Investigatory Powers (Amendment) Bill [ Lords ] (First sitting)

Debate between Kevin Foster and Tom Tugendhat

Committee stage & Report stage
Thursday 7th March 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Tom Tugendhat]

That is what I was going to say. Although the register is not publicly available and therefore would not fit in this category, that is where we get to the line. The “no” is for publicly available data, and that is relatively clear.

The “low” comes in areas such as the idea of leaked papers, which somebody raised—forgive me, I cannot remember who. That is where the Bill sets out terms under which datasets should be considered, because of course it is impossible for me to give an answer that applies to every single dataset into the future. One example that came up recently, as right hon. and hon. Members will remember, is the Panama papers. One would not argue for a second that the people listed in those papers had an expectation of openness initially. However, after those papers had been published and republished over many years, at what stage do we really think the expectation of privacy is maintained?

That is where the dataset becomes low expectation. We have set out the oversight regime in another area of the Bill, but I will touch on it. The Investigatory Powers Commissioner has a range of responsibilities, the judicial commissioners have other responsibilities for approving warrants and IPCO has responsibility for overseeing the regime. That is where that is addressed—in slightly ways at each moment of influence and each moment of power, but everything is covered.

[Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)]

I am interested in the Minister’s example of the Panama papers. As he rightly says, when those papers were originally held by a bank or a financial institution, there would be an expectation of privacy. However, he is alluding to where they are sourced from. Those papers have been freely circulating on the open internet and anyone can download them, and it is at that point that the low or no expectation would come in. Rather than the nature of the document itself, it is the fact that it is easily available online that matters.

[Tom Tugendhat]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The reality is that once papers are effectively public, the argument for privacy somewhat falls away. That is exactly where we are getting to in this area, which is why we have looked at how to oversee it and the different elements within it. Part 7A explains the oversight regime clearly and section 226A really gets to the nub of it.

It is important that we focus there, where the argument comes back to the essential element: when considering whether intelligence services have applied the test correctly, the judicial commissioner will apply the same principles that a court would apply on application for judicial review. We therefore have an internal legal process overseeing this before it would even get to any legal challenge. That is why it is more robust than some voices have gently suggested, and covers many of those internal challenges.

EU Settlement Scheme

Debate between Kevin Foster and Tom Tugendhat

Wednesday 7th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Kevin Foster)]

As the first Home Office Minister to come to the Dispatch Box since this afternoon’s news, I would like to pay tribute to my colleague and right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire), and say that we will miss him as a Minister in the Home Office. We obviously still look forward to continuing to work with him as a Member of this House, and wish him the very best for the future.

I am very grateful to the SNP for the opportunity to use the time allocated for today’s debate to highlight the great success of the EU settlement scheme, our approach to late applications, and how welcome it is that so many of our friends and neighbours who arrived during the time of free movement want to make our United Kingdom their home on a permanent basis. I appreciate the generally constructive tone of my debates with the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald): even though we disagree on some fundamental points, he has given some very constructive input, both during his time as my direct shadow and now in his slightly different role as the SNP’s lead spokesperson on home affairs.

As this House is aware, the deadline for applying to the scheme for those resident in the UK by the end of the transition period was last Wednesday, 30 June. As of that date, in excess of 6 million applications have been received by the scheme. More than 5.4 million of those have already concluded and more than 5.1 million grants of status have been issued, with literally thousands being decided every day.

[Tom Tugendhat]

I am delighted to hear my hon. Friend making these statements. Is he aware that if he had applied for settled status in France, he would probably be queuing up even now, and that if he had done the same in Belgium, he would even now be waiting for documents to be approved? The Home Office has secured a remarkable achievement: even when we were members of the European Union, the paperwork needed to be legally resident in France, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, and in many other countries around the EU was significantly more complicated than the procedure that my hon. Friend has set up.

[Kevin Foster]

I thank my hon. Friend for his comments: obviously, he has a unique perspective on these issues, given his chairmanship of the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs. It is always worth reflecting that on the day the French system opened for applications for UK nationals living in France, the EUSS had already received over 4 million applications. That just shows the scale of the scheme, and most people had the ability to apply from home, using an app on their smartphone to verify their identity in conjunction with their national passport. We are very pleased, and we hope that others will learn lessons from our success at getting so many applications in and so many settled and concluded already when it comes to how they approach the position of UK citizens living in their own nations.

To be clear, any application posted on 30 June is also considered to be in time. In recognition of the time it can take for post from all parts of our Union, especially the highlands and islands, to be delivered, we will assume any application received in the post until midnight tonight was posted in time. This is to ensure there is no prospect of an in-time application being ruled out purely on the basis of when it was delivered to the Home Office. Overall, these numbers are significant just in themselves: despite all the warnings about our potential willingness and ability to deliver, literally millions of EU citizens in the UK and their family members now have their status protected and their rights secured under UK law.

