Investigatory Powers Bill (Fourth sitting)

Debate between Christian Matheson and Simon Hoare

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

[Simon Hoare]

Up to a point, Lord Copper. I find myself in broad agreement with the hon. Member for City of Chester. Likewise, I could not give a tinker’s cuss about most of these things as long as I can look a constituent in the eye were something horrible to happen on the streets of Shaftesbury, Blandford Forum, Gillingham or any of the villages in my constituency. They might look at me and say, “Mr Hoare, are you convinced that you supported everything you possibly could to avoid this atrocity?” I would prefer to say, “Yes, I did.” If it impinged upon or offended against the virgo intacta of civil liberties as a sort of purist academic—I use that word not in an abusive way—definition, I would side with the security argument at every step and turn.

I am not using that as the Luddite argument that someone who has done nothing wrong has nothing to be afraid of. It is absolutely right that to govern is to choose. It straddles that often imperceptible divide between the application of the rule of law and discharging the first duty of the state—to keep the realm safe—and preserving the sacred and long-cherished liberties and freedoms that we all enjoy.

I accept what the hon. and learned Lady says on that point, but it is not just Liberty and Amnesty and other organisations that have access to legal counsel. It is not that the statue, as it emerges through all our processes, would be available only to us and the good guys. It would be available to those who wish us well, but I am going to hazard a guess that one or two of those who wish this country ill—whether in terms of national security, serious crime or acting in an injurious way to our economic wellbeing—may just have recourse to a legally trained brain or two themselves. They, too, would be able to say, “Ah, we’ll do it that way”, because the Home Secretary, the Foreign Secretary, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland or the Defence Secretary would be so hogtied by the narrow definitions contained in the statute of the Bill, because people sought to stand—this is a phrase I used on Second Reading—like vestal virgins, defending the flame of civil liberty, because that is the flame that must be defended above all others and national security must be secondary to it. That is a perfectly acceptable and reasonable position to take, but it is one with which I profoundly disagree. It offends everything that motivates me as a politician.

We need to be very careful about having, either in the proposed amendments or during the progress of the Bill in Committee and on Report, an obsessive regard to trying to narrow down our language. Providing that the double lock with the judicial oversight remains for all circumstances whereby these warrants and other facilities can be granted—as long as that judicial view is there—that would seem to be in order to secure the provision for the short, medium and longer term, so that we do not have to come back through the legislative process to continually update the narrow language in the Bill to reflect circumstances or address scenarios that, without sounding too much like Donald Rumsfeld, in 2016, we did not think existed or could exist.

It is not from some sort of bovine, recidivist, reactionary, “We are the law and order side of the Tory party” sentiment that I find this quest for the narrowing down of our language to be wrong. It would fetter and constrain the decisions of Ministers and those who, on a daily basis, put their lives at risk under the rule of law to keep us safe. I shall be opposing this set of amendments, just as I will any other amendment, not because my Front Bencher or my Whip advises me to, but merely because I think that there is nothing intrinsically wrong—this is the non-lawyer’s approach—in having broad definitions that provide accountable scope to those who take the decision, so that they are able to take those decisions in response to circumstances as they arise.

[Christian Matheson]

There has been the requisite level of jousting and debate, and sometimes temperatures have risen a little bit, but I have found Ministers at least prepared to justify their arguments and to listen to other arguments. I say that, importantly, because this clause and the amendments are of profound importance to me and to many Opposition Members. I have absolutely no doubt that there are occasions when attacks on the United Kingdom can be carried out on an economic, rather than a military or criminal, basis. Let us consider a hypothetical example of a country that is adept at undertaking cybercrime against the London stock exchange to manipulate stock market activity or shares, or to bring the stock exchange down. That, of course, would have a serious effect on the operation of the City of London. I accept that that can happen.

The hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West talked about criminal activity. I have no doubt that the activity in the scenario I described would be considered criminal activity, but when my good friend the hon. Member for North Dorset talked about the elephant in the room, I thought he was going to mention the real elephant in the room and he did not. The real elephant in the room, certainly for me, is that, on such a broad definition of economic activity, the activities of trade unions in the United Kingdom could be brought under the scope of the Bill. I ask Members not to try to intervene to correct me because unfortunately that is the case. That is the real elephant in the room.

I do not believe that Ministers today do not consider trade unions to be an important and relevant part of civil society, but on Second Reading my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) gave the example of the Shrewsbury pickets, whose case was examined by the Secret Intelligence Service, and made the point that their convictions still stand. Indeed, there are right hon. and hon. Members of this House today who were right hon. or hon. Members of the House or indeed the Government in the 1980s when trade unions were seen as “the enemy within” and banned from representing members at GCHQ because it was considered that trade union membership and activity was incompatible with a commitment to international security, which is a position that is as absurd as it is downright insulting. I genuinely believe that Government Members have moved on from that positon.

Government Members may well wish to point to subsection (4), which suggests that:

“A warrant may be considered necessary as mentioned...only if the information which it is considered necessary to obtain is information relating to the acts or intentions of persons outside the British Islands.”

They may feel that that gives sufficient protection. I must say that, in my experience, unfortunately it does not.

At this point I remind the Committee that I am a member of the GMB and Unite trade unions and I was formerly a senior official with Unite. That experience gives me insight that I wonder whether Ministers and Government Members, through no fault of their own, do not have. My plea is that they bear in mind that our economy is a globalised one, employers and industries are globalising and, in response, trade unions have had to do the same. Trade unions will gather together in bilateral agreements or bilateral alliances. In the UK, they may well join international trade union organisations such as the IMF—I should point out that that is the International Metalworkers Federation rather than any large economic body—or, as I did, they may well form a globalised trade union with other trade unions so that they meet globalised employers on the same basis and cannot be picked off, one against the other.

In the past, for example—this was quite a regular occurrence—I found myself in Canada on negotiations with mining and mineral extraction employers based in Brazil, working with trade unions from outside the UK. There were disputes with British Airways, which at the time was incorporated through International Airlines Group in Spain, and I found myself in Bangladesh working with the Bangladeshi trade unions that we were trying to form to help them develop trade union strength against the exploitation of shipbreakers. Globalised trade unions pursuing genuine avenues of trade disputes with globalised employers are a modern-day reality.

When the hon. Member for North Dorset talked about the elephant in the room, I thought he was going to mention the great fears that Opposition Members have that trade union membership could be seen as damaging to the nation’s economic wellbeing. If we seek to amend the clause to give the greater clarity that I understand Government Members do not wish to see, it is for good reasons of bitter experience—reasons that Ministers are perhaps not aware of, because of their own personal experience.