Murder of Lee Rigby

Jack Straw Excerpts

Tuesday 25th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. and learned Friend puts the matter into clear perspective. Once it has been discovered on someone’s e-mail account that they are planning or plotting a terrorist outrage, it is hard to think of any justification for not passing that on to the authorities. That is exactly what my right hon. and learned Friend’s Committee finds:

“the companies should accept they have a responsibility to notify the relevant authorities when an automatic trigger indicating terrorism is activated, and allow the authorities, whether US or UK, to take the next step.”

That is absolutely right and I hope that this will trigger a debate among the internet companies themselves about the action that needs to be taken.

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

First, I commend the Intelligence and Security Committee report, as the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition have done. I also echo what the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary have said about the extreme difficulties that the intelligence and police services face when there is an expectation of success in respect of every investigation. These agencies, and the police, have people who are very highly skilled and dedicated and who are working very long hours—but, with the best will in the world, they are human. There will be some cases where the terrorists escape detection and there will therefore be terrorist outrages, as there have been in previous terrorist campaigns.

Lastly, may I press the Prime Minister again on the issue of the United States-based internet companies and ask him to take it up with the US at the highest level? Is there not a cultural problem among the leadership of some of these companies, which have a distorted “libertarian” ideology and believe that somehow that allows them to be wholly detached from responsibility to Governments and to the peoples whom we democratically represent in this country and abroad?

[The Prime Minister]

I agree with everything that the right hon. Gentleman has said. First, on the work done by MI5 and our agencies, I will repeat the quote from the director general of MI5 that says it all:

“We are not an army that has battalions waiting in barracks for deployment. We are fully deployed all the time so the only way to go on high priority cases is to stop low ones.”

That gives a sense of the pressure that, inevitably, organisations such as this are under; they are trying all the time to think of how they best triage these cases and make sure that they have the maximum input into the most dangerous cases.

The second point that the right hon. Gentleman made was about taking up personally with the US the engagement on the importance of communications data. I can guarantee absolutely that that happens at every level, including with the President. It is a shared challenge for both of us to get this right. We are very clear: wherever these companies are headquartered, if they provide services in the UK they should be subject to UK law. The point he makes with respect to the companies is absolutely right. Of course they worry about their public image in terms of wanting to be in favour of data security, and one can understand that. But they also need to worry about their public image if they are being used by terrorists to plot attacks and they have information about those attacks that they do not pass on. We need to make that point tell in the conversations to come.