Draft Investigatory Powers Bill

David Davis Excerpts

Wednesday 4th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for the tone that he adopted for most of his response to my statement. I thank him for his willingness to understand and accept the importance of this legislation and for his clear comment that this is not mass surveillance. As he says, the message should go out very clearly from this House today that these are important powers that are necessary to keep us safe and secure, but that we must have the right safeguards.

The right hon. Gentleman asked a lot of questions. I will attempt to answer as many of them as possible, but if I miss any particular points I will respond to them in writing.

Before I come to the specific questions, I want to address the reference that he made to the Prime Minister at the end of his speech. I have to say to him that it was not justified by the tone that he adopted for the rest of his speech. What the Prime Minister has said, and what we are saying in our counter-extremism strategy—the strategy deals with extremism of all sorts, including Islamist extremism and neo-Nazi extremism—is that we want to work with people in communities and encourage mainstream voices. We want to work to ensure that, when people are in isolated communities, we identify the barriers that cause that isolation. That is why Louise Casey is doing the very important work she is doing. The characterisation of the Prime Minister that the right hon. Gentleman puts to the House is not one that I recognise.

The right hon. Gentleman asked about David Anderson’s view. I have had a private meeting with him on the matter and discussed it with him. We have taken virtually everything that he requested on board, but I do not think it is appropriate for me to say what his view is. That is for him to say separately. It was a private meeting and I just do not think it is appropriate for me to use it in that way.

The right hon. Gentleman referred to serious crimes. Yes, the measure will cover only the most serious crimes, as currently defined in RIPA. That definition will be brought into the legislation.

On the retention of communications data, it will be possible to require the intercept communications records to be retained for up to 12 months. That refers only to the front page of the website. As I have said, it is not exactly which pages within a website that people have been looking at, but just the fact of access to a website or communications device.

The right hon. Gentleman asked about recent cyber-attacks. The message we take from those is very simple: as criminals are moving into more online crime, we need to ensure that our law enforcement agencies have the power to deal with that cybercrime and work in that online space, which is precisely what today is about.

On encryption, the current requirement, which is in secondary legislation, that those companies issued with a warrant should take reasonable steps to respond to it in unencrypted form, is being put on the face of the legislation, but we are not banning encryption. We recognise that encryption plays an important part in keeping people’s details secure.

The right hon. Gentleman asked about providers. There may be a slight misunderstanding about requirements on overseas providers. There are some elements that we are not now requiring of overseas providers, but we retain the extra-territorial jurisdiction of our warrantry. It is still our view that we should be able to exercise against an overseas provider a warrant issued here in the UK. The work of Nigel Sheinwald, of which hon. Members will be aware, suggested that there was scope for a greater form of international agreement in this area. The Government will continue to look at that.

On journalistic sources, I did not mention it, but we will include in the legislation what we included in the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 code earlier this year: access to communications data to identify a journalist’s source will require judicial authorisation.

The point of the double lock is that both parties have to authorise the warrant for it to go ahead. The right hon. Gentleman mentioned the time delays. There will be an urgent process, so it will be possible for a Secretary of State to sign an urgent warrant that will come immediately into effect. There will then be a period of time within which the judge will have to review it and make a decision on whether it should continue. We will look to ensure that, in that urgent process, the time delay is as little as possible between those two parts of the process. As I have said, the purpose of a double lock is that, in most circumstances, we will have that double authorisation.

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

In view of the size of the Bill, I will confine myself solely to the judicial authorisation aspects of it. Will the Secretary of State tell the House whether the measure will replace all 66 statutory approval mechanisms for intercept and use of communications data? Will the judiciary involved in the authorisation procedures be appointed by the Judicial Appointments Commission or by the Prime Minister? Will Members of Parliament get the same protections on communications data, to which she referred, that are being extended to journalists? My understanding is that that is not the case.

[Mrs May]

In relation to the warrantry that will be subject to the double lock and the process of interception, where the process currently requires a warrant signed just by the Secretary of State, it will in future have the double lock. Additional processes will be introduced in relation to some of the bulk capabilities to which I referred. Obviously, we have to appoint the investigatory powers commissioner. There will then be a process to determine who should be under the commissioner and the areas of expertise they should have. I have said to the Justice Secretary in Scotland and the Minister of Justice in Northern Ireland that we would expect to ensure that Scottish and Northern Ireland expertise is available to the commissioner.