Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Tuesday 15th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

The hon. Lady is right. Although we know that there are issues about the Court judgment and its implications over the summer, there will be considerable concern about the pace at which this Bill has been introduced and has been debated in Parliament. The short-term debate would be easier if there had been a wider longer-term debate about the question of a sensible framework in which the public could feel involved and have their say. If emergency issues came up, as they will from time to time—for any Government in any circumstances there will be court judgments that suddenly mean that an emergency response is needed—it would be so much easier to have the emergency debate against a backdrop in which the broader issues of security and liberty, and how we balance them in an internet age, are being properly debated and discussed, with public involvement.

Those of us who believe in the vital work the police and agencies need to be able to do should be the most ready to debate both the powers and the safeguards that are needed, because they must have public consent. We cannot hide behind a veil of secrecy. Of course, that debate must be handled with care so that we do not expose important intelligence capabilities that need to be kept secret to be effective, but we can have a debate about the legal framework, about the principles and about the powers and safeguards we need.

We know the vital work that we want the police and agencies to be able to do: building the intelligence that foils terrorist attacks; providing the fast response needed to find the last location of a missing child or murder victim; and stopping online fraud and cyber-attacks, which are escalating with every month. We also know that people will only continue to support those vital powers if they also know that there are proper safeguards: protection for innocent people’s privacy; public reassurance about what that protection really is; safeguards so that powers cannot be abused; safeguards, checks and balances on what the police and intelligence agencies can do; and a Government and Parliament that recognise that this is difficult and do not try just to sweep it all under the carpet and deny the public a say.

The lack of a wider debate is making it harder to have a short-term debate today. This is not the right way to have this debate. However, I also believe that we cannot reject this legislation now; it would be wrong to do so. We need to support it today, but we must also use it to get the wider debate that we need.

Let us be clear about what is at stake. The Court judgment means that the regulations on data retention need to be replaced; otherwise, they will fall altogether. This is about the requirement for companies to hold their billing data and other communications data for 12 months. This does not refer to the content of the calls and messages; it just covers the communications data. If the police are investigating a crime or pursuing an emergency that involves risk to life or limb, they can get a warrant and ask the companies to hand over the data relating to the suspect. As the Home Secretary has said, these data are used to identify conspiracies, prove alibis, locate missing children and find out who is committing online crimes or sending online child abuse. The police need warrants to do this, and the data do not tell us what people are saying. They cannot tell us the content of an e-mail—that is private—but they can help us to solve crimes.

These data are particularly important in dealing with serious and organised crime. For example, they can show that drug dealers who claim not to know each other have in fact been calling each other every week. They can show who the armed robber called to help him get away from the scene of a crime, or where a missing child was when their phone was switched off. They can also help to trace who a terror suspect contacted before they went to Syria, for example, and to work out who might be grooming or radicalising more young people to go there.

These data are used in court in 95% of the serious and organised crime cases that reach prosecution. They are particularly important in relation to online child abuse, because they allow the police to get warrants, to contact companies to find out the name and address of the person who has sent vile images of child abuse and to rescue children who are being hurt. A recent Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre investigation resulted in the arrest of 200 suspects and identified 132 children who were at risk of abuse. The prosecutions and actions needed to rescue those children were made possible only through the use of communications data. A similar investigation in Germany, where communications data are not held, led to only a handful of cases being investigated.

The Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan police has described the importance of communications data to rape investigations. She has said:

“As to robberies and rapes, it is very usual for phones to be stolen. The stranger rapist, on many occasions, will take the phone from the victim and within 24 hours we find the rapist.”

The data also protect our children’s safety. In one case that the Joint Committee looked at, an online help service contacted the police, worried about a child who had posted on their website a threat to commit suicide. The police contacted the relevant companies, which helped to track down the service user’s name and address, then sent the local police to the door to find that the child had hanged himself but was still breathing. Fast action and communications data saved his life.

It is because we recognise how crucial this evidence is to so many investigations that we believe it would be too damaging to the fight against crime and terrorism for the police to lose this information this summer. The Government have rightly made changes to ensure that the new legislation can comply with the ECJ directive. They have narrowed the number of organisations that can access the data, for example, and introduced further safeguards to ensure that the process is necessary and proportionate.

The second part of the Bill is more complex, as it addresses the global nature of our telecommunications. Increasingly, the companies that help us to communicate with each other, with the family members we live with and with our neighbours and friends down the road, are based abroad. They should not be excluded from UK law just because of where their headquarters are based. International companies have been covered by and complied with RIPA for many years. Indeed, the legislation has always made it clear that companies should be covered if they provided services in the UK. We recognise, however, that other court judgments have made it more important to be explicit about legislation that has extraterritorial effect, rather than just leaving the arrangements implicit in the legislation. Again, it would jeopardise important intelligence if we were to ignore this factor.

Similarly, on telecommunications data, we have sought assurances from the Home Secretary that these measures are not an extension of powers and that they are only a clarification of the arrangements that already exist and of practices that already take place. It is important to recognise that this is not just about the legislation. The Home Secretary has now given the House assurances that the way in which she issues warrants will comply with that intention not to extend those powers, and that this is simply about maintaining the powers that are already in place.

This means that the safeguards are extremely important. The safeguards in the Bill and in the regulations are welcome. They ensure that the legislation is temporary, as well as restricting the purposes of the legislation so that it cannot be used only for purposes of economic well-being, and restricting the number of organisations that have access to data. We welcome the proposals for a privacy and civil liberties board, although we will need more debate about how that should work and how it should fit with our proposals to overhaul the commissioners and ensure that there is stronger oversight.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is important to have the widest possible consultation with as many groups as possible before the names are put forward for the new board?

