Investigatory Powers Bill (Sixteenth sitting)

Christian Matheson Excerpts

Committee Debate: 16th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 3rd May 2016 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Order. We are not ready for you yet, Minister.

[Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)]

I can assure you, Mr Owen, that I will not detain you, the Minister or the Committee for long, save to endorse what my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras has said.

If this is to be our final debate in Committee, I pay tribute to the forensic diligence exercised by my hon. and learned Friend throughout our proceedings and as exemplified by new clause 25 that he has tabled. The crux of so much of what we have discussed in Committee has been balance—where the right balance is between the protection of individual privacy and the ability of our security, intelligence and law enforcement agencies to protect us as a nation. We all have different beliefs about where the balance lies and it is the job of the Committee and the House to establish that balance.

As my hon. and learned Friend has made clear, adding this overarching new clause would give the public a level of comfort—a level of trust, indeed—that we have the balance correct. The new clause would remind us, right at the start of the Bill, of the principles that we think underpin the legislation. That would provide the public with the comfort that they require and also imbue a sense of trust in the final Act that we hand over to the judiciary, the Home Secretary and the agencies that are charged with protecting us. Given the structure of the Bill and the repeated application of certain measures to different areas of activity, an overarching clause would provide a solid foundation to the rest of the Bill’s structure.

I commend my hon. and learned Friend for his work, and in particular for the new clause, because it helps to achieve the balance between protection of privacy and the protection and defence of the realm. I hope that it goes a long way towards winning the support of more sceptical members of the public who might be looking for reasons why they should not support the Bill; now, we can give them a reason why they should.

[Joanna Cherry]

I add my support and that of the Scottish National party to the new clause. I will tell hon. Members about an example of such a clause in Scottish legislation, which they might wish to look at. In doing so, I pay generous tribute to honourable Labour and Liberal Democratic parties which passed it. In coalition in the first Session of the Scottish Parliament, they passed a wonderful piece of legislation, the Mental Health (Care and Treatment) (Scotland) Act 2003. It was based on a report produced by a committee chaired by the late right hon. Bruce Millan, a former Secretary of State for Scotland and a very distinguished gentleman.

The 2003 Act sought thoroughly to modernise and codify the law of Scotland on mental health and, in particular, to take into account the human rights of those who have mental health problems. To do that, it set out in section 1 of the Act general principles that everyone discharging functions under the legislation must stand by. It is a piece of legislation that has very much stood the test of time and it has greatly enhanced the protection of the human rights of those in Scotland with mental health problems. It has also balanced that against the protection of the public in certain situations. The new clause does not take a legislative approach that is without precedent. If Members want to see how it might be done, they can find a similar example to new clause 25 in section 1 of the Mental Health (Care and Treatment) (Scotland) Act 2003.