Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill (Business of the House)

Debate between Julian Huppert and David Davis

Tuesday 15th July 2014 Commons Chamber

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

To follow on from my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind), I think that we are looking at a third category: a piece of legislation that is being renewed, but that has fallen into disrepute over the years in which it has been used. That is why this Bill is more important than a simple renewal.

There is an emergency—a legal emergency—but it started on 8 April. It was eminently predictable because, as far back as 2010, the European data protection supervisor said that the data retention directive was

“without doubt the most privacy invasive instrument ever adopted by the EU”.

Data retention has been struck down in Germany and Romania, and there have been difficulties in other countries. The two requests to the European Court of Justice came not from bogus organisations, but from the Irish High Court and the Constitutional Court of Austria. Those were therefore serious revisions and it was entirely probable that we would find ourselves in the situation that we are in today.

Why has it taken three months? Why was the legislation not pre-prepared? Why was the deal with the Labour party not struck in advance? My understanding is that there was an argument inside the Government between the two halves of the coalition. That argument has gone on for three months. What the coalition could not decide in three months, this House has to decide in one day. That seems to me entirely improper.

[Dr Huppert]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Davis]

No, I am going to be very fast and finish on this point.

Parliament has three roles: to scrutinise legislation, to prevent unintended consequences and to defend the freedom and liberty of our constituents. The motion undermines all three and we should oppose it.

Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Bill

Debate between Julian Huppert and David Davis

Monday 5th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Dr Huppert]

It is tempting to spend a while talking about risk, as that is a theme that lies behind this debate. Opposition Members have not mentioned the risk we create by treating people who have not been convicted of an offence as though they have been so convicted. In some cases, people who have been found not guilty in a court of law have immediately had a control order slapped on them. There is a risk involved in such cases. We have also heard the slightly lazy assumption that all the people who are suspects in these circumstances are dangerous. We know that some people have been completely exonerated. For example, Cerrie Bullivant, to whom I spoke earlier today, was not a risk, yet he was punished as though he was, for a very long time. Instead, however, I will talk about the purpose of sunset clauses.

[Mr David Davis]

Before my hon. Friend leaves the issue of risk, may I suggest that we need to tackle this matter head-on? During the course of the control order regime, the number of people of interest to the security services started at 1,600 and grew by 25% per annum, until the numbers rose above 4,000 and the agencies got too embarrassed to announce them. Does my hon. Friend accept that the control order regime and everything that went with it were so heavy-handed that they actually increased radicalisation rather than reducing it?

[Dr Huppert]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. That speaks volumes about how ineffective control orders and the whole panoply of tools used by the previous Government were. It also highlights why the points about the extra resources needed by the police do not really matter. If there are 1,600 or 2,000 or 3,000 people of great interest to the security services, I hope that the services are occasionally looking at them; otherwise, their interest cannot be very great. If those people are actually dangerous, resources should be available, as the extra resources to deal with a relatively small handful of people are a drop in the ocean.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Huppert]

The hon. Gentleman is right. I have always been uncomfortable when someone says, “I know better, so just do exactly what I say.” I am never comfortable with that as a form of argument, partly because it is very hard to rebut. In many ways, it is the central argument behind control orders—when the state tells someone, “I know what you’ve done, but I’m not going to tell you what it is or how I know; we’re just going to assume that you have done this.”

[Mr David Davis]

rose—

[Dr Huppert]

I will take one more intervention, but then I would like to make some progress.

[Mr Davis]

I hope that the hon. Gentleman will forgive me for intervening a second time, but on this point of “We know better than you”, the real problem with reviews has not been the timing so much as the quality of the information provided. We know that there have been miscarriages of justice, as the hon. Gentleman has mentioned, but these are never mentioned in any reviews. We also know from the evidence of the last few days that the control orders were used in effect to immobilise Libyan dissidents to suit our foreign policy in dealing with Colonel Gaddafi. This is the sort of thing we in the House should know about; the failure is not about time, but about the quality of the information provided to us.

[Dr Huppert]

Indeed. I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his comments. He pre-empts something I was planning to say later about the Libyan issue, which is a very serious one, as it seems that the Government might have acted perhaps using some of these tools on behalf of another power. I hope that the Minister will be able to assure us that that has never happened, and also assure us later than none of the evidence under which people have been subject to control orders has come as a result of torture in Libya. We have heard some astonishing stories; I look forward to hearing the Minister’s comments about this either now or later, if he has time to check the facts.

The other purpose of a sunset clause is to flag up the fact that something is exceptional and should not be a regular part of our law. We do not have a sunset clause on theft and we do not have one on the vast majority of things because they are standard. This is an exceptional measure and we need to flag it up. That is why I am so pleased that the Government have accepted the argument. We should be very concerned when we step outside the normal bounds.

I disagree entirely with the comments made by the hon. Member for Bradford South (Mr Sutcliffe), who I believed to be a shadow Minister but who appears to be sitting on the very Back Benches. I do not know what that says about his position and standing. [Interruption.] I hope he will move towards the front rather than withdraw to the back. I withdraw any aspersions I may have cast on the hon. Gentleman in what I said; I was merely surprised by his location. In Committee, he said:

“Unfortunately, there are times when people have to be outside the legal framework.”––[Official Report, Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Public Bill Committee, 23 June 2011; c. 57.]

I disagree with him completely and utterly on that. I think we have a legal framework for a reason, and once we start saying that people should be outside it, we are on very dangerous grounds.

The Internet and Privacy

Debate between Julian Huppert and David Davis

Thursday 28th October 2010 Westminster Hall

[Dr Huppert]

Indeed. There are a number of ways to deal with genuine cyber-terror risks. Labour’s proposals certainly were excessive; it took a draconian and over-zealous approach.

