant.

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)]

I recognise that there has been much lively interest from Members of this House on the matter of the Wilson doctrine, and I welcome the debate and congratulate the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) on securing it.

It is right that the House should be debating this important issue, touching as it does on the ability of hon. Members to do their duty as Members of Parliament, the need to protect civil liberties and, just as important, the need to protect national security and to keep our constituents safe from harm. As the hon. Gentleman set out, and as the House is aware, the doctrine refers to the general policy outlined on 17 November 1966 in this House by the then Prime Minister, Harold Wilson. The policy has become known as the Wilson doctrine.

It is important to quote exactly what Lord Wilson of Rievaulx, as he was to become, stated. In the opening section of his speech, the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) quoted only the beginning of the statement. Harold Wilson said

“that I should give this instruction that there was to be no tapping of the telephones of Members of Parliament. That was our decision and that is our policy. But if there was any development of a kind which required a change in the general policy, I would, at such moment as seemed compatible with the security of the country, on my own initiative make a statement in the House about it.”—[Official Report, 17 November 1966; Vol. 736, c. 639.]

Since that time successive Prime Ministers have been asked questions in this House in relation to the Wilson doctrine, and successive Prime Ministers have confirmed that the doctrine continues to apply. That position remains unchanged, as the Prime Minister himself has confirmed in this House on a number of occasions.

Although it is clear that the Wilson doctrine continues to apply, I understand the significant interest of the House following the judgment given last week by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal in the case brought by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), her noble Friend, Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb, and a former Member of this House, George Galloway. I hope it will be helpful if I set out for the benefit of the House the Government’s position in relation to that judgment. Indeed, I believe there have been a number of misconceptions about the judgment that the Investigatory Powers Tribunal has made and I welcome the opportunity to set the record straight.

Let me begin by saying that it is important to note that the Investigatory Powers Tribunal found against the claimants in all respects. It agreed with the Government’s interpretation of the Wilson doctrine. The position therefore remains unchanged and—I stress this—the protection for MPs’ communications which the doctrine offers remains unchanged. However, it seems that there has been an element of confusion about what the Wilson doctrine actually means. On that, let me say first that it cannot be the case that MPs can never be the subject of interception. Members of this House are not above the law or beyond the scope of investigatory powers. I hope that the whole House will understand this important point. From the nods from a sedentary position, I understand that hon. Members accept that.

[Chris Bryant]

I said that.

[Mrs May]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for reminding us of that, but he also interpreted the Wilson doctrine as meaning that there would never be any interception of Members of Parliaments’ communications. That was not what the Wilson doctrine said, and it has not been the position. Indeed, last week’s judgment from the IPT quoted a statement that I made last year in response to an intervention from the current deputy Leader of the Opposition, the hon. Member for West Bromwich East (Mr Watson). It might be helpful if, for the benefit of the House, I repeat what I said:

“Obviously, the Wilson doctrine applies to parliamentarians. It does not absolutely exclude the use of these powers against parliamentarians, but it sets certain requirements for those powers to be used in relation to a parliamentarian. It is not the case that parliamentarians are excluded and nobody else in the country is, but there is a certain set of rules and protocols that have to be met if there is a requirement to use any of these powers against a parliamentarian”.—[Official Report, 15 July 2014; Vol. 584, c. 713.]

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs May]

As the hon. Gentleman knows full well, all three reviews of investigatory powers that have taken place came out with a different solution on the oversight and decisions authorisation process for warrants. This is still under consideration, but when the draft Bill is published he will be able to see what the Government have decided.

[Chris Bryant]

At the beginning of her speech, the Home Secretary chastised me for not reading out the whole of Harold Wilson’s comments and read out the lines where he continued that

“if there was any development of a kind which required a change in the general policy, I would, at such moment as seemed compatible with the security of the country, on my own initiative make a statement in the House about it.”—[Official Report, 17 November 1966; Vol. 736, c. 639.]

She seemed to be suggesting that there has been a change but she does not want to tell us about it because it is not compatible with national security. Is that really what she is saying?

[Mrs May]

The point I am making is about the interpretation of the Wilson doctrine that the hon. Gentleman set out at the beginning of his speech—that is, that there absolutely would not be, and never could be, any interception of communications of Members of Parliament. That is not the correct interpretation of the Wilson doctrine, as the statement from Lord Wilson of Rievaulx makes very clear.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs May]

The hon. Lady has identified a conundrum, which perhaps makes it all the more significant that we look at the issue in due course.

I reiterate that the protection offered by the doctrine remains in force and nothing in the Investigatory Powers Tribunal ruling changes that position. These are serious matters that touch on the wider debate about the right balance between privacy and national security.

[Chris Bryant]

I am terribly sorry to be so irritating to the Home Secretary, but she said that the protection still applies to parliamentarians. Precisely what is the protection afforded to parliamentarians by the Wilson doctrine?

[Mrs May]

The hon. Gentleman himself made reference to the Wilson doctrine and I have read out what Lord Wilson said. I am perfectly happy to do so again. He said that

“I should give this instruction that there was to be no tapping of the telephones of Members of Parliament. That was our decision and that is our policy. But if there was any development of a kind which required a change in the general policy, I would, at such moment as seemed compatible with the security of the country, on my own initiative make a statement in the House about it.”—[Official Report, 17 November 1966; Vol. 736, c. 639.]

I have also alluded to other safeguards as a result of the change—

[Chris Bryant]

The change?

[Mrs May]

Yes, I am going to use the word “change”. The legislative framework in which these matters are dealt with has changed over the years—more than once, I suspect, but most recently in 2000, with the introduction of RIPA, which contained a number of safeguards in relation to these matters. As I have indicated, and as the IPT repeated, the draft code, which was published in February 2015, makes very clear that particular care has to be taken if it is proposed that certain communications of certain categories of people should be intercepted.

These matters touch on the wider debate about the balance between privacy and national security, and the first duty of a Government is to protect their citizens. I have repeatedly stated my determination to ensure that the police and security agencies have the powers, support and capabilities they need to keep us safe.

In recent years, however, we have seen many wild and inaccurate allegations about the extent of surveillance carried out by the agencies, the legality of the intelligence agencies’ actions and the effectiveness of the oversight of their actions. Recently, three independent reviews have considered the investigatory powers used by the police and security agencies.

In March, the Intelligence and Security Committee published its “Privacy and Security” report, which set out a comprehensive review of the intelligence agencies’ capabilities and the legal and privacy frameworks that govern their use. In June, David Anderson published his report on the operation and regulation of law enforcement and agency investigatory powers, with specific reference to the interception of communications and the separate issue of communications data. This summer, a panel co-ordinated by the Royal United Services Institute and established by the former Deputy Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr Clegg), reported on the legality, effectiveness and privacy implications of the UK’s surveillance programmes and assessed how law enforcement and intelligence capability can be maintained in the face of technological change.

--- Later in debate ---

[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)]

May I begin by echoing the tribute paid to those Members who have harried the Government on this issue in recent years? It is important to remind ourselves of why we are having this debate. It is because four recent events have called into question the nature and scope of the Wilson doctrine and, indeed, whether it is in any way meaningful.

