Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Bill

Dan Carden Excerpts

Committee stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Committee: 1st sitting & Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons & Report stage & Report stage: House of Commons
Thursday 15th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

The proceedings on this Bill today are an absolute travesty of parliamentary accountability. That a major Bill such as this, with huge implications for civil rights and human rights in our society and for our standing around the world, should be pushed through in a very short time this afternoon is a travesty. I suspect we will not even vote on most of the amendments—they will not have been subject to stand-alone debates. In effect, we are having another Second Reading debate to accommodate those who have tabled amendments. We should reflect on this House’s role in holding this Government to account.

I have added my name to a number of amendments, particularly those drafted by my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy), to whom I pay tribute for her work on the Bill and her contribution this afternoon.

The Mitting inquiry into undercover policing operations, which succeeded the Pitchford inquiry after Pitchford’s death, is still going on. It was due to report in 2018; it has not even got into its second and third stages yet and may well go on for several years more before it reports. It covers undercover policing since 1968, a time which, I reflect, more or less covers my whole political life, so I will read with great interest the Mitting inquiry’s final report.

What has come out so far for those of us who have good friends in environmental groups, human rights groups, trade unions and many other campaigns is the sheer arrogance of police undercover operations that have infiltrated wholly legitimate and legal operations in order to disrupt them, spread negative information and cause problems for them. If we live in a free and democratic society, criminality is obviously not acceptable and policing is obviously required to deal with it, but we do not deal with criminality by authorising criminality through undercover policing operations and investigations into such groups.

There are those of us who have had the honour of meeting people, particularly women, in a number of groups that have been infiltrated by the police and the police have then knowingly formed sexual liaisons with those women. Children have been given birth to a result and then, often years later, the woman concerned finds out that she was completely duped—completely misled—and her life was ruined by an undercover police operation. Imagine what it feels like for someone to have been with what they thought was their life partner for several years, and they discover that that person was put there by the police to seduce them into giving information on, actually, legal activities done by environmental and other groups. Will the Bill protect women from that in future? I think we all know the answer to that.

I hope that, at the very least, the House of Lords is able to make some substantial amendments to the Bill. I am disappointed that the College of Policing advice, which has just come out, is that it is not necessarily wrong for undercover officers to form sexual relations with people to gain information. This is the kind of world that we are about to approve of unless the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham, my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) and others are accepted by the Government today.

I will be brief, because there is not much time and 11 more colleagues wish to speak before 3.20 pm. The second matter to which I shall refer relates to the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham. The Bill says that people cannot do anything to undermine the economic wellbeing of the country. What does that actually mean? Does that mean, for example, that if dock workers decided to take strike action because they had reached the end of the road in negotiations with their employer and therefore wished to withdraw their labour to force a settlement of their grievance, they would be acting against the economic interests of this country, because that would disrupt trade? Or would they be acting in the interests of themselves, their colleagues and other workers by trying to improve their economic wellbeing? There is a big debate about what is economic wellbeing and what is not.

There are those, like me, who have seen the activities of undercover police operations in trade unions and the blacklisting of wholly legitimate trade union representatives, who have spent 20 years and more being unable to work, as electricians, as carpenters or as plumbers, because they have been blacklisted secretly by groups of employers, when the police knew about it all along. These were wholly illegal activities. The police need to recognise that what they have been doing is completely wrong—it is simply unacceptable.

I hope that we will have a thought for the moment for the more than 1,000 groups that have been infiltrated in some way by the police at some point over the past few years. Those of us who have spent our lives campaigning for social justice and environmental sustainability, and against racism in any form, often wonder why there is apparently much less concern about, much less involvement with and much less attention paid to far-right racist organisations than to other people within our society. We need to know the answers to all these questions, but I suspect we will not get them today.

My hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) has tabled an amendment that proposes that activities should in future be authorised only by the Prime Minister. My hon. Friend the Member for Streatham has also proposed amendments on the issue of accountability, which is the key to this. I wonder whether Ministers actually knew what was going on or know what is going on now. I wonder whether senior police officers always knew what was going on. I wonder how many different quasi-secret operations were being conducted in different police authorities around the country without the relevant police commander even knowing what was happening. Inquiries in South Yorkshire in respect of Orgreave and Hillsborough tend to indicate there is a lack of transparency in the way the police operate.