I raised the matter yesterday in Prime Minister’s questions. I asked exactly what was happening about the intercept modernisation programme. He assured me that the Government were not planning a centralised database. I suggest that right hon. and hon. Members read exactly what he said. I am trying to give the Prime Minister and the Government the benefit of the doubt, but I am concerned about the careful choice of words. Does it have to be a centralised database to cause problems? Does it have to be a Government database to cause concern?

The original problem was that ISPs were storing the data. Hoping that the Prime Minister was being less than entirely clear, I asked some follow-up questions to establish what is being proposed, given the wording of the strategic defence and security review. The Government have to be better, and they can start by ruling out for good such a costly, over-broad and heavily intrusive approach. A minimal standard for data retention has to be the goal.

I understand that the Home Office is considering that data retention by ISPs should be based on an EU directive. If so, extremely stringent safeguards must be put in place. What discussions has the Minister had with the Home Office on the matter? Will he assure the House that Government intrusion into the privacy of individual internet users would happen only in the event of a serious threat to national security, that it would be regulated by the strictest possible safeguards, and that it would be subject to primary legislation so that Members of Parliament could consider what was proposed?

[Mr David Davis]

I am listening with fascination to the hon. Gentleman. He is exactly right in what he says; there will clearly be a need for a severe warrant in order to control what is done with privately held data by agencies of the state. However, that alone will not resolve the problem of having a big centralised database. The creation of a database can itself create a security hazard. A large quantity of data being held, even by one ISP, becomes a target for fraudsters, hackers and terrorists. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the Government should sort out that problem as well as the others?

[Dr Huppert]

The right hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point. Wherever the data are kept, we would have to be most careful about their security. Some people would be interested to see it. For example, I can imagine that a number of people would pay considerable sums to gain access to the web and e-mail records of every Member of Parliament; we saw the excitement on expenses, and I am sure that it would be similar. Data like that must be treated as a great security risk, and that risk counterbalances much of the risk from cyber-attacks about which we hear so much.

I could talk about many other matters, but a number of Government Members wish to speak; the Opposition Benches are somewhat denuded. However, I wish to tell the House that I chair a Liberal Democrat policy working group that is writing a new policy on IT and IP matters, and we would welcome submissions from Members and from people across the country. We shall also be dealing with the party’s proposals on privacy. Indeed, members of the working group could have given a rather more detailed take on many of these matters. We clearly need to avoid the kind of lazy thinking that gives blanket solutions but ignores the need for privacy and liberty, and suggests draconian solutions that cause more problems than they solve.

I hope that my comments and those of others here today will give Ministers and others food for thought and that, together, we can work towards a balanced solution that preserves people’s reasonable privacy expectations.

Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism

Debate between Julian Huppert and David Davis

Wednesday 14th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

It took us time to get to the bottom of the facts. When I asked the right hon. Gentleman’s predecessor as Home Secretary to give us the information I am talking about, we were not given it. I asked for it three times, and my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton was there on at least one or two of those occasions. This is one of the problems with the Home Office: it mouths the words “justice must be seen to be done”, but it does not live by them in terms of transparency.

Let me turn to the remaining two people who were detained, because some further facts have come to light. We were told at the time, “Here is a serious case and we have to go to 27 or 28 days—right to the edge—in order to bring a case against them.” However, we pressed the matter and asked when the evidence was obtained to charge those individuals. It was obtained not at 27 or 28 days, but before 14 days—if I remember correctly, on day three and day 12. It was perfectly possible to charge those people before the 14-day limit; now we find, however, that they were charged on day 28. They spent nine months in prison on remand, and even in that time not enough evidence was found to convict them. One of the cases was thrown out by the judge after hearing it—it did not even go to a jury. The other was rejected unanimously by the jury and the individual concerned was exonerated. It was not a soft jury: the same jury convicted three other terrorists in the same trial. So, we had five people, every single one of whom was innocent.

That is what our policy has done so far and why it is a recruiting sergeant for terrorism. It might not make somebody a terrorist, but it does make the communities concerned less likely to co-operate, less likely to provide information, and less likely to help us to prevent the next terrorist attack. That is why the policy is completely counter-productive.

Let me turn to hard fact No. 3: the simple list put out by the previous Government and the present Government showing why we need this provision for another six months. We are told how difficult terrorist cases are. What did we do when we were trying to be consensual with the previous Government? Both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats agreed with—in fact, we thought up—the idea of acts preparatory to terrorism. We supported the idea of terrorist training being an offence, so we made matters easier in that regard.

The next argument was, “We have lots of evidence and it might be encrypted—it might be in code.” We had to remind the previous Government that when they passed the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, they made it an offence to withhold the encryption key, so if the evidence is in code, belongs to the suspect and he does not provide the key, we have got him for five years anyway. Therefore, that argument went out the window.

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

The right hon. Gentleman will no doubt be aware that in cases involving encrypted data, 28 days, six months or even a year would not necessarily be long enough if there were no access to encryption codes, so such a detention period would not help anyway.

[Mr Davis]

My hon. Friend—I suppose he is my hon. Friend—is exactly right. When we heard those arguments, we thought that, with the prospect of the terrorism levels being, as the shadow Home Secretary says, very high, the then Government would have acted quickly. What was worrying was that that RIPA requirement, passed in 2000, was not brought into effect until 2007—two years after the 7/7 bombings. So we did not even give what was already on the statute book as a weapon for the police to use.

The other thing the then Government said to us was, “If you charge people, you cannot interview them after charge.” In 2005, we volunteered to amend that, but the Government did not make that change in the 2006 legislation. They put the provision in the 2008 legislation, which is not even in force yet. If we are serious about taking this on, we should deal with the things that actually attack the problems that we are trying to address. We should not create other problems for ourselves.