First, the submissions made on behalf of the Government to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal in the case brought by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) appeared to attempt to undermine the Wilson doctrine and to suggest that it was impossible to have it in the modern age, given the existence of the mass trawling of data.

Secondly, the content of last week’s IPT ruling seemed to be to the effect that the Wilson doctrine has no legal force and is just an ambiguous political statement. We are looking for clarification of that ambiguity.

Thirdly—this is very important from the perspective of Scottish MPs and, indeed, MPs from other areas with devolved Administrations—during the IPT hearing, official and hitherto undisclosed guidance that entered the public domain appeared to show that a change of policy regarding the scope of the Wilson doctrine had occurred around about 2014.

Fourthly, we are having this debate because of the Home Secretary’s comments last July, during a debate on the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill, in response to a question from the hon. Member for West Bromwich East (Mr Watson), who is now the deputy leader of the Labour party. It seems to me that many of us agree that that was the first time the Wilson doctrine had been described on the Floor of the House in caveated terms. The right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) has rightly drawn to our attention the fact that while we may not all disagree about what the Wilson doctrine should actually say, we need to know what the Government think it says.

In July 2014, the Home Secretary talked about certain rules and protocols that would enable interference with parliamentarians’ communications, but she did not say what they were. Instead of explicitly notifying Parliament that the Wilson doctrine was being in any way redefined, the Home Secretary simply presented her comments as a restatement of the original doctrine. However, as other Members have said, previous Prime Ministers, from Harold Wilson in 1966 to Gordon Brown in 2007, had not stated the doctrine with any such caveats. It is interesting and important to remember that, in paragraph 11 of the judgment, the IPT said it was satisfied that what the Home Secretary was referring to in Parliament in July 2014 was the contents of the official guidance to the security services, which we know had changed.

We are having this debate because it is not acceptable for the Executive unilaterally to abandon or modify such a doctrine without explicitly saying that that is what they are doing and informing Parliament. The removal of the protection given by the doctrine or its modification should not occur without any consultation or democratic scrutiny. The Chamber requires from the Government straight answers on their view of the nature and scope of the Wilson doctrine. There needs to be no more prevaricating. There is considerable discontent across the House. The Government should be in no doubt that there will be growing support for the early-day motion tabled by a cross-party contingent over the coming weeks. They need to take this issue very seriously.

If we look at statements by previous Prime Ministers, we can see that they were unambiguous about the doctrine’s existence, nature and extent, despite the fact that there was sometimes pressure from those who argued against the absolute nature of the doctrine. I believe that such pressure was brought to bear on Tony Blair when he was Prime Minister, and he resisted it. The right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) has repeatedly reminded us that, in 2011, the present Prime Minister confirmed to the House that the Wilson doctrine was still in force. However, since the Home Secretary’s comments last July, hon. Members, including the right hon. Gentleman, have repeatedly sought clarification from the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary without success.

As the first Scottish MP to speak in this debate, I must address an important matter that emerged from the IPT hearing. It emerged that the most recent versions of the operational notes to the security services seem to exclude Members of the Scottish Parliament, the other devolved Assemblies and the European Parliament from any protection by the Wilson doctrine. That appears to be in contrast to versions of the same operational notes that appeared before 2014. SNP Members cannot imagine what event in 2014 could have provoked such a renewed interest in the activities of Members of the Scottish Parliament.

I hear the Home Secretary’s point about the discrepancy between what Jacqui Smith said when she was Home Secretary and the code of practice. However, we need to know why the code of practice and the official guidance seems, at least during some period before 2014, to have encompassed parliamentarians in the Scottish Parliament, the other devolved Assemblies and the European Parliament, but were subsequently changed. We need the Government to tell us what is going on. When the Wilson doctrine was first enunciated, there was no Scottish Parliament, other devolved Assemblies or European Parliament—[Interruption.] As my hon. Friend the Member for West Dunbartonshire (Martin John Docherty) says, some people might like to return to that position, but that is highly unlikely.

We need to know why there has been a change in practice in relation to other parliamentarians in this country. The First Minister of Scotland wrote to the Prime Minister on 24 July seeking urgent clarification about this apparent change of policy, but two and a half months later she has still not received a reply. Liberty’s legal director James Welch has commented that removing the protection from the Scottish Parliament shows

“an arrogant lack of respect for democratic institutions”.

It might be said that such an arrogant lack of respect for the Scottish Parliament is often felt by SNP Members and Scottish parliamentarians.

I understand the Prime Minister to have said that there is supposed to be a respect agenda in relation to the Scottish Parliament. We need to know why the intelligence services and this Government think the Scottish Parliament is less of a Parliament or less deserving of such protection. Do they think Scots deserve less protection of their privacy when communicating with their MSPs than with their Westminster counterparts? As the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) asked, why should unelected peers of the realm enjoy greater protection than elected Members of the Scottish Parliament? Unlike Members of the House of Lords, Members of the Scottish Parliament and of the other devolved Assemblies have constituents’ interests to serve and protect. If there is a matter of principle about protecting communications between constituents and those who represent them, it should apply to all parliamentarians.

I want to stress that insisting on proper protection for the communications of parliamentarians with others is special pleading not on behalf of parliamentarians, but on behalf of the constituents, whistleblowers and campaigners who communicate with them. When people contact parliamentarians they are often in a vulnerable position—for example, somebody in a big Government body or a big corporate entity who wishes to blow the whistle on some official scandal. Yes, hon. Members of the House, the Scottish Parliament, the other devolved Assemblies and the European Parliament also have to be protected from intimidation or oversight by the Government so that they can help such sometimes vulnerable people and do their jobs without fear or favour.

What is to be done? The draft investigatory powers Bill to be brought forward in the autumn is an opportunity to refine the law to protect civil liberties and set minimum protections and safeguards across the board and, I suggest, for communications between parliamentarians and constituents. I very much welcome the Home Secretary’s statement that she will give further consideration to the position of parliamentarians in the Scottish Parliament and the other devolved Assemblies. I echo the call made by other hon. Members that there must be sufficient time to consider the Bill, but I am reasonably hopeful that we will be given sufficient time, because the Home Secretary has said that a draft Bill will be brought before the House.

[Chris Bryant]

I urge the hon. and learned Lady not to be too confident. Last time we had to pass such legislation, we had to pass the whole lot in a single day. We had to suspend all the normal processes in the House to take through the Bill in a single day.

[Joanna Cherry]

I was not in the House at that time, but I watched it on the television. I am aware of that, but I am giving the Home Secretary the benefit of the doubt, because she has indicated that it will be a draft investigatory powers Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant]

I can confirm that the deputy leader of the Labour party is perfectly content with the policy that we are arguing for. Indeed, he is the person who got the Home Secretary to confirm for the first time that she had changed the Wilson doctrine.

[Mr Davis]

I will return to the subject of the debate.