Foreign Affairs Committee

Debate between Kevin Foster and Tom Tugendhat

Tuesday 19th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to be called in this debate. It is worth saying that I have no personal objection to the hon. Members for St Helens North (Conor McGinn) and for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) joining a Committee; I remember the rather courageous stand that the hon. Member for St Helens North took a few years back in supporting the Government’s taking military action against Daesh when his party leader was not doing so. The comments I am about to make are no reflection on those two Members, but I do feel rather conflicted.

There has been a lot of talk about whipping and potential arrangements. I do not think it is right to discuss on the Floor of the House Members’ conversations with Whips, but I must say that while it is always lovely to hear from my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St Edmunds (Jo Churchill), my Whip, it was nice not to hear from her today about this motion and the amendment. She has the joy of texting me to ask if I am here, which usually gets the response, “I’m sitting on the other end of the Bench from you.”

There is a bit of a conflict in my mind today, and I will explain why. Previous motions from the Committee of Selection that we have considered on the membership of Committees, including Select Committees, have usually been brought forward when a Member has said that they no longer wish to be on a Committee, and the relevant party is looking to replace them. That is why when, a couple of years back, there was a motion relating to the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) being on the Justice Committee, I took the view that it was a Labour vacancy, and the Labour party had nominated someone. While the motion was controversial to those on the Government Benches, I took the view that it was not really for Government Members to pick who represented the Opposition on a Select Committee; I felt that voting against the motion would set a bit of a precedent, so on that occasion, I was prepared to vote in favour of it. It was not that I had any great thoughts about the merits of the individual concerned; I felt that it was a Labour vacancy, as a Labour Member was standing down from the Committee. The Labour party was therefore entitled to nominate someone. I did not feel it was for a Government MP, particularly one who was quite involved in things, to say, “No. Come back with someone else.”

I accept that today the situation is very different. Neither the hon. Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin) nor the hon. Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) wishes to be removed from the Foreign Affairs Committee, and neither has done something that makes it necessary for the House to remove them. They have both given exceptional service. We saw in the superb speech of the hon. Member for Dudley North exactly why he is on that Committee. It is because of the incisive nature that he brings to debates and his passion for the subjects concerned. In the case of the hon. Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes), I can say that I may not share some of his views, I may not share his thoughts on a second referendum, and every time he speaks, I may not innately think, “Yeah, great point. That is one I would have made myself.” That is not what it is about; it is about making sure that there is independence on these Committees.

Where I feel uncomfortable is whether it should really be the Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster who goes through the Lobby to decide who represents the Opposition on Select Committees. That is why I feel uncomfortable with suggestions that we should vote against this motion. It will set a precedent. I am conscious that there will be a number of Members on the Government Benches who will wish to vote against this motion. In particular, the respected members of the Committee may feel that they have a stronger need to express their views. None the less, as PPS to the de facto Deputy Prime Minister, I feel reticent about going through the Lobby to choose the Opposition representatives on that Committee.

[Tom Tugendhat]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. I appreciate the point that he is making about choosing who should serve on Committees—which party they come from and how they should be selected—but surely the question before us today is a fundamental one about whether those who are elected to serve on a Select Committee are delegates of the whole House or representatives of their party. That is a fundamental question that we should be considering. The truth is that the Select Committee system was established so that the whole House could look into matters at greater depth than is possible for the Chamber as a whole. That is the question that we should be asking ourselves today. Therefore, once the House has made a decision as to who should represent it, should it be up to the Whips Office from one party or another to make a difference?

[Kevin Foster]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. In relation to Committee Chairs, he is absolutely right that we select as the whole House. They are appointed by the whole House, and I would be reluctant to set a precedent, if Chairs of the Committees were to change their political affiliation—there has been one such change—that they were delegates of one party or another. At the start of the Parliament, we makes the allocations. If there comes a vacancy, that would potentially make a difference.

For me, there is a challenge in this. This matter is being debated on the Floor of the House. Members are appointed by the whole House to be Chairs and members of Committees, but we are talking about the Opposition’s spaces, and I do have a view on that. Although I suspect that, in this Parliament, things will be handled quite maturely—in fact I suspect that, under a number of Labour Governments, things would be handled well—we could be setting quite a precedent if Government Members, particularly Government payroll Members, started choosing the Opposition members on a Committee, regardless of what I might think on this particular occasion. It is different for those who are not on the Government payroll.

Windrush: 70th Anniversary

Debate between Kevin Foster and Tom Tugendhat

Thursday 14th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)]

I apologise that I was not here for the opening of my hon. Friend’s remarks due to Parliamentary Private Secretary duties. Does he agree that there is also the entrepreneurial spirit that many brought from the Indian subcontinent? For example, I opened the National Federation of Retail Newsagents conference in Torquay on Monday, and we see the impact in that industry, in particular, of the many entrepreneurial people who came to this country from the Commonwealth.

