Intelligence and Security Services

Debate between John McDonnell and Martin Horwood

Thursday 31st October 2013 Westminster Hall

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) on securing the debate, which has been helpful in several ways. First, it allows us to reflect on the changing nature of communication in our society; these days, the best way of achieving secure communication is probably to send an open postcard rather than putting it on Facebook.

Secondly, the debate enables us to correct the slightly partial accounts of the current state of things such as article 8 of the European convention on human rights. The hon. Member for West Bromwich East (Mr Watson) correctly quoted the section relating to the right to private correspondence, but he left out the second half, which refers to exemptions for national security and the fighting of crime.

Thirdly, the debate allows us to correct a few of the really inaccurate assertions in the wider debate, such as the one about the presentation on “Mastering the internet” that was portrayed as some Orwellian plot to dominate cyberspace when it was actually about enabling people to use search engines better. Much nonsense has been talked in the wider debate, but the issues are serious.

I must declare an obvious constituency and family interest in this debate. My parents both worked at GCHQ and, before that, at Bletchley Park. My father, Don Horwood, was involved, under Tommy Flowers, in building Colossus, the world’s first programmable electronic computer. He was one of the people who kept it secret for decades, enabling the Americans, God help us, to take credit in the meantime for building the first electronic programmable computer.

My mother went back to Bletchley Park with me only recently, after 60 years’ absence. Only then did she reveal to me that she had not just been a linguist, as I had always thought, but had interpreted intelligence as well. The habit of keeping secret things that need to remain secret is one of the enormous debts we owe that generation of code breakers.

That continued in GCHQ during the cold war. We cannot know about all the secret victories our intelligence services won then, and are winning now, because they must, quite properly, remain secret. If we cast too much sunlight on some of these things, they stop working; it is not so much that we would always endanger agents’ lives, as that talking too much in public about precise techniques and sources makes those sources disappear and those techniques more difficult to apply. That endangers people in different ways.

I would love to think that we had entered a safe post-war world, where that level of secrecy was unnecessary, but that is simply not the case. We still face hostile states and hostile state intelligence services. Frankly, if the cyber-attacks and counter-attacks going on now took place in some physical realm, they would, in some instances, almost constitute an act of war. Some states are certainly engaged in hostile activity towards this country, but there are also the new threats of terrorist networks and organised crime.

It is not only the threats but the technology that is changing. We cannot make it childishly simple for those who would do us harm to evade surveillance. We must move with the times, and we must give our intelligence services the capability, under proper oversight, to access the communications they need to access.

Of course, much of the discussion is about when access crosses the line into surveillance. A lot is said, and a lot of allegations are made, about mass surveillance, but if it was really taking place, it would—apart from being wildly impractical—be straightforwardly illegal. In his statement to the House, the Foreign Secretary made it clear that he still regarded the situation in this way:

“To intercept the content of any individual’s communications in the UK requires a warrant signed personally by me, the Home Secretary, or by another Secretary of State…Warrants are legally required to be necessary, proportionate and carefully targeted, and we judge them on that basis.”

He added that all those authorisations were

“subject to independent review by an Intelligence Services Commissioner and an Interception of Communications Commissioner, both of whom must have held high judicial office and report directly to the Prime Minister.”—[Official Report, 10 June 2013; Vol. 564, c. 32.]

As Members have pointed out, we have a sophisticated system of democratic oversight. The Labour Government passed the Intelligence Services Act in 1994, establishing the Intelligence and Security Committee. RIPA has been referred to. The coalition’s Justice and Security Act 2013 became law only in April, further refining and defining that Committee’s responsibilities.

There is a degree of anger at GCHQ and among my constituents. People at GCHQ understand that there will inevitably be some misunderstanding of what they do, because it is not very public, and that there may be some naivety and inaccuracy. However, they find it difficult to forgive the accusations of bad faith and illegality. Their perception is that they operate under one of the most exacting sets of laws and systems of ministerial and independent oversight applied to any intelligence agency anywhere in the world.

Of course, there are things that will remain secret, and there are things that are done that would surprise us if they became public. Hon. Members have referred to the interception of Angela Merkel’s mobile phone communications by the NSA. I find that very surprising, although anyone who knows West German intelligence history will know that the Federal Chancellor’s office has not always been the most secure place. I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) could find similar stories of insecurity in unexpected places.

Of course, Angela Merkel’s intelligence agency—the Bundesnachrichtendienst—employs 6,000 people and has a sophisticated electronic capability, so I would be amazed if she, even with her East German background and the obvious sensitivities that go with that, was as surprised at what has been going on as she has made out in public.

[John McDonnell]

Would the hon. Gentleman be surprised at this morning’s reports that the Pope was bugged as well? Is that a venial or a mortal sin?

Succession to the Crown Bill

Debate between John McDonnell and Martin Horwood

Monday 28th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell]

I attached my name to these amendments because they reflect an amendment I tabled for last week’s debate that was not selected. I wish to explain why I did that, for the record and for some of my constituents and other supporters who might find it a bit bizarre.

Apart from my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn), those who have participated in the debate so far have had an interest either as monarchists or, in the context of the amendment, as Catholics. I am not a monarchist—I am a republican; I see the monarchy as a complete anachronism—and I am, at best, a lapsed Catholic, as the parish priest optimistically describes me.

Over the past 10 or 15 years, I have sat in this Chamber on a number of occasions when successive Members have tried to remove anti-Catholic discrimination from our legislation. Dr Evan Harris and John Gummer did that when they were Members of this House. The simple reason, they argued—I fully agree—is that we in this House should not allow our institutions and our legislation to be founded on or framed by discrimination. This measure is the last remnant of anti-Catholic discrimination that sits within our laws. Frankly, it is offensive to discriminate on religious grounds, and every Government in recent years has said so. We have legislated time and again to remove such discrimination, so why can we not do it in this case?

The hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) went through a trajectory of 300 years in the space of one speech; it has a been a major breakthrough to bring him into the 21st century. As he argued very eloquently, on whatever grounds this discrimination was introduced centuries ago, it is no longer relevant, and I am convinced that at some point it will be challengeable in other forums and courts. This is an ideal opportunity to say to the outside world that we will not tolerate discrimination of any sort. It is anti-Catholic discrimination that has historically been present in this kind of legislation, but such discrimination pertains to every other religion as well. We have heard potential successors to the Crown say that they are happy to be seen not as defenders of the faith but defenders of faith; if that is the case, so be it. We have an opportunity to send out a message that we are opposed to all discrimination, that we accept that the institutions we establish should not be founded on discriminatory legislation, and that we will remove this stain from the character of this House and our constitution.

John Gummer and Dr Evan Harris argued their cases extremely eloquently, more so than I can. When I left the Chamber after those debates, I thought, “If I were a member of a particular religion and that barred me from a particular office, I would find it offensive.” We might think that this debate is about something that is necessarily insubstantial in the everyday workings of our society and our lives, but it is not; it is about a symbol of past discrimination that must be removed. By removing that stain, we can go forward into a modern society

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

The amendment is framed in anti-disestablishmentarianistic language, in that it creates a rather exotic formula, but is not the inevitable consequence of debating this matter that it will lead us towards a debate on establishment and the role of the Church of England as the state Church, the role of the Supreme Head of the Church of England, and the title of Defender of the Faith, which was awarded to Henry VIII during the time of his communion with Rome?

[John McDonnell]

I agree that this will lead to that debate, but I am happy to take these reforms one step at a time. That is why the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for North East Somerset is extremely clever, because it would enable those who wish to maintain the established Church and not to move towards the disestablishment debate to pause at this stage.

I think it is inevitable that that debate will come back, but it is not for today. Today is about removing the way in which we discriminate against those who are not members of, or in communion with, the Church of England. This is a way of removing the ostracism of the past. It is time to send out a message that this is a modern, multicultural society, with people of all faiths and of no faith, and that no one should be discriminated against at any level of society, from the monarchy right through to every other institution. Let us seize this opportunity.

Superannuation Bill

Debate between John McDonnell and Martin Horwood

Tuesday 7th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell]

Yes, and that is why I have consistently put forward alternative economic policies and strategies.

Let me press on, if I may. This is a serious debate, and I am trying to get across the feelings expressed to me through the PCS parliamentary group. As I say, I have met PCS members, I have attended meetings of the executive, I have been on picket lines, and I have been at various meetings around the country. There is anger about the proposals in the Bill—I shall come on to that—but also about the way in which the issue has been handled by Ministers.

In interview after interview, and even in the Chamber today, Ministers and Government Members have focused, in their descriptions of the compensation scheme, on payments to the highest-paid civil servants; it has almost been a portrayal of “Yes Minister”-type permanent secretaries, retiring to their Whitehall clubs on large-scale pay-offs. There are some individual examples of that, and they have been quoted today, but PCS is one of the leading unions that has pointed out that issues around high pay within the civil service have undermined the equitable distribution of rewards in the public sector.

Time and again, including today, we have had repeated the example of some civil servants receiving up to six years’ wages as a redundancy settlement. Let us get this point on the record as best we can: if I may refer Members to the Library note, of 500,000 civil servants, only 4,400 are in the senior civil service. The maximum compensation for most is capped at three years’ pay under the compulsory scheme, and two years’ pay under the flexible, voluntary scheme. For a small number of people who joined the service before 1987 with reserved rights regarding severance payments, payments are higher.

Ministers were asked by the Public Accounts Committee and, I believe, in parliamentary questions on the Chamber Floor, for information on the number of individuals currently getting a package worth six years’ salary. We were told that the information was unavailable because it could be provided only—there is a sense of irony here—at disproportionate cost. The six-year allegation is consistently used, even today. I would welcome some facts on how many people we are talking about and what the costs are.

[Martin Horwood]

Perhaps I could be of assistance to the hon. Gentleman. One of my constituents, a civil servant, calculated that to qualify for that six-year maximum, one would have had to have joined the civil service just after one’s 17th birthday and have been made redundant just before one’s 50th. I suspect that we are talking about a very small number.

[John McDonnell]

Would it not have been useful, though, if we actually had the number so that we could have a properly informed debate, rather than allegation, counter-allegation and, almost, smear?

Ministers were also asked how much public expenditure the imposed scheme would save—my right hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Tessa Jowell) on the Front Bench raised the issue again today—but that information has not been forthcoming. The Secretary of State has said that the amount is impossible to calculate. I have been there; I have advised decision makers—and in the private sector it is exactly the same—and when one is entering a redundancy situation, one does a rough, or even a back-of-an-envelope, calculation of the numbers one is looking to lose, the amounts, the average rates of pay, the distribution of the rates of pay across the service, and therefore roughly what the cost would be. That is not too much to ask before we make a momentous decision on this legislation. In fact, the Public Accounts Committee raised the issue again in July, and the Minister refused to respond.

I deal now with the myth of the highly paid civil service. Some people have already mentioned the subject today, but it is important that we get the point on the record. Even though this has been denied today, it has been part of the Government’s strategy to promulgate the myth of a highly paid civil service.