The answer to those journalists, commentators and editors who think that this is about the House getting above itself, or that in some sense it is not important, is simple: we should not tolerate the Government intercepting or interfering in any way with any of our communications—there is one tiny exception that I shall return to—because MPs are the people who are charged with holding the Government to account. We forget this line from time to time in the sort of schoolboy antics that pass for the reporting of Parliament in this day and age, but we are the ones who hold the Government to account. In doing so, we deal with campaigners, journalists, whistleblowers, other MPs and, of course, our constituents. The text of the judgment states that the only protected component is our constituents, and although they are incredibly important, in some ways they are the least salient of the components that we deal with.

The Home Secretary, quite properly, reminds the House of the demands of national security. She is right to do that because 58 people have died owing to terrorism within the United Kingdom since 2000, and the figure is about 90 if we include those in Tunisia and elsewhere. Security is a serious issue, but so are matters that are brought to our attention by whistleblowers. Mid Staffs occurred because whistleblowers were supressed or ignored—the same effect that we get by diluting the Wilson doctrine. How many people died unnecessarily at Mid Staffs? It was 1,200. We must not forget that whistleblowers are incredibly important and they would, or will, be supressed by what is seen as the demise of the Wilson doctrine.

Let us consider the possible cases. A police officer calls an MP about corruption, but he might be intercepted by other police officers. A prisoner calls his MP about ill treatment in prison, but he might be intercepted and recorded by other prison officers. A tax official calls the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee about sweetheart deals on tax with big companies and Parliament being lied to—hon. Members might begin to realise that these are real cases—but that person might have his life destroyed because of activities under RIPA. Imagine an official from the Ministry of Defence telling an MP about the mistreatment of a prisoner by the British Army, or an immigration officer telling a shadow Home Secretary about Government deceiving Parliament—that case led to the arrest of one of our colleagues, my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green), some time ago. The absence, failure or demise of the Wilson doctrine would undermine or deter all those cases.

The Home Secretary has a difficult task, because technology is changing under our feet and has been doing so for decades. The difficulty today is that the Wilson doctrine that most people believed was in place is not. The idea that all our communications are protected is untrue for a number of reasons. I cannot find the first reference—I think it was Gordon Brown, but it might have been earlier—but one Prime Minister limited such protection to cases with a warrant from a Secretary of State. Before then it was not limited in such terms. Let us understand what a limitation that is. The report on surveillance by David Anderson, the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, points out that there are more than 65 different statutory mechanisms for initiating intercepts and other sorts of communication surveillance. Very few of those require a warrant from the Secretary of State. It is a very narrow protection.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Bone]

My right hon. Friend makes a powerful point, but that was why I was limiting my questions to telephone conversations, which the Home Secretary would have known about and clearly does know about, but which she does not want to tell the House about.

[Chris Bryant]

For the avoidance of doubt, I want to make it absolutely clear that my personal objection is not that MPs’ phones might have been tapped—there might be circumstances in which that is perfectly legitimate in order for Governments to defend national security or prevent serious criminality—but the continued pretence and repeated assertion that their phones have not been tapped.

[Mr Bone]

I almost agree with the shadow Leader of the House. What I am saying is that I have no objection to the tapping of MPs’ telephones for national security, alongside all the safeguards we have mentioned, but we should be told at least once a year how many times that has occurred. We should know not who is involved, but how often it has occurred so that the House knows what is going on. That, however, is the information that we cannot get, which is why we have to put the Wilson doctrine into law. It expands, of course, into e-mails and all the other forms of communication that are now in place.

Let us have the debate. The shadow Leader of the House seemed to take an assurance from the Home Secretary, but I was not sure whether I was listening to Richard Nixon again. It was not clear to me whether legislation will definitely be brought forward, or if that would be only considered. It is essential that we get clarity about that.

I was very attracted to what my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Tom Pursglove) said when he talked about a treble lock. If an MP’s phone is to be tapped or another form of their communication is to be intercepted, yes, that should be authorised by the Home Secretary and by a judge, but I think it should also be authorised by whoever is sitting in your Chair, Mr Speaker, as the Speaker should also have a role in this. That triple lock would make the process more difficult because if any of those parties disagreed, the proposed intervention would not happen. We need to debate such issues in detail. We cannot pretend that MPs are not having their communications intercepted when clearly, by the omission of a response from the Government, that is exactly what is happening.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant]

I promise you, Mr Speaker, and the Home Secretary, who is already bored by my comments, that I will not speak for long. I am a former curate in the Church of England, so I am accustomed to doctrine being a rather loose concept, but the 38 articles have nothing on the Wilson doctrine. [Interruption.] They were often referred to as the 38 articles, because even though they had to swear allegiance to the 39 articles very few clergy in the Church of England believed in all 39 and clergy often used to leave one of the buttons on their cassock undone just to show that they did not agree with one of the 39 articles. Broadly speaking, that is what the Government have done since 1966; they have been wearing a cassock called the Wilson doctrine but leaving several of the buttons undone.

Excellent contributions have been made in the debate by Scottish National party Members, by the Green party, by colleagues from Northern Ireland, by my fellow Labour Members and by Government Members, but I have sometimes felt as if I have been in an episode of “Through the Looking-Glass” because words have been used in a way that defies their own meaning. It is a bit like when Humpty Dumpty said:

“When I use a word…it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

The truth is that there has been a change; Wilson said Members phones’ would not be tapped. I think we know from this debate that Members’ phones have been tapped, yet successive Prime Ministers and Home Secretaries have sworn blind to this House—they have made written statements and said it time and again in this House—that the Wilson doctrine is fully in place. The truth of the matter is that it is not. I have no objection to the fact that Ministers will, on occasion, have allowed the interception of Members’ communications to have happened, if that is in the interest of national security—no Member of Parliament should be above the law, as everybody has specified—but we should just own up to that fact. If the doctrine is dead, it should be consigned to that place to which all previous doctrines have disappeared when they have been surrendered—to limbo, which itself is a doctrine now surrendered by the Roman Catholic Church.

I say to the Government that I hope that as a result of this debate we can be straightforward in what we say to the public. First and foremost, we should not rely on a doctrine—we should rely on statute law. I hope that the Government will soon introduce legislation which can go to the Joint Committee. I hope that that Committee will be set up as soon as possible so that we can consider all these issues in the round, as they affect whistleblowers, campaigners, those who correspond with MPs and of course constituents. Secondly, there must be greater judicial oversight; it must surely be nonsense that in this country, which prides itself on the rule of law, a politician should be in the position of deciding whether a politician’s communications can be intercepted, and only politicians are in the position of making that judgment. Labour Members believe that a senior judge should be making that decision.

Finally, I come to a point that has been well made by many others: this is not about MPs being a special class of people or seeking special privileges; it is about parliamentarians being able to do the job that they are assigned to by the voters in the country. That should apply not only to Members of this House, but to Members of the other House, Members of the devolved legislatures and Assemblies, and UK Members of the European Parliament. I very much hope that in the next year it will be possible to put the doctrine to bed and have proper statute law to protect our constituents and our ability to hold government to account.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the operation of the Wilson Doctrine.

Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

As I have indicated, the Home Office is leading on the extremism strategy. We will be working on that, but the right hon. Lady should not expect to see anything published before the end of the year. On the wider issue, when we came into power, we made two changes to the way in which Prevent operated, and we did so for a good reason. First, we ensured that Prevent looked not only at violent extremism but at non-violent extremism. Secondly, we saw that in some communities, work being done on community integration under a Prevent heading was being rejected or arousing suspicion. People saw that the work was being done under a counter-terrorism heading and thought that it was about spying on individuals, when it was actually more about community integration. That is why we separated the integration work and gave it to the Department for Communities and Local Government, which has been undertaking that work.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

May I press the Home Secretary about the temporary exclusion orders that she wants to have the power to exact? They would, in effect, result in the exile—albeit short term and temporary—of British citizens, in many cases, to other countries. All history suggests that such action further radicalises people and makes them more dangerous enemies to this country. If we do so without any judicial process, as she advocates in the Bill, is there not a real danger that we will put ourselves in more danger rather than less?

[Mrs May]

I caution the hon. Gentleman about the terminology that he uses in relation to the power. He has used the term “exile”, but the proposal is not about saying that people cannot return. It is possible for people to return, but they will return on the basis that we have set out in the Bill. Their return will be managed and we will have some control over it.

In response to an earlier intervention, I said that the change that we were making to the threshold for TPIMs was from “reasonable suspicion” to “the balance of probabilities”. The change is actually from “reasonable belief” to “the balance of probabilities”. I apologise to the House for having given the wrong impression about that.

Aside from the diplomatic efforts that we must make and the work we must do with those in the region, I have always been clear that we would keep our terrorism laws and capabilities under review. As the House knows, the first and most important duty of Government is the protection and security of their citizens. As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister made clear to the House on 1 September, we must ensure that our law enforcement and intelligence agencies have the powers that they need to keep us safe. The Bill will strengthen our existing powers so that we can disrupt people’s ability to travel abroad to fight, as well as their ability to return to the country. It will enhance our ability to monitor and control the actions of those in the UK who pose a threat and it will help to combat the underlying ideology that feeds, supports and sanctions terrorism.

Part 1 of the Bill will provide the police and MI5 with two new powers that will significantly enhance their ability to restrict the travel of those suspected of seeking to engage in terrorism-related activity overseas. First, it will provide the police, or a designated Border Force officer under their direction, with the power to seize a passport at ports. That will allow them to disrupt the travel of individuals, and give operational agencies the time to investigate and assess whether long-term disruptive action should be taken, on a case-by-case basis. Such action could be taken through, for example, criminal prosecution; the exercise of the royal prerogative to refuse or cancel a passport; a TPIM; deprivation of citizenship; or deportation. The use of this power will be properly safeguarded through a range of measures, including the need for a senior officer’s approval; an additional check by a more senior officer independent of the investigation after 72 hours; an initial retention period of 14 days for the passport; and a court review of the ongoing need to retain a passport, where a judge can allow more time for the police to continue their investigation—up to 30 days. There will also be a statutory code of practice for officers on how to exercise the power, and we intend to publish this code for consultation shortly.

Secondly, the Bill will create a power to issue temporary exclusion orders, to which I have already referred in response to interventions. These orders can temporarily disrupt the return to the UK of a British citizen suspected of involvement in terrorist activity abroad, ensuring that when individuals do return, it is done in a manner that we control. This power will cancel an individual’s travel documents and add them to watch lists, notifying the UK if they attempt to travel. Depending on the individual case, it may also require the individual to comply with certain activities once they are back in the UK. There has been a lot of interest in the nature of this power, as we have seen already this afternoon, but I want to reassure the House that it will not render an individual stateless. All those concerned will have the right, which their citizenship guarantees, to return to the UK. But when they do, it will be on our terms—quite possibly in the company of a police officer. Once they are back in the UK, the police will interview them, in order to explore their activities abroad, and can make them subject to further requirements. We are discussing this proposal with other Governments, in order to agree how it will work best in practice. So far these discussions have been constructive, and this proposal is consistent with all our existing international legal obligations.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant]

There are now literally millions of refugees in Lebanon and children are being born there who are effectively stateless. That is not a recipe for a peaceful middle east, is it?

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is right to say that the huge stresses and strains in the region will have long-term consequences. That is why we need to do our bit with our humanitarian response and recognise the long-term security consequences both in the region and here in Britain.

Let me turn to the Bill’s measures and how they respond to the challenge we face. More needs to be done to prevent young people from being radicalised or drawn into extremism in the first place. The Home Secretary has said that she wants to strengthen the Prevent programme, which we welcome, and we hope that putting it on a statutory footing will help do that. She will know, however, that getting the Prevent programme right is not simply about legislation. The programme has been narrowed over the past few years, which has led to criticism from the Intelligence and Security Committee, which noted in its report last week

“the relatively low priority (and funding) given to Prevent in the CONTEST programme as a whole”.

The Committee concluded:

“The scale of the problem”—

by which it meant the number of people travelling—

“indicates that the Government’s counter-radicalisation programmes are not working.”

We know that Prevent support for local community programmes has dropped from £17 million to less than £3 million over the past few years. Although the Home Secretary talked about the promotion of a counter-narrative, the evidence suggests that far less work is being done now than a few years ago to promote counter-narratives within communities.

--- Later in debate ---

[Yvette Cooper]

More judicial oversight is needed in this area and we will certainly table amendments. It is also important to clarify what the powers are intended to achieve. It appears that they are not intended to achieve exclusion at all and have a very different intention.

[Chris Bryant]

My right hon. Friend is right to raise such queries. May I add two others that she might want to put to the Home Secretary? The first is what constitutes serving notice on somebody. Presumably this happens in another country. How is that notice to be served? How will somebody be deemed to be suitable to have that notice served on them? Secondly, at what point does the exclusion start? Is it before they get on an aeroplane or a boat to come to this country, or is it at they moment they arrive in this country? Once they are in this country, what happens to them? Are they effectively deported?

[Yvette Cooper]

Again, my hon. Friend raises important questions. The independent reviewer said that the policy was an announcement in search of a policy. It started with an announcement by the Prime Minister at a press conference. To be fair to the Home Office, it probably worked hard to try to turn it into some kind of sensible measure that might achieve something as part of the Government’s counter-terror policy but that could still have the label “temporary exclusion order” attached to it in order to keep the Prime Minister happy. The House needs to understand exactly what the Home Secretary’s intention now is. This is not a hugely responsible way to make counter-terror policy or for us all to be able to understand whether it gets the balance right between the powers and measures that are needed and the safeguards that are needed as well.

The Home Secretary has described this as a policy to manage return. The intention behind that is sensible, requiring people to co-operate with the police and security agencies and to attend Channel interviews if they have been involved with ISIL or have been in the region. That is important, but there are some practical questions about how the policy will work—first about co-operation with other countries, secondly about bureaucracy in the process, and thirdly about the safeguards and the judicial oversight.

