Cycling

Debate between Julian Huppert and Julian Lewis

Thursday 16th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Dr Lewis]

Let me answer the hon. Gentleman’s first intervention before I let him have a second.

With good will and with co-operation and arrangements that relate to three things this problem could be solved. The sensible arrangements are: that the local authority should have the power to determine the frequency of these events; that it should have the right to limit the total numbers participating in the events; and that the participants should wear some form of identification, probably numbering, so that where there are mass events and incidents occur—let us be frank about this, sometimes incidents of an aggressive nature do occur—then there can be no question about misidentification.

[Dr Huppert]

I wonder if I can bring the hon. Gentleman back to the very exciting New Forest cycle hire scheme. As I understand it, more of the responses to the public consultation from people living within the forest were in favour of the scheme than against it. Does he agree that it is a rather perverse decision from the authority to listen to the public, hear that they support it and then decide that they cannot go ahead with it?

[Dr Lewis]

The hon. Gentleman illustrates the point I am making. I do not want to second-guess the decision of the national park authority for the simple reason that I did not involve myself in that debate and I only read about it afterwards. Frankly, I do not have enough information to make a judgment on whether I sympathise or not. However, what I certainly think—I hope he would agree—is that it is really unfortunate that the attitude towards cycling in general by the representatives of the national park and the community in the New Forest has been so damaged by this dispute over mass cycling events that cycling is getting a bad name.

To conclude, I simply say that we look to the Minister to try to have some reserve regulatory powers in place, hopefully seldom having to be relied upon, to ensure that where there is a danger of a clash—as has happened on one occasion, between the New Forest drift, when the ponies have to be moved across the forest, and a mass cycling event—and where there is a question mark over perhaps two major cycling events being scheduled for the same day, or where there is too much bunching of events one after another rather than being spread at reasonable intervals, just as there is light-touch regulation for racing events on the public highway, we believe there should be some powers in reserve so that cycling can regain its popular reputation. In this way, the New Forest and cycling will once again be bracketed together harmoniously, rather than as a source of dissonance and friction.

Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill

Debate between Julian Huppert and Julian Lewis

Tuesday 15th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Dr Lewis]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend, who is a fierce defender of the rights of individuals. I hope he agrees that if we can build on the attitude I have described from one of the most senior providers, then, by consensus, we ought to be able to set an example of an agreed arrangement whereby providers can be satisfied that they are assisting the law enforcement authorities in a proper, open and legitimate way, with no question of their being party to underhand arrangements.

Finally, may I apologise to the House for my late entry to this important debate, and, indeed, for my attire? I spent the entire day at the Farnborough air show, where the screaming of fast jets must have excluded the noise of my telephone ringing repeatedly from Downing street, offering me an alternative way to serve the nation.

[Dr Huppert]

I have two questions and I would be grateful if the Minister provided a written response to them, to ensure we get a clear answer. First, may we have a written confirmation that there would be no power to force foreign companies to install surveillance equipment on their networks if they are able to provide the intercept that is needed? Secondly, will he confirm the impact of subsection (4) and make it clear that, if a foreign company is under an obligation not to provide such data—if it would, in fact, be a criminal offence for them to comply—no such requirement would be made by the Government? That would put people in the invidious position of having to face criminality on one front or the other. If the Minister wrote to me with confirmation on those points, that would be very helpful.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Huppert]

These are, I hope, two unobjectionable new clauses, which seek clarity from the Government about what is intended in respect of the transparency reporting. One challenge we have faced for a very long time in this area is the fact that, as I mentioned earlier, very little information is kept by the Home Office or any of the other bodies about what exactly this information is used for, how many pieces of information are collected by different people and what the reasons were. This is a very frustrating state of affairs.

When we looked at the draft Communications Data Bill, we found that there was just a two-week snapshot survey of a few police forces—it was not even all of them—asking about the purposes for which communications data are used. For that reason, I have for a long time wanted proper transparency reporting from the Government and all the organisations—some companies, such as Google, already do this as far as they can—so that we know what is being done and we can make an informed decision about whether it is being done appropriately.

Currently, we have well over 500,000 requests for communications data every year. In order to judge whether that is a large or a small number, we need to know why they were made. We also need to know—we simply do not know this at the moment—how many people it relates to. Do those 500,000 requests relate to more than 500,000 people, or are there, in fact, 20 requests, say, relating to one person? We simply do not have that information.

This is not just a concern that I and various others have raised; it is something that the interception of communications commissioner raised in his 2013 annual report, in which he said:

“In my view the unreliability and inadequacy of the statistical requirements is a significant problem which requires attention.”