The right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) spoke correctly about the issue of where we are going if we go down a road of ignoring human rights and justice within our society. He and I spent a lot of time campaigning to try to get British nationals and British residents released from Guantanamo Bay. The whole thing is a disgrace. The whole thing is extra-judicial in every conceivable way. Likewise, this country and our Government here were involved in extraordinary rendition in some form. If we are to hold our heads up around the world as being supporters of human rights, and as being a signatory to the universal declaration, the European convention and our own Human Rights Act, we need to look carefully at ourselves and at what this Bill proposes. I hope that at the very least the Minister will make it clear whether the Government are committed to continuing to support, recognise and work within the terms of the historic and important Human Rights Act or whether, once again, he will be appealing to the backwoods people in the Tory party who see human rights as somehow a term of abuse and who want to repeal that Act or reduce its power and importance. These things are very important.

I regret that we have such a short time for this crucial debate today, but I am moved by the hundreds of people who have been in touch with MPs about this, and the dozens of organisations, not necessarily all protest groups or on the left—these groups cover peace, civil liberties and human rights—that are very concerned about this Bill. These are people who think seriously about these matters and we would do well to listen to them, rather than ramming this through in a few hours on a Thursday afternoon and imagining that that will be job done. It will not be, because this will all get back in the courts at some point in the future and the Mitting inquiry report will come out at some point. Many of us will continue our vigilance in order to protect civil liberties and human rights in our society and our country, and to protect the civil liberties and rights of those who work in the police and other security services.

[Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Dame Rosie. I understand that my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) has swapped places with my right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) in the list, and they are to be on either side of my speech. I was just wondering whether there was a reason for that.

[The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that point of order. I understand that the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) spoke to my predecessor in the Chair because he is speaking to his new clause, so, very unusually, given that the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) was happy to swap places, that seemed reasonable. There is nothing sinister about it and it has not altered where the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden) comes in the call list, but for the value of the debate, it was felt to be reasonable that the person speaking to the new clause could move forward. It does not affect when the hon. Gentleman is speaking, I can assure him.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

There was a time when I used to like the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden), when he was a young researcher here. There is nothing sinister happening—it was the fact that the Intelligence and Security Committee sat this morning. I was going to move the amendment because the Committee was still sitting, and that is why it was done. It is nothing against the individual personally, and he knows I have a lot of respect for him.

I support the Bill, and obviously the new clause in the name of the ISC, because it gives a legal framework to cover this area of work. Having been on the ISC for a number of years, I have seen transcripts of some of the evidence from CHIS. Is it information that we could get in any other way? No, it is not. There is a misunderstanding that somehow now with modern technology, telecommunication intercepts and everything else, we can get all the information that we require. We cannot. The best is still from human sources. Certainly, with the cases I have seen and the transcripts for terrorism cases relating to Islamic terrorism and the ones for Northern Ireland, the work that the security services do to protect us all—including all communities, and that includes marginalised communities—could not be done without that CHIS involvement.

There has also been a misunderstanding—I think it gets crossed over in the Bill—between what is happening now and what happened in the past. I am no defender of what happened in the past, in terms of some of the things that were referred to in Northern Ireland or even the spy cops issue. Under this legislation, we will have the Investigatory Powers Commissioner’s oversight of the situation, and there is a big difference between police officers, in terms of this authorisation, and civilians. Police officers will come under the Bill, but remember, more importantly, their conduct is also covered by other legislation.

I know that the spy cops case is cited, as though this would legitimise them. It would not because police officers would still have to come under the legislation that covers their conduct. They are more controlled than the civilians or individuals we will recruit both for organised crime or national security issues, who will have to commit crimes on occasions to ensure that their cover is not blown. I have seen the transcripts, and although I cannot refer to individual cases, I have seen one where an individual was part of a proscribed organisation for many years. His actions have not only led to a major disruption of that organisation, but, I think, saved lives. Therefore, is it right that this should be on a legal footing? Yes it can.

My hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy) said that this would give carte blanche for the security services and police to do what they want. I am sorry, but it does not. We have to look at the guidance, which many people have not looked at. I know that some Opposition Members have been saying that they will vote against the Bill on principle. Well, I am sorry, but I do not see anything principled in weakening the ability of our security services to protect us or of the police to protect trafficked women and children, or in the fact that it will make the situation worse for some of the most vulnerable people in our society, who are preyed upon not only by organised crime but terrorism groups.

