Reports into Investigatory Powers

James Cleverly Excerpts

Thursday 25th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[James Cleverly (Braintree) (Con)]

There is a natural and proper tension between the desire for personal privacy and the need for national security. In this afternoon’s debate, both sides of that argument have been discussed with the calmness and clarity that the issue merits. Absolutist positions, whether libertarian or on the side of state security, are unhelpful. They may be fun in university or school debating societies, but in this place we have to think about the practical implementation of our discussions, so it is welcome that Members in all parts of the House have taken pragmatic and logical positions.

I do not pretend to be an expert on security matters, but I was part of the Metropolitan Police Authority at City Hall in London for a number of years. I sat on its scrutiny committee, which looked into the counter-terrorism and protective services work of the Metropolitan police, so in a small way I had some exposure to the security work that we demand our public servants conduct. I was, in small part, one of those people who watched the watchmen.

The speed of change in communications is both exciting and frightening. There was a time when communications interception meant snaring a carrier pigeon or steaming open a letter; those days are long passed. We are now in a world where state-of-the-art encryption technology exists not just on traditional desktop or laptop computers, but on every mobile phone and tablet that we carry around—and in forms that people do not normally think of. My sons regularly play on a games console and are able to communicate with their friends across the globe using encrypted communications technology. I am pleased to say—I am fairly sure—that they do so with entirely innocent motivations, but it does not take much of a leap of imagination to understand that people with much more sinister intent use such encrypted technology with ease. So it is not enough for people to say that the current state of affairs is good enough, and I welcome those parts of the Anderson report that highlight the fact that communications technology is moving apace. The status quo is not good enough. We are either at least trying to keep up, or being left badly behind.

I was on the Metropolitan Police Authority when the student riots that afflicted Westminster took place, and I remember how those protesters were able to move with great speed through London and, in particular, the time when they attacked the car carrying the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall. The protesters were able to stay ahead of the police in a way that historically has not been possible. For most of the recent history of the police, they have been alone in being able to utilise peer-to-peer communications technologies; the bobby’s radio gave them a significant strategic advantage over those they sought to apprehend. Those student protesters, using BlackBerry Messenger, which, let us remind ourselves, is five to six years out of date, were able to stay well ahead of the police officers who were trying to do their duty.

I look at that incident as a very real and credible indicator of the challenge we now face at a national level. The situation where the security services are potentially behind the curve is worrying and it needs addressing. It is essential that we give our security services the tools they need to protect us, but the counterbalance of that is also ensuring that there is proper scrutiny of the work they do.

In conclusion, I suggest that our aim in this House and in this debate is to ensure that those who watch the watchmen are able to do so effectively and with real teeth, but this should not be to prevent the watchmen from watching.