We must fix this; it is very important that we know. It was a bit of a shock to find, for example, that only 11.4% of requests were for national security. The vast majority were to prevent or detect crime or to prevent disorder. We should have that information available; we should know. Partly because of the lack of it, the commissioner highlighted the fact that he simply had to estimate various parameters that he was supposed to be investigating. He also said that he was concerned about “significant institutional overuse” and that the figure was “a very large number” that had

“the feel of being too many.”

We need to have the information available and published, so that we can make a proper decision.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

I warmly endorse what the hon. Gentleman is saying. Does he agree that if more examples were given of a collated nature—such as those we read about frequently in individual criminal court cases—about the vital role that such data play, that would go a long way to allaying unnecessary public suspicion about the importance of having such data available for the forces of law and order?

[Dr Huppert]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Unfortunately, the approach taken for, I believe, many decades has been not to tell people. We have always been told, “We can’t tell you what’s being done at the moment, but we need more.” If we were told and there were transparency, the public could make a much more sensible judgment about what was needed.

New clause 3 highlights what I would expect to see as part of new transparency reporting. It contains requirements to ensure that information is available about the offence being investigated, so that we can find out if it is about children applying to the wrong school or speeding offences, as opposed to national security matters, how long the data have been requested, so that we can work out how long they should be kept for—is it usually used after a week or a year?—and what sort of data they are, so that we know whether we are talking about reverse directory look-ups or rather more personal information. I hope the Minister will be able to reassure me that that is his intention.

I should say that both my new clauses were inspired by Big Brother Watch, which I have been working with on this whole Bill and which particularly wanted to make these points clear. New clause 4 deals with the problem that a number of organisations feel they cannot publish their transparency reports and say what they have been asked to do for fear of violating the legislation against tipping off. I understand why there is a concern. The Government do not want companies to say, “The following things we are reporting to the Government, but these things are perfectly safe; we will not tell the Government about them.” We want companies to be able to publish that anonymised information, so I hope the Minister will be able to confirm that companies can safely publish it as part of their transparency reports without fear of being prosecuted.

I look forward to hearing the Minister’s reassurances on both those aspects.

Intelligence and Security Services

Debate between Julian Huppert and Julian Lewis

Thursday 31st October 2013 Westminster Hall

[Dr Huppert]

It is absolutely right that we should have that debate. We have to agree it—we cannot just give carte blanche to people. I think that view is shared by everybody here. The hon. Gentleman is right. We must be balanced. None of us wants the details of exact techniques to be publicised. None the less, we do need to have the discussion about what is okay, what is not okay and where the line is drawn.

We know that the National Security Council was not even told of the scale and scope of the surveillance on our own citizens. We have heard that there were concerns about what would happen if the public knew what was happening. It was feared that it could lead to public debate and legal challenge—well, so be it. Public debate and legal challenge are an important part of the rule of law, and to avoid accountability through secrecy is simply not the solution.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is being extremely generous in taking interventions. A few moments ago, he said that he did not want detail to be released. The problem with the mass release of thousands of stolen documents is that nobody knows the detail before they release them and propagate them. Is that not rather different from whistleblowing on an individual error or abuse, when one is putting out there hundreds of thousands of documents that one has not even read oneself?

[Dr Huppert]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to say that it would be irresponsible to publish hundreds of thousands of documents without having a look at them. That is why I am so glad that that is what The Guardian has explicitly not done. It has taken a responsible approach and managed to prevent that. We can imagine what could have happened if there had been a WikiLeaks-style publication. The hon. Gentleman should be concerned about the fact that a contractor was able to get hold of all the information, and that is a serious failure from the NSA and a great disgrace. If it cannot protect information to that level of security, it should be very worried. There are, I think, 850,000 people who could have had access to that information. Was the NSA certain that none of them would pass it on to a foreign power? Frankly, passing it on to The Guardian is probably about the safest thing that could have happened to it.

One of the functions of Parliament is to pass legislation and scrutinise the work of the Government. However, if we do not know what is happening, how can there be any scrutiny? We see legislation such as the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 being used beyond the original intentions of the House, and that makes it impossible for Parliament to do its job. People say, “If you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear.” I suggest that they say that to the green activists infiltrated by the police or to members of the Lawrence family. Human behaviour changes when people know that they are being watched. Is that the world in which we want to live?

There is also an economic issue. Our actions are hitting our own economic interests. The internet is a huge factor in business here—some £110 billion of GDP. It is a dynamic market, and it can move. If people are concerned about the privacy of their data here, whether their personal information or important company secrets, they will simply move where they store that information. Germany is already launching schemes to encourage businesses to go there instead, with e-mail systems that guarantee that no data will leave German boundaries while e-mails are being sent, so there is not the problem of information going overseas and coming back again to be looked at. That will hit us financially, regardless of anything else.