All I say to Members is please read the Bill and read the guidance, because the guidance is important. I have some problems with the Bill in the sense that it could be improved. My right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) made a very good point that this is probably not the way to do it. We should have had more time, and perhaps debated it in Committee upstairs, which would have been far better. It is important that we get this right, but the idea that the security services do not have any oversight is not the case. In fact, they will have more oversight. May I just say this: the individuals who are running CHISs are not just the office boys in MI5; they are senior officials who not only have training on the guidance, but know the difficult situations that are being dealt with on the ground. I say to Members: please do not go for headlines; look at what happens in the Bill. The Bill can be improved, which is why I support the oversight proposed in new clause 3.

I agree with the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) on one point—a point that was also raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) in her contribution in which she made some other very legitimate points. The Bill would be strengthened if the guidance was actually in the Bill. I have no problems with the guidance as it is written at the moment, because it is both strong and robust. The right hon. Gentleman’s point was that if it were in the Bill, it could not be, as he said, tinkered with or changed afterwards.

I also ask Members to look at the present, rather than at what went on in the past. My right hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) is right: we cannot justify what some of the agencies did in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s without any scrutiny—whether for the police or the security services. As for blacklisting, the Bill will not lead to a situation in which blacklisting is not given a red light. If Members read the guidance, they will see that that would fall out of the scope of that guidance. Likewise, the Investigatory Powers Commissioner will be able to look at those individual warrants. Moreover, as a former trade union official, I know that blacklisting existed, but certain members of trade unions do not have a great history in terms of their collusion, on some occasions, with employers in certain industries to blacklist trade unionists. I feel passionate about this in the sense that it is wrong, but it cannot all be necessarily put down to the employers.

May I touch on two other points? The first is the issue around amendment 7 in the names of those on the Labour Front Bench. I have problems with it. I accept that, as the Bill is written, it is looking backwards at these cases. Operationally, from the cases that I have seen, the idea that we could get a judge to cover the scope of potential criminality in certain areas would be difficult. Let us say, as an example, that we have someone who has been authorised to get involved in the drugs trade, but then they are asked to carry out a burglary. A very broad warrant would have to be issued to cover quite large things. I think that it is perhaps better leaving it in the guidance and with the officer. I have seen evidence that there are occasions when the security services will withdraw authorisation from a CHIS, and they do so because people are getting involved in things that are quite clearly not in the public interest and are not followed by the guidance. That does happen.

I have one final point, which again has been raised and which I still struggle with. Why have other organisations been lumped into the Bill? I am quite content for the police and the security services to be covered by this legislation, but I am less at ease with the Food Standards Agency and others being given authorisation. There is a level of expertise now, both in the police and in the security services, in terms of being able to authorise, train and run CHISs, which might not be there in the other organisations when, perhaps, they are dealing with very small numbers of cases over a period.

The Bill is an improvement on what we have at the moment, because it will bring in a legal framework. Can it be improved? I think that it can be, but, again, I urge people to read the Bill and read the guidance and to look at them in terms of what is happening today rather than what has happened historically.

[Dan Carden]

I am delighted to follow my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones)—

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Right hon.

[Dan Carden]

My right hon. Friend. I think that was one of the briefest speeches he has ever made in this House.

This Bill is about the power of the state, and it is also about the rights of citizens. What we have today is a book of amendments, almost each and every one of which would improve the Bill, but unfortunately, it feels to me like a fait accompli by the Government. I am not surprised that the Government are not listening to civil liberties organisations, but I am pretty surprised that they are not even listening to the Intelligence and Security Committee of this House. The way in which the House is being led down the garden path is something worth speaking up against.

I would not be in this House if it was not for my experiences growing up with a dad involved in an industrial dispute for over two years—the experience of workers taking action and the challenges they faced. That was an unofficial dispute, opposing casualisation and insecurity, and it lasted two years. It is relevant because there is a real worry that these powers could be misused. What matters is what is in the Bill. Of course we all want appropriate powers to deal with criminality and the most serious crimes. However, the scope in the Bill for organising criminal conduct by the state is wide open to abuse, and it comes down to a triple-whammy attack on our civil liberties.

First, the Bill permits secret agents of the state to commit any crime to prevent what they consider to be disorder or harm to the economic wellbeing of the UK. Secondly, it does not include the necessary independent judicial oversight, so the agencies concerned will act alone in that decision making. Finally, the Bill does not limit those crimes at all. We have heard that the Human Rights Act will be applied to this legislation, but the Human Rights Act does not create crimes like other legislation does. Rather, it means that a Government can be found in breach of that Act, so the crimes in this Bill are simply not limited.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on the contribution that he is making, and I forgive him his earlier remarks. He says that the scope is unlimited, but it is not, because the guidance that goes alongside the Bill—which I accept should be in the Bill—makes it clear that it will not lead to the free-for-all that he is suggesting.

