Intelligence and Security Services

Debate between Julian Lewis and Michael Meacher

Thursday 31st October 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mr Michael Meacher (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab)]

It is extremely welcome that Parliament is at last having a debate about the fact that a state employee can select on a computer any item about an individual—their address, phone number, mobile number, e-mail, passport number, credit card number or any of their log-ins to a web service—and thus access the content of their communications and details of who they communicate with, the full range of their internet use, their location and a great deal else. Of course, GCHQ is proud to insist that none of that is at all likely, because it always acts within the law—if only. Yes, the computer operator must provide a justification for the information that he is seeking, but that is not too hard when he is conveniently offered a drop-down menu to prompt his thoughts.

All such activity is supposed to be firmly controlled by the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 but that Act is, I think, more about facilitating such exercises than curtailing them. RIPA is so poorly drafted—one almost wonders whether that was deliberate—and is open to such broad interpretation that it allows Government agencies such as GCHQ to do whatever they like. We are assured by the Home Office that it is concerned only with the metadata—the technical wherewithal of communications systems, rather than the documents—but the Snowden documents, as reported, tell us the truth:

“GCHQ policy is to treat it pretty much all the same whether it’s content or metadata.”

We are repeatedly given assurances that privacy is fully safeguarded, until we discover that the National Security Agency in the United States spends £250 million a year on weakening encryption. No doubt GCHQ is acting similarly on breaking commercially available security products.

The truth is, and has been for a long time, that the NSA in the States, via the Prism programme, and GCHQ in the UK, via Tempora, have acquired the capability to hoover up vast, untold quantities of personal data from the undersea cables that carry internet data on a colossal scale in and out of the UK, and to do that without any check or accountability. Does that matter? I think that it does. Tempora already allows GCHQ the capacity to collect more than 21 petabytes a day. To put that in context, it is the equivalent of sending all the data in all the books in the British Library 192 times every 24 hours. Two years ago, there were already 550 British and American analysts ploughing through the Tempora database. The balance between safeguarding personal safety and tracking down terrorism and serious crimes has unquestionably been drastically breached. The security agencies are operating under outdated law, despite the recent changes that we all know about, without a genuine public mandate.

What should be done? It was decided at the end of the previous Parliament that all Select Committees, except one, should be elected by the House, and not selected by the Whips and beholden to the party leaderships, as hitherto. The one exception was of course the Intelligence and Security Committee, which operates in a totally different way, untouched by the wave of accountability that swept through the Commons in 2009-10, in response to the revelations of the expenses scandal.

[Dr Lewis]

I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will—I suspect that he will—enlarge on that point, but will he mention the fact that that one Committee is different from all the others, because it is the only one that has access to highly classified material? Surely, that is the relevant point.

[Mr Meacher]

That is perfectly true. The real issue is whether that justifies its being outside the system of accountability of the Houses of Parliament. In my submission, it does not. Safeguards might be required, but not the construction of a different type of Committee, whose Chair and members are appointed by the Prime Minister, to replace as and when he or she wishes, and which sits in private.