We must look at the balance between intelligence gathering and privacy. We need to have oversight. Although I am pleased that we are having the heads of the intelligence and security services coming to a public forum, it has been incredibly hard to get that to happen. Of course national security should not be taken lightly, but the public needs to understand what is being done in their name.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

I genuinely congratulate my near namesake, the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert), not only on securing this debate but on the way in which he presented his case and the exceptionally generous way in which he handled interventions. I hope that it will not damage his credibility on the left too much if I point out how very strongly I agreed with at least one of the points that he made in response to my intervention on him.

There are three questions that I want to address. First, on which the hon. Gentleman responded, why is it so easy for junior personnel to engage in mass leaking? Secondly, is it easier than before, as he suggested, to track or spy on people? Thirdly, who should rightly be regarded as a whistleblower? That is the point that I was touching on when I intervened on him. On the first question, he is absolutely right. If these secrets are so sensitive, there is something terribly wrong with the system that allows an Army private or a junior technician access to them.

[Dr Huppert]

indicated assent.

[Dr Lewis]

I am glad to see the hon. Gentleman endorsing what I am saying. Any system that allows tens of thousands of top secret documents to be downloaded by such junior personnel in such quantity must be at risk.

In an absolutely outstanding contribution to the debate, the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood)—I do congratulate him on his measured and exceptionally well-informed contribution—referred to the whole business of Enigma and the ultra secret of world war two.

Colleagues might remember that in 1974 the book, “The Ultra Secret”, perhaps regrettably—historians are grateful—revealed the secret that, as a result of the development of the Enigma machine, we were decrypting codes during the war that people thought were unbreakable. The book was published. Its author was F. W. Winterbotham. If I remember correctly, his role was to be in charge of the signals liaison units, which comprised members of the special services who were involved in the distribution of the Enigma decrypts and who were spread around all parts of the military infrastructure that received that intelligence. In other words, they were crucially aware of the need to keep top secret material secure. As such, they had special security arrangements to prevent anything like the Snowden case and the Bradley Manning case from happening. There is a huge gap in the security arrangements for the handling of such material.

On whether it is easier than before to track and spy on people, as the hon. Member for Cambridge has suggested, in one sense, he is absolutely right. We have electronic devices that offer more ways in. In another sense, though, he is not quite right. The problem is that in the past, when we wanted to track or spy on someone, all we had to do was to get a court order to enable the interception of mail or telephone calls. Now, with so many new systems of communication, it is actually much harder to track and spy on people who ought to be tracked and spied upon, according to the process of law, because there are so many other ways to communicate.

[Dr Huppert]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way and for some of his earlier comments. There is an interesting issue. Communications data are increasingly available to the police, but records of the locations where people had phones are now kept for a year. We can join the dots to find out exactly where somebody went. That information is available to the police and is used in many investigations. That would never have been available before. He is right that there are some safeguards; but 20 or 30 years ago, there would have been no way to say, “Three months ago, where was Dr Julian Lewis at any particular moment?”

[Dr Lewis]

I entirely accept that point, which was partly covered by the hon. Member for Cheltenham when he briefly referred to the need to hoover up haystacks to be able to search for the needles in them afterwards. The question is whether we then have access to the irrelevant parts of the haystack, or legally supervised targeted access to those needles in the haystack, which can be detected as a result of modern technology. This is all about the mass collection, mass storage and interrogation of mass data so collected and stored.

I now come back to the third question: who should rightly be regarded as a whistleblower? I would like to reach a point of agreement again with the hon. Member for Cambridge. In his defence of The Guardian newspaper, he said that it is precisely because The Guardian is not simply publishing everything that has fallen into its hands that it is acting responsibly. We can argue the finer points of that; he certainly has an arguable case. Where there can be no argument, however, is in the case of a person who steals the mass database and transmits it to other unauthorised individuals or organisations, or indeed newspapers, when he cannot possibly have read or in any way assessed whether the contents of that database had been properly collected or whether an abuse of the intelligence services’ powers had in fact taken place. That person is not acting responsibly, so the hon. Member for West Bromwich East (Mr Watson), whom I always admire, should be a little more careful before ascribing the term “brave whistleblower” to someone like Snowden.

Snowden is no more a whistleblower than someone like Julian Assange or anyone else who gets a mass of information and feels that it is right to publish it and put it into the public domain for no other reason than it is classified secret or top secret. Basically, their rationale can only be that they do not think anything should ever be classified secret or top secret. Once they admit that there is a purpose in classifying some information, and that some information ought to be kept secret, then we get into the area of who decides what should be kept secret and what should be the result of whistleblowing activities.

When I see somebody who blows the whistle on an identifiable abuse, I say, “Well done”, provided, of course, that they have used and exhausted all the right channels and were left with no alternative. But when I see someone who abuses their access to a massive database and then publishes it widely, I say that that is not whistleblowing; that is irresponsible—