[Dan Carden]

I think my right hon. Friend has far more trust in the words of the Government and the guidance than I do.

What would stop an agency deciding that an unofficial dispute constituted disorder or harm to the economy that it was worth taking action against? The Bill is written so badly and broadly that it is effectively a licence to criminally disrupt working people taking action to support themselves, their co-workers and their families, and we have seen this all too often in the past. The Bill paves the way for gross abuses of state power against citizens.

In Liverpool, we have a healthy suspicion of state power, because we have felt its damaging force too often in the past. We have experienced the 30-year fight of the Hillsborough families and survivors for truth and justice. We have had striking workers targeted by state violence, and trade unionists blacklisted and spied on for representing their members, and we are not alone. Campaigners fighting miscarriages of justice across our country, such as Orgreave, the Shrewsbury 24 and now Grenfell Tower, oppose this dangerous Bill.

I fear that my own party is being taken for a ride by this Government, because I will tell you what happens. You start with the idea that legislating for something that operates in the shadows must be a good thing. You then engage in good faith with a morally bankrupt Government arguing for vital safeguards, and once that Government finish stringing you along, you end up in the perverse situation of condoning laws that ride a coach and horses through our nation’s civil liberties and could even be used against the labour movement itself.

I am sent here by my constituents to stand up for their rights, freedoms and well-being, and that is what forces me to vote against the Bill tonight.

[Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

The reason I asked to speak later in the debate this afternoon was made clear by the speech by my right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones). His knowledge and experience from his time on the ISC gives him an insight into the issue that many of us in this House just do not have. I am a very new member of the ISC, and I have a lot to learn, but I know that it is important to listen to those who have that knowledge and experience.

When I spoke on Second Reading, I made a short contribution saying that I supported the law on giving covert sources the right to break the law being set out expressly. I think that is absolutely right. We need to have those legal safeguards set out very clearly, but that also reminded me of those individuals who put themselves at great risk to go undercover to infiltrate terrorist groups, serious organised crime groups or paedophile rings. They are doing that on our behalf, and it is right that we now have a law that gives protection to them for what we are asking them to do.

As has been said already, the Bill could be improved, and I am disappointed that I have not seen much movement from the Government on the improvements that could be made on oversight and additional safeguards. I am also disappointed that consideration is being squashed into a Thursday afternoon to deal with this really important legislation. As the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee and the Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee said, the timing of this is not helpful at all.

There has been recognition over several years that our intelligence services have needed to come out of the shadows, and the role of oversight and accountability has developed, not least through the role that Parliament has played in the creation of the Intelligence and Security Committee. Over the past few years it has extended its responsibilities and powers. So I join the Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee and my right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham in supporting new clause 3 in the name of members of that committee, cross-party, to give that further oversight every 12 months of the numbers and categories of authorisations given under the Bill. That would, it seems to me, fit with the role that we already have under the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 in the bulk interception power. Having that on the face of the Bill is really important, because it spells out very clearly that Parliament believes that the role of the ISC is to look at issues like this on behalf of Parliament.

The ISC will only be able to review those agencies that we have responsibility for, so I agree with hon. Members who have raised questions about the oversight of some of those agencies included in the Bill. I wonder where that oversight will come from to make sure that the law is being properly applied—for example, by the Food Standards Agency.

I also add my support for the amendments tabled by the Labour Front Bench in good faith to strengthen the Bill and give independent oversight. We all have an interest in making the Bill as clear and as strong as possible, and I am disappointed that we are so limited in our debate this afternoon. I support amendment 7, which would require the use of a warrant issued by a judge when a criminal authorisation order is required. Having that prior judicial authorisation is right. I support amendments 9 and 10—

[Dan Carden]

That is such a fundamental oversight that is needed. Is the Bill really fit for purpose without it?

[Dame Diana Johnson]

As I said, I support what the Labour Front Bench is doing in making that proposal to the Government and I hope the Minister is able to give us some good news when he responds to the debate at the end of the Committee stage.

Amendments 9 and 10 are very clear on the legitimate and legal activities of trade unions, and that trade unions should be excluded, on the face of the Bill, from any such acts.