What happens if a country does not want to co-operate? Have countries such as Turkey said that they will co-operate? Will they immediately deport people? Will they detain people at the airport? How will those orders be served and what will the response be?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to be able to participate in the debate. At the outset, I should say that I welcome my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary introducing the Bill. I entirely agree with her that the House needs continuously to address the challenge and threat that terrorism poses to us. Some people think that the threat is exaggerated, but from my time as Attorney-General—I had to see some of the background briefings, and sometimes to consider cases relating to individuals who had gone abroad, particularly to Syria and Iraq—I have no doubt that she is absolutely accurate in her description of the real threat they pose to us.

With that in mind, I do not intend to take up much of the House’s time on my broad welcome of the legislation. Although the House will want to look in detail at the proposals on TPIMs and data retention, which is undoubtedly important, and the measures on preventing people from being drawn into terrorism, there is no doubt in my mind that they make good sense.

However, I hope to take a little of the House’s time this evening to talk about chapter 2, on temporary exclusion from the United Kingdom; I have flagged up my concerns on how the House should best proceed on that in a question to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. It is a fundamental principle of the common law in this country that an individual, unconvicted—the presumption of innocence applies—should be free to reside in his own land. The principle of exile, as a judicial or even an administrative tool, has not been tolerated in this country since the late 17th century. It is certainly no part of our criminal justice panoply, and certainly not part of administrative provisions or powers given to the state.

[Chris Bryant]

Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way?

[Mr Grieve]

I shall make a bit of progress.

Therefore, when we consider the question of temporary exclusion from the United Kingdom, we must bear it in mind that what is proposed, even if exclusion is on a temporary basis, is a draconian and unusual power being taken by the state. The point has been made that the proposal could be in breach of our international legal obligations by rendering a person stateless.

That is a separate consideration, and I know the Home Secretary has had it in mind in introducing the legislation, but I come back to the more fundamental point about the common law right. The point is often well made that as Parliament is sovereign, it can exclude the common law whenever it likes, but the fact is that the more fundamental the common law principle, the more careful we should be before excluding it. I simply say to my right hon. Friend that this is one of those common law rights that I regard as being of a fundamental character.

If I move on from that to consider what is proposed, I am pleased to note that it seems to me that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has given careful consideration to the issue. The temporary exclusion orders, which she has put forward, appear to be of a character such that she accepts she must issue a permit within a reasonable time after a person makes the application. The process therefore is—in my view, correctly —one of managed return: a return that provides reassurance that the state, which has to protect citizens here, knows of the returnee coming back to this country and, furthermore, provides opportunities, if necessary for the state to impose conditions on that individual after they have come back.

I have to say to my right hon. Friend that what has intrigued me in reading the Bill is the relationship between that and the TPIMs the Bill seeks to enhance in a number of perfectly legitimate and sensible ways. As she will know, the TPIM is also a serious interference in the liberty of the subject, and is therefore provided with a number of safeguards and protections in how it operates. The principal one is that although the Home Secretary instigates the application for a TPIM, the process has to be initiated through the High Court. There are some circumstances, however, in which that can be bypassed in the event of an emergency, and permission sought retrospectively.

The obligations after return to the United Kingdom, in clause 8, appear—the Minister may be able to help us when he comes to sum up—to be in large measure identical to those one might expect a TPIM to include, although there may be some differences, in which case it would be useful to have some clarification. Of course, the principal difference, as far as I can make out, is that this process does not have to be instigated by an application to the High Court; it is simply done on the basis of the Home Secretary concluding that she has reasonable grounds for requiring this process to take place.

I have to say to my right hon. Friend that I will be interested, in the course of the debate during the passage of the Bill, to understand why we should introduce two separate regimes of this kind. We know that, in respect of TPIMs, she has been broadly satisfied with the way they have been operating, even though she wishes to expand some of their scope. That is, I think, supported on both sides of the House. After all, if an individual is located in Iraq or Syria, or has crossed the border into Turkey and has indicated a desire to return when my right hon. Friend has removed his or her passport, the one thing one probably has as a result of this legislation is a short period of leisure—the reasonable period where the application is being made—for, if necessary, the process of a TPIM, or a TPIM which applies to a returnee, to be instigated through the High Court. I am a little mystified as to why we should simply resort to a judicial review process, which, although I accept it may comply with our international legal obligations and also the principles of due process, is nevertheless by its nature likely to be more ponderous and cumbersome, and would not allow the High Court to be seized of this matter at an earlier opportunity.

I say to my right hon. Friend that this is a matter on which we need to spend a bit of time during the passage of the Bill, to see whether in fact the two ways of approaching this are justified. Beyond that, I want to emphasise that the principle of the managed return seems to me eminently sensible, and my right hon. Friend has my support on it. The House will of course also want to look at some of the other issues that may apply to the details in respect of this scheme.

On the seizure of passports, the point needs to be made that a passport is not actually a right to come into the United Kingdom. I say that because we have discussed it in the terms of the matter I have just been talking about. Ultimately, the issue of a passport is a prerogative power. It is, in some ways, vouching for the person concerned. There are many reasons why my right hon. Friend may rightly remove somebody’s passport, either before they leave the United Kingdom or when they are abroad. However, I raise the following issue. We are progressively giving more and more summary powers to seize passports. There is nothing wrong in that, if, for example, it is preventing people from leaving the country when there are good grounds for considering whether they are going to commit, or are likely to commit, an act of terrorism, but it increasingly raises the likelihood of travel documents and passports being seized when it might turn out subsequently on examination that there was no justification.

The memorandum, properly prepared and passed off—I am sure—by the Law Officers before being issued, makes the point that taking passports interferes with article 8 rights. It must therefore raise the possibility of individuals who can show that their passports were wrongly taken making a claim for compensation. As far as I am aware, no issues of compensation have hitherto arisen from passport seizure. I appreciate that it might be different were it done maliciously, but I am talking not about malice but about errors made at the time the passport was removed.

During the passage of the Bill, I hope that my right hon. Friend and other colleagues on the Front Bench will think about the likely consequences, which might often be financial, of increasing powers of passport removal. I do not think that where there are reasonable grounds to suspect involvement in terrorism an individual has a right to compensation, but unfortunately there might be instances of people being targeted when they have no involvement in terrorism.

Ultimately—I have said this previously in the House, but it is worth saying again—we are engaged in a values battle. We will not stop terrorism or prevent young people from going to participate in terrorism by whatever methods of law we pass in this House, however draconian they might be; we will stop this phenomenon when we can persuade people that the virtues of our society, which are many, despite some of its drawbacks, are very considerable and that its values should be respected. For that reason, when we enact such legislation, we must have it in mind that we do not, as an unintended consequence, create the very resentments that are likely to fuel terrorism in the future.

Listening to the shadow Home Secretary, I was reminded that I have said that previously—over 90-day and 42-day pre-charge detention, both of which, I might add, were far more draconian attempts at interfering with the liberty of the subject than anything my right hon. Friend is doing in this measure, which I know she has brought forward with a prudent eye to the issues I have raised. On that basis, I welcome the Bill, but I hope that the matters I have touched on will be given serious thought.

