Investigatory Powers Bill (Sixteenth sitting)

Debate between Christian Matheson and Joanna Cherry

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

[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.

Investigatory Powers Bill (Tenth sitting)

Debate between Christian Matheson and Joanna Cherry

Committee Debate: 10th sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 21st April 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Joanna Cherry]

I am glad to hear that the hon. Gentleman does not want the Americans to tell the British how to run their affairs. In very much the same way, I do not want the British establishment to tell Scotland how to run its affairs. We can have that argument another day—

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

We have already had that argument.

[Joanna Cherry]

I think the hon. Gentleman will find that the argument is alive and kicking north of the border, but we digress.

I can reassure the hon. Member for North Dorset that I have no intention of following the United States of America’s security policy. We should devise our own policy in the United Kingdom, so long as it remains the United Kingdom. I am saying that we should set up an independent review body, made up of people from the United Kingdom—not the Americans or French; let us not panic about the French or the Americans telling us what to do. I am suggesting that our own people, if I may use that phrase, should be on the body. I mentioned the American experience to show that our key ally in such matters has, as a result of two very high-level congressional committees, reached the view that bulk powers are not justified. That is my point; it is not that we should do what the Americans tell us to do. I can assure the Committee that that is far from being the position of the Scottish National party. My point is that we should look to the experience in other countries to inform our decision making.

Investigatory Powers Bill (Fourth sitting)

Debate between Christian Matheson and Joanna Cherry

Committee Debate: 4th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 12th April 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Joanna Cherry]

These amendments would delete the separate ground for interception of economic wellbeing from the face of the Bill and require that grounds for interception are tied to a threshold of reasonable suspicion of criminal behaviour.

The Bill re-legislates for RIPA’s three broad statutory grounds for issuing surveillance warrants. The Secretary of State may issue warrants for interception, hacking and so on

“in the interests of national security…for the purpose of preventing or detecting serious crime, or…in the interests of the economic well-being of the United Kingdom so far as those interests are also relevant to the interests of national security”.

That final ground can apply only where it relates to the acts or intentions of persons outside the British islands.

I support the amendments because all three main statutory grounds are, in my submission, unnecessarily vague and are left dangerously undefined. As the decision will continue to lie with the Secretary of State, the test will be met by whatever he or she subjectively decides is in the interests of the national security or economic wellbeing of the UK, having regard to popular sentiment rather than to what is necessary and proportionate, as we have now heard from the Minister’s own mouth. The tests mean that individuals are not able to foresee when surveillance powers might be used, and they grant the Secretary of State a discretion that is so broad as to be arbitrary. The Joint Committee on the draft Bill recommended that the Bill should include a definition of national security, and I call upon the Government to produce such an amendment. If the Government sprinkle the Bill so liberally with the phrase “national security”—indeed, it is the Government’s job to defend national security—they need to tell us what they mean by that phrase, so I call upon them to define it.

The Joint Committee also recommended that the phrase “economic wellbeing” should be defined, but the ISC went further and said that economic wellbeing should be subsumed within a national security definition, finding it unnecessarily confusing and complicated. I heartily endorse the ISC’s view in that regard. The third ground is an unnecessary repetition unless there is something sinister behind the definition of “economic wellbeing,” and many Members of the official Opposition, and indeed of my own party, have serious concerns about what that might be about.

Recently, the Prime Minister went so far as to say, ridiculously in my view, that the Labour party is now a “threat to national security”. I am not a member of the Labour party, although I once was when I was a student.

[Christian Matheson]

Join us again.

[Joanna Cherry]

I am very happy to join Labour in many aspects of this Bill, but I have taken a slightly more radical path in middle age as an SNP MP. It is a disgrace to suggest that the Labour party is a threat to national security, and such loose language shows us that the continued undefined use of the term “national security” in enabling legislation is not sustainable.

The ISC also queried both the agencies and the Home Office on the economic wellbeing ground, and it reported that neither the agencies nor the Home Office have “provided any sensible explanation.” I hope that we might get a sensible explanation from the Government today, and I wait to hear whether we get one. Regrettably, the recommendations of the ISC and the Joint Committee have been dismissed, and the core purposes for which the extraordinary powers can now be used remain undefined and dangerously flexible within the Bill.

That is the nub of my concerns about the definitions of “national security” and “economic wellbeing.” The SNP amendments go slightly further than the Labour party is prepared to go at this stage by requiring reasonable suspicion. At the moment, the three grounds contain no requirement for reasonable suspicion that an individual has committed or intends to commit a serious criminal offence, nor even suspicion or evidence that a serious crime has been or is going to be committed. In my submission, that gives licence for speculative surveillance.

Briefly, on the national security ground, the courts have in the past responded with considerable deference to Government claims of national security, viewing them not so much as a matter of law but as Executive-led policy judgments. As a legal test, national security is meaningless unless the Government attempt to tell us what they mean by it. The second ground is similarly broad and open-ended because the Government have not sought to clarify the circumstances in which national security, as opposed to the prevention and detection of serious crime, will be in play.

I invite the Government to table an amendment to tell us what they mean by national security, to explain why it is necessary to have a ground revolving purely around economic wellbeing, to explain why they have discounted the recommendations of the Joint Committee and the ISC, and to tell us why there is no requirement for reasonable suspicion in these grounds.