[Yvette Cooper]

My right hon. Friend is right, and I would certainly expect the Select Committees to play an important role in that process. There needs to be a debate about the way in which the board should work. It has considerable potential. Wider, more substantial reforms of the existing framework are needed, including, for example, to the structure relating to the commissioners, who in theory have oversight of different parts of legislation, and to the role of the counter-terrorism reviewer, which is more effective than the work of some of the commissioners. We need to look at the whole framework in determining how the privacy and civil liberties board will fit in with the wider reforms that we need. That might need to be a two-stage process: the introduction of the board and reforms made to the commissioners’ structure in the light of the wider review that we are calling for. We have tabled amendments to secure such a review.

The review of the legislation is particularly important. For some time, we have been calling for an independent expert review of the legal and operational framework and in particular of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. As a result of the communications data revolution, the law and our oversight framework are now out of date. As my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) has said, new technology is blurring the distinction between communications and content, and between domestic and international communications, as well as raising new questions about data storage. We therefore need to reconsider what safeguards are necessary in an internet age to ensure that people’s privacy is protected.

We need stronger oversight, too. We need to know how far the new technology is outstripping the legal framework, and what powers and safeguards are needed for the future. We need to determine how warrants should operate, who should have access to data, and whether the police and intelligence agencies have the lawful capabilities that they need. The police need to be able to keep up with new technology, but the safeguards need to keep up, too. All those elements should be included in the scope of the first stage of the independent review by the counter-terrorism reviewer, David Anderson.

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[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

It is a huge pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), who has an unrivalled knowledge of these issues. He is right that we should be cautious in dealing with legislation of this kind. The latest figures we have are that the number of tweets being issued every year is 150 billion, the number of mobile phone contracts has reached 82 million, the number of landlines is 24 million, and the number of broadband connections is 21.7 million. So a lot of data are flowing about. That is why it is extremely important that we consider these matters very carefully. I for one associate myself with the wish of all those who have spoken, including the Home Secretary, that we had longer to scrutinise this legislation so that we could raise the kind of issues that have been raised so far but in much greater detail.

Yesterday, the Home Affairs Committee took evidence from the Home Secretary, who was subjected to quite robust questioning from members of the Committee on this issue. In particular, the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert), who is something of the expert in these matters, was able to raise a number of points that Members had concerning the speed of the legislation going through the House and its detail. Of course it is not satisfactory that we had only one session. We would have liked to have had more sessions. We would have liked to have had the Minister for Security and Immigration before us, but that was not possible given the time scale.

The Committee wrote to the Home Secretary supporting the Government’s view. My hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick) is right: he did not support the letter being sent, nor its contents, but every other member of the Committee did, representing every other major party in the House. As he knows, he often finds himself in a minority of one on issues that are voted upon in the Committee. That in no way means that we do not take his view seriously. Of course we do. He is a very distinguished Member of the House. But that was the view of the Committee, as I correctly reported to the Home Secretary in my letter last night. It echoed what the Prime Minister said to me and other Select Committee Chairs when he said that this was not a land-grab; that this was existing legislation and not about additional powers. I and the Committee support this on the basis of the assurances given by the Prime Minister to me at Downing street, and to other Select Committee Chairs, and to members of the Committee only yesterday by the Home Secretary, that no additional powers are being sought by the Government. I think that that is the basis upon which the shadow Home Secretary and the official Opposition also support the Government.

There are two issues that I hope the Minister will take on board in Committee. The first, of course, is the need to ensure that the scrutiny process is as robust as possible. The Home Affairs Committee recently published a report on counter-terrorism. Its conclusions—I will not go through them all because they are too long—talked about enhancing the role of Parliament and the various commissioners. We felt that it was unacceptable that at least one of the commissioners was part time, with a part-time secretary to deal with these very important issues. We felt that some of the commissioners should be amalgamated to produce full-time people who are able to scrutinise the work of the security services.

The second issue is that the Committee felt that David Anderson should be given additional resources. A feature of our reports over the past few years has been that we have praised the role of the counter-terrorism assessor and asked that he—only men have occupied the post—be given additional support in order to do his job effectively. We rate David Anderson’s work, but we think that he could do much better if he had more resources. He has not asked the Committee for more resources; it is our view, having looked at the evidence and heard from various parties.

That is why it is extremely important that we have a privacy and civil liberties board that is widely representative of those with an interest—all the stakeholders. I urge the Government to consult widely, including with the Select Committee and others outside Parliament, before the names of the board members are announced so that they can work with the independent assessor and do a job that is robust, fair and has the confidence not only of this place, but of the British public.

Reluctantly, given the time scale, we support the Government, accept the assurances that have been given and hope that they will return to Parliament frequently to inform us of any additional information or powers they seek so that there can be proper and appropriate scrutiny, which we have recommended should be conducted by our successor Committee once it is formed in the next Parliament.

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[James Brokenshire]

I hope that in Committee we will be able to get on to the role that the statutory code of practice may play in that regard. The hon. Gentleman will note that there is reference to that in the Bill, and we will be able to discuss it shortly.

It is important to note that the Intelligence and Security Committee has endorsed these proposals, with one notable exception. Indeed, the Home Affairs Committee has done the same, obviously recognising that there may not have been unanimity in that respect. It is important to say that Committees have reflected on and examined this and seen that it is about protecting the status quo.

[Keith Vaz]

It was 7-1, like Germany and Brazil.

[James Brokenshire]

The Chair of the Committee has made his point in his inimitable fashion.

It is important to understand that this is about protecting powers, not adding to them. It is about ensuring that our law enforcement agencies and security agencies have the powers that they need. That is what the proposal in this Bill is about. While I note the clear concerns over the balance between security and liberty, this is about protecting powers, not enhancing them. I commend the Bill to the House.

Question put, That the Bill be now read a Second time.