--- Later in debate ---

[Keith Vaz]

The Home Secretary is right that she is due to appear before us in two weeks’ time, but the legislation will probably have passed through the House by then. If a piece of emergency legislation is coming before us, as it is now, Ministers should put themselves before the relevant Select Committee. The right hon. Lady managed to fit in a visit to the British curry awards last night, at which we were of course all delighted to see her, but the point is that the date of 16 December for this emergency legislation to come before the House was fixed many months ago, and Ministers must be prepared to be scrutinised on such legislation. That message clearly applies to all Select Committees. The Home Secretary may nod her head, but that is the position. Our Select Committee is now left to conduct a session on this Bill after its Second Reading, which we will do tomorrow.

[Chris Bryant]

Is it not a particular irony that the Government always drag their heels on legislation when it comes to a subject such as circus animals, but when it comes to legislation dealing with the liberty of the individual, the Government always want to expedite the processes through the House. Is that not a nonsense?

[Keith Vaz]

I thank my hon. Friend, although that also happened with a Government of whom we were both Members; it is a feature of the way in which Governments tend to introduce counter-terrorism legislation. Indeed, as the shadow Home Secretary said, mistakes are made, and there were mistakes under the last Government. I remember the incredibly important speeches of the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield on 42 days and 92 days, and the role played by my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick) on these issues. That is why it is so important to pause, consider, scrutinise and then report to the House. The Select Committee will not be in a position to produce a report for this House as we had hoped we might, simply because there is no time to do so as we have already reached Second Reading. By the time the Home Secretary makes her much-heralded appearance before us, the legislation will probably already have passed through the House.

Having made my complaint about that matter, I agree that these are dangerous times. The Home Secretary and the shadow Home Secretary are absolutely right that we need to act quickly but carefully, while recognising not only that ISIL and extremist groups are operating in Iraq and Syria but that those who support those groups are acting in countries all over the world.

Yesterday I met Nathalie Goulet, the chair of the French Senate Committee that is inquiring into the struggle of jihadi networks in France and Europe. I was astonished to hear that the situation in respect of French citizens travelling to Iraq and Syria is much worse in France than it is in our country. I looked up the last report our Select Committee published, and it must be a surprise for the House to learn that countries such as Belgium, Australia and even Norway are in exactly the same position as we are in respect of citizens who wish to travel abroad to fight.

That is why we cannot see the fight against terrorism as something that affects just this House. The shadow Home Secretary was right to raise the international dimension. The Select Committee was very clear in its last report published earlier this year in saying that there needed to be an international platform, with countries able to pool information and act together. We suggested that we should work through Interpol, which we saw as the most appropriate organisation, as it already exists to share information about organised crime. We felt that that was a platform that could be developed to build an international network with allies such as the French, the Dutch and others to ensure that we do things together and learn good practice.

I learned that in France, for example, they have a dedicated “Green Line”, which people can ring with information about those they suspect of being involved in terrorism, and parents can ring for advice and be guided in the right direction. As a result of the activities of the “Green Line”, the French authorities have been able to stop 200 people from travelling abroad to fight. There are other examples, and I hope that we use the good practice developed in other countries in order not to repeat mistakes and to move forward and try to find effective methods of stopping people travelling.

--- Later in debate ---

[Keith Vaz]

The hon. Gentleman is right. We need to understand much more, and we can only do so at local level: in the mosque, through community activities, in schools—as the Home Secretary said—in colleges, and in prisons. People who have not been radicalised go into those institutions and come out radicalised, and then there is a failure to monitor them. The solutions are all there—in reports written by Committees over a number of years, in contributions made in all the time Members have been in this House, and in speeches of Home Secretaries, as strong as the one we heard today, when she said what she wanted to put right as far as terrorism and radicalisation are concerned—but they are not acted upon, and they have to be acted upon, otherwise we will be back here in a year’s time doing the same thing again, and we do not want that.

[Chris Bryant]

Does that not highlight why, in considering giving new measures to the Home Secretary, it is incumbent on us to assess whether that would radicalise people further or provide greater security to us? My anxiety about temporary exclusion orders is that exile has not had a good history in Britain. When Richard II exiled Henry Bolingbroke, he simply went abroad, gathered a whole load of allies and came back to this country and removed the King. My anxiety is that these new orders will do exactly the same thing.

[Keith Vaz]

My hon. Friend is a greater historian than I am, but our constituents would say, if they were to find out there is someone causing mischief in Kenya, as Adebolajo was, that he should be kept in Kenya if the Kenyan authorities want to prosecute him, and that we should not try to bring him back. If there are people in these countries who are up to mischief and who wish to undermine the values of our country, I can understand perfectly why the Government are suggesting an exclusion order.

The issue here is not that we should not accept that; it is to do with the practicalities that the shadow Home Secretary and the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield have mentioned. Sometimes we need to be very careful that there is proper judicial scrutiny of the decisions we take. I think that sometimes our constituents would prefer such people not to come back. If they are brought back, they have to be monitored so they do not end up putting on a burqa, leaving a mosque and leaving the country, as Mohammed Ahmed Mohamed did. He wanted to stay in Somalia but was brought back to this country and now is nobody knows where.

Of course I support this legislation. When a British Home Secretary comes before the House and says, “These measures are necessary in order to combat the severe threat we face,” the House will obviously support what the Home Secretary is doing. However, there is a need to scrutinise the practicalities, and the Home Office must work closely with the Select Committee and the House to ensure that we have a solution and decisions that will be in the best interests of our country, and will not create the kind of unintended consequences that we all wish to avoid.

Business of the House (Today)

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Monday 10th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

The right hon. and learned Member for North East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell) spoke very wisely. He is absolutely right to say that the way we do our business in this House is just as important as the business we transact. That is why we have rules that govern our proceedings. For centuries we have believed in this country that we govern by consent, not by arbitrary decisions made solely by the Government. We govern by consent, not by proxy motions that are reinterpreted by the Government. That is why it is important that the way we do our business, especially on a matter that affects the imprisonment and extradition of British nationals and nationals of other countries coming back to this country—a matter of essential importance to people’s personal liberty—should be debated properly, openly and transparently on a proper motion that, as the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) said, should be amendable. The motion should not be advanced to the House by proxy or by some subsidiary means; it must be open and clear.

The Home Secretary and the Prime Minister stated quite categorically in this Chamber, and elsewhere in letters, that they would ensure that there was a proper vote on the matter of the European arrest warrant. Mr Speaker, you have said today that this will not be a vote on the European arrest warrant, yet the Justice Secretary, who should know better, has told us that he will reinterpret the message as meaning that this is a vote on the European arrest warrant. I simply say to the Government that for the sake of legal certainty—so that lawyers will not be paid vast quantities of money to debate in extradition courts whether the law has changed and whether it applies—it is essential that they withdraw the motion, and that they should have tabled a proper motion in the first place.

It is no good the Government coming here and saying, “The House may pass one thing, but we will interpret it to mean exactly the opposite.” The House agreed unanimously that the rules should be changed in relation to Magnitsky, and that anyone who had been involved in his murder or in the corruption that he had unveiled would not be allowed in this country. The Government agreed to that at the time, and have done nothing subsequently. The Government let the Wild Animals in Circuses Bill go through, and have done nothing since. We cannot have a Government who conclude, arbitrarily, “The House has decided one thing, but we choose to believe that it means exactly the opposite.”

Criminal Law

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Monday 10th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

In our changes to the legislation we are clear that this is about the decision to charge and to try. As I mentioned earlier, my hon. Friend has been assiduous in championing the issue because of the case of his constituent Andrew Symeou and we all recognise that that sort of circumstance led many people to query the European arrest warrant and be concerned about its operation. The legislative changes we have made allow a British court to decide that unless there is a decision to charge and try an individual, it can reject the European arrest warrant. In addition, we have also made changes so that an individual can be transferred temporarily to give evidence and be returned to the United Kingdom, or to give evidence by video link, for example, so that they do not need physically to be taken to the other country concerned.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

rose—

[Nick de Bois]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs May]

I note my hon. Friend’s point, but I believe that the changes we have made are sufficient to ensure that our courts are able to make judgments on charge and trial, and therefore a judgment on whether a European arrest warrant should be put into place. I will give way to the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant).

[Chris Bryant]

I did not have to ask this time, and I am grateful to the Home Secretary. I fully agree with what she is saying about the European arrest warrant and with many of the changes that she has managed to introduce and negotiate with other countries. I agree with all that, but not with the process she is adopting. On 29 October, when asked about the European arrest warrant, why did the Prime Minister say not just once but four times:

“I am not delaying having a vote on it. There will be a vote on it…we are going to have a vote, we are going to have it before the Rochester by-election”—[Official Report, 29 October 2014; Vol. 587, c. 301.]

The Speaker has already said that this is not a vote on the European arrest warrant. So that all Members of the House can at least reckon that they have had a fair deal, will the Home Secretary please give us a proper vote next week?

--- Later in debate ---

[Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

rose—

[Chris Bryant]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker.

[Mr Speaker]

Before I allow the intervention of the hon. Member for North East Somerset, we have a point of order.

[Chris Bryant]

“Erskine May” says that if a Member prays in aid a document, they must be prepared to submit it to the House. The hon. Member for Ipswich (Ben Gummer) prayed in aid documents that apparently came from the Government Whips. Surely they should be made available to the House.

[Mr Speaker]

It is not as simple as that. The ruling refers to state papers, and I do not honestly think that some document circulated clandestinely or otherwise as a result of the wishes of Her Majesty’s Government Whips Office necessarily constitutes a state paper. It is probably just some piece of advice or other material being lobbed around the Chamber. It does not have a hallowed status.

[Chris Bryant]

Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. I think state papers would normally include anything prepared by a civil servant for a Government Minister. I am sure that the papers to which the hon. Member for Ipswich referred were such.

[Mr Speaker]

I have not seen the document in question, although it may be presented at some point. At this stage, all I am saying is that it is not obvious to me that a state paper is at stake or that the hon. Gentleman has suffered any detriment. We will leave it there. I think that the right hon. Lady was about to take an intervention from Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Clarke]

I have every respect for the strongly held views of quite a lot of Members, including a lot on my side, who do not agree with me on this evening’s measures, but I think we would win back the respect of the public if we had a serious debate on them. We will not if we bog ourselves down in arcane procedural arguments, most of which are a novelty to people sitting in the Chamber at the moment; we are going into hitherto unknown areas. I have never previously heard a Front-Bench spokesman move this motion at any stage in any serious debate, and I do not expect I will for many years to come.

I sympathise with the shadow Home Secretary’s position; indeed, I agree with her on quite a lot of things. Her problem is that she is leading for the Opposition when in policy terms she agrees with absolutely everything the Home Secretary is proposing, and so do I. I congratulate the shadow Home Secretary on her responsible approach to the subject. Everybody in this country responsible for the fight against crime and for the criminal justice system, and wanting to protect the public, is in favour of this opt-in. I am even more closely aligned with her than with some of my colleagues. I voted with her on the Maastricht treaty. I also voted with her on the Lisbon treaty, which paved the way for these international agreements being reached. That has enabled us to be so much more effective than we used to be in dealing with international criminal fugitives, who not only thrived on the Costa del Sol but were very present in London when they fled to this country before we steadily began to develop today’s arrangements.

The shadow Home Secretary has, however, got absolutely no arguments against the Government’s proposals on the merits. She is therefore making a mountain out of a molehill of a parliamentary procedural thing, which she thinks serves her purpose. Of course she is also enjoying herself, which I quite understand in ordinary party political terms. She is allying herself with my right hon. and hon. Friends who profoundly disagree with her and with the Home Secretary, and who are totally opposed to me in my support for these criminal justice measures. The alliance between the shadow Home Secretary and some of the most dyed in the wool Eurosceptics in this House is a very unlikely one, but I go back to where I started.

[Chris Bryant]

The right hon. and learned Gentleman knows that I agree with him on many issues relating to the European Union, but I gently suggest to him that good Europeans like us need to understand that we have to carry the country with us. That requires proper processes in this House, not chicanery and not a proxy motion; we need a proper motion on the Order Paper, which is why every Committee that has considered this matter—the Home Affairs Committee, the Justice Committee and the European Scrutiny Committee—decided that there should be a separate motion. That is all we are calling for.

[Mr Clarke]

I hope my opening remarks made it quite clear that the one thing I am not going to do is get drawn back into this entertaining procedural debate we had earlier on. It seems to me as plain as a pikestaff that if we have a vote at 10 pm on what is apparently on the Order Paper, the Government will be bound either to proceed with the opt-in to 35 measures or not to proceed with the opt-in to any of them. I repeat that the public are expecting the House of Commons to debate this seriously. It may be that there are not enough Members of Parliament against it and there are not enough arguments against it to delay us much longer, but I do not think that is the case. Some very respectable Government Members are going to oppose it—if they ever get the chance.

One way or another, this argument about whether or not the strict requirements of parliamentary procedure—allowing everybody to get wildly indignant about what we all know is synthetic anger at the way the procedures have been brought forward—is not a wise way of proceeding. One thing that unites most Members so far, all the way from my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) to me, is that we think these are serious issues, and to break down now in an atmosphere of such trivial argument will be a triumph for the UKIP but something that all of us ought to regret.

Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Tuesday 15th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

One of the issues that emerged from the ruling of the European Court of Justice was the scope of the data retention directive. The Court believed that it was too broad, and that it was necessary to be more specific about the purposes for which data could be retained. Our legislation was already specific, but we have looked at it again, and we are very clear about its focus in terms of how it will be operated and in terms of its scope. We are addressing the very issue that was raised by the Court.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Both today and last week, the Home Secretary has drawn a distinction between the data and the content. May I suggest to her that reliance on that distinction may not be legally valid in the future? For a start, she has already said that the data are often used to establish or disprove an alibi, and thus to prove someone’s whereabouts. They can be used to establish whether someone banks with a particular bank, or whether someone uses a particular doctor or dentist. I merely suggest to the Home Secretary that, in the world of Facebook and other even more modern ways of messaging, a reliance on the difference between data and content will not stick.

[Mrs May]

The hon. Gentleman is right in the sense that as technology changes and people use new methods of communication, we need to ensure that our agencies’ capabilities and powers, and the legal framework within which they operate those capabilities and powers, are indeed appropriate in relation to the technology as it develops. For that reason I considered introducing a further communications data Bill in this Parliament, but that is not to be, and it is definitely not what today is about. Today is simply about retaining the status quo.

As for the hon. Gentleman’s main point, the review of the capabilities and powers that are needed against the background of the threat that we face and the correct legislative framework will be important in that regard. It will, I hope, look ahead and ask what legislation the House needs to pass to ensure that we can deal with the environment in which we find ourselves.

[Chris Bryant]

Let me take the Home Secretary up on that point. Will she tell us now, at this early stage in the debate, whether she will accept new clause 1, which has been tabled by the shadow Home Secretary?

[Mrs May]

Obviously we shall come to that in Committee, but I am happy to say to the House now that I recognise the shadow Home Secretary’s desire to put the review in statute so that there is no question but that it will go ahead. I want to be clear about what the review will cover, and how we can ensure that it does the job that I think we all want it to do in looking at capabilities and powers and setting the right regulatory framework, and does it in a way—[Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman says “Just say yes”, but I do not say yes to an amendment if I do not think that it will deliver technically what everyone wants. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman says from a sedentary position, “Oh, come on,” but he was one of the Members who earlier stood up and talked about the importance of proper parliamentary process, so I am sure that he would not want to see amendments added to Bills if they did not deliver what everybody wanted them to deliver.

--- Later in debate ---

[Yvette Cooper]

The right hon. Gentleman will know that the directive went considerably further than the regulations we passed in this country. As I recall, the European directive was drawn up in the wake of the 7/7 bombings in London and the terrorist attacks that took place at that time and was designed to provide a framework to ensure that different European countries could legally take the necessary action to investigate terrorism. However, the decision we took in the UK was to implement it much more narrowly, to ensure that safeguards were in place and to ensure that there were safeguards in the operation of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. I think that those safeguards now need to go further in the light of changing technology, and it is important that we do that.

I recognise that the Home Secretary wants only to maintain the status quo and to ensure that powers are not suddenly lost over the summer, but the problem for us is that the status quo is being challenged by the pace of new technology, by the struggle of police and agencies to keep up, by the limitations of a legal framework that dates back to 2000, by the weakness of oversight that does not meet modern expectations, by the Snowden leaks, by the global nature of the internet and by private companies that, in the case of most of us, hold, access and use far more of our private data than any police force or intelligence agency might do.

[Chris Bryant]

Although the Government keep on saying that the status quo is remaining as the status quo, 10 years ago it was the status quo that all electronic communications of MPs were covered by the Wilson doctrine. Earlier this year the Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General said quite the reverse when he stated that metadata about MPs’ communications was now being kept by the Government.

[Yvette Cooper]

My understanding is that the Government do not keep metadata on UK citizens and that the data retention directive is about the information that companies hold, but I would certainly be very surprised if companies were able to separate out the billing data for MPs, for example, from that of any other British citizen. It would be startling if they were able to do so. My hon. Friend is right that one would expect things such as the data retention directive to cover not just MPs but all UK citizens in that way, but my point is that the Government cannot take for granted the need to restore the status quo. We need to debate it and we need reform.

My real concern about how the Government handled the issue is not only about the delay in introducing the legislation after the Court judgment in April and the limited time we have to debate it. It is bigger than that. It is about the Government’s failure to rise to the bigger challenge and debate of the past 12 months. They have said almost nothing in response to the Snowden leaks, to provide either reassurance or reform. They tried to limit the debate over the draft Communications Data Bill, drawing it too widely, and have never been clear about what they really wanted and needed to achieve. They have not faced the new challenges of the digital age and recognised the importance of changing technologies and expectations. They have not started a serious review of the legal framework or the powers and oversight needed. The Home Secretary made a speech a few weeks ago that set out some of the safeguards needed, but it has taken time for Ministers to do that.

Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill (Business of the House)

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Tuesday 15th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I do not doubt for an instant the seriousness of the Government’s concerns about their present legislative situation. I also wholeheartedly want to ensure that the police and the prosecuting authorities have the powers they need, so long as they are proportionate, to be able to secure convictions in some cases, such as those mentioned by Ministers. However, I just say very gently to this House that the reason that we developed over centuries a process whereby every piece of legislation has to go through three readings in this House, a Committee stage and a Report stage, with gaps between each of those stages, was that people in the country had a concern about the overbearing power of the Executive over the individual citizen. The Bill is expressly about that relationship—that is all it is about—and that is why we should be very cautious about suspending and concertinaing the process.

The Home Secretary said last week that it was essential to have a fast track. Well, yes, but there are many different ways of having fast tracks. Everything does not need to be done in one day; it could be done over two days, so there could be a proper process of listening to the debate on Second Reading and then tabling amendments, rather than having to table amendments before the debate has taken place. The only reason this is in any sense an emergency is that the Government spent far too long making up their mind on what to do.

When the House of Lords considered in the previous Parliament the process of fast-track legislation, they put forward some serious and sensible suggestions. First, where there is to be fast-track legislation, the Government should, on a standard basis, publish the legal advice that they believe backs up their case. That has not happened in this case. Secondly, there should always be a sunset clause. I accept that there is a sunset clause in the Bill. The sun will take a very long time to set, but none the less that is a matter for us to debate later on. Thirdly, the Lords made it absolutely clear that wherever possible there should be a process of pre-legislative scrutiny. I do not believe that publication of the Bill last Friday in draft form and the Secretary of State appearing at the Home Affairs Committee yesterday was anywhere near adequate pre-legislative scrutiny of this because we are being asked to accept, on face value, the Government’s assurances that this is merely the status quo and that there is no change. We want to be able to test that, which is why I think we should always proceed very reluctantly when we concertina the standard processes that have been with us for centuries and which have stood us in good stead.

Communications Data and Interception

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Thursday 10th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Although I appreciate that this is a very difficult subject, I remind the House that short questions and answers will mean that everyone has a chance to contribute to this statement.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I sympathise with the Home Secretary’s quandary, but I rather sympathise, too, with the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), because the only reason that this is an emergency that has to be dealt with in a single day in the House of Commons is that the Government have spent three months making up their mind, and they have decided that we are going on holiday in 10 days’ time. Does it not make far more sense to enable proper consideration so that we do not have unintended consequences from this legislation? If the legislation was considered in this House on two separate days, we could table amendments after Second Reading.

[Mrs May]

I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point. To ensure that we get this legislation through in the necessary time and that we have a space of time—I recognise that it is a short space of time—I am publishing the draft Bill today. I am not waiting until Monday to publish the formal introduction of the Bill, because I want Members to have some extra time to look at it. It is important for this House to proceed through this matter in a timely way such that we can ensure that we do not lose the capabilities, and that we get the legislation on the statute book before the recess.