[Tom Tugendhat]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. He will not know this, but I was a beneficiary of that entrepreneurial spirit. When I was learning to be a journalist, one of the papers that I worked for was Eastern Eye, a newspaper that was started by a couple of brothers in their bedroom, as it were, and is now an important voice for a major community in our country.

We are focusing on the Windrush gift to the United Kingdom, but there is a much wider gift here—a gift to the world of those people. Just as our own people, whether they come from these islands 1,000 years ago or come from these islands 10 years ago, have demonstrated the drive and energy to transform this part of the world, the connections around the world have also been transformed. This is where I think we have to focus now as a people, because too many countries today are looking inwards. Too many are seeing the borders, whether they be land or sea. They are seeing those borders as boundaries, and of course, they are not. Those borders are merely the front door to the rest; the front door to the other; the front door to our friends.

That is what we must start thinking about today as we change our relationship with our European friends, and as we change the way in which we interact around the world. We should be looking at the Windrush generation, and, of course, at all the generations, whether they are, like mine, emerging from a broken central Europe, or, like others, emerging from the heat, the sun and the light of the tropical climates from which so many came. Wherever they came from, we need to remember that the links that now tie this House of Commons, this people and these islands to the rest of the world are in no way a drag, but are, in a very fundamental sense, an enrichment.

This must be our new strategy. This must be our new approach: not just looking at the past, but looking at the future. If we can use these links of history, blood and understanding, reinvigorate them, and transform them again into the links that we all want to see—links of enterprise, energy, trade and culture—we shall have an extraordinary future for ourselves, built on a legacy that we all share, built on an enterprise that we all share, and built, fundamentally, on the memory that we are one people, one United Kingdom, and together we have a glorious future.

NHS (Charitable Trusts Etc) Bill

Debate between Kevin Foster and Tom Tugendhat

Friday 22nd January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Foster]

I thank my hon. Friend for that good point. Once we start on the principle of these changes, where do we stop? Karing, a charity in my constituency—it is in Preston, in Paignton—is very closely linked with a local doctor’s surgery, and it was lucky enough recently to have had its new base opened by Esther Rantzen. It is not, however, part of that surgery. Clearly, the two work together, with Karing supporting and providing great services, giving real benefits to local people, but, crucially, it is not part of the business that is the surgery, nor is it part of the business that is the NHS. That is where the logo point comes in.

[Tom Tugendhat]

My hon. Friend is making a strong, clear point. In my constituency, Edenbridge hospital has a league of friends, which is there not only to support the hospital—it does that incredibly impressively—but to support the needs of the community and to advocate when the hospital gets it wrong, which, occasionally, it may have done. Keeping that independence is essential so that the charity can actually do its job and not merely be an adjunct to the hospital.

[Kevin Foster]

My hon. Friend makes the excellent point that many people will see a league of friends at a local hospital as not just having a function of holding some money in an account, but as also being a stakeholder in the process, able to speak independently and fearlessly about the local hospital and the charities. It needs to be seen as neutral and independent. As we have mentioned, the Public Accounts Committee looked in depth this week at the financial sustainability of NHS trusts. There are concerns about that, and we have seen examples where NHS trusts have gone badly wrong. Thankfully, this Government have been far more prepared to talk about that and deal with it than previous Governments have been. If the charity is seen to be part of the trust, we go back to the idea that the charity is not bringing in additionality. People will think, “I am not donating money so that there is something extra; I am donating money that could or should have been provided by the Government or by the trust.”

If we start spreading the logo around, we open up other debates that are not particularly helpful, as we set a precedent. That was touched on briefly in the intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall. People are very precious about the NHS—it is a symbol of the public sector, delivered by the public sector. That is a very important point. If we start extending use of the logo to charities, what do we do about other bodies that might wish to start using it? For example, we regularly see the NHS logo used alongside “in partnership”, for example with a foundation trust or the Department of Health, but we do not see groups such as my local league of friends abandoning their long-established and very well-recognised brand within the local area to say that they are collecting for the NHS. The Torbay Hospital League of Friends is doing a great job with its “This is Critical” campaign to get money to help equip the new critical care unit of the hospital, but it is not the NHS, and the essence of that approach is that what it provides is additional and that it is independent. That is why, for me, the amendment would go against the whole spirit of the Bill, which is about independent charities and independent trusts. For me, amendment 9 does not make sense and I will not be supporting it. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset will not press it to a vote.

Trident

Debate between Kevin Foster and Tom Tugendhat

Tuesday 24th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Tom Tugendhat]

Absolutely. I thank my hon. Friend very much for that intervention. The appalling nature of nuclear weapons is exactly what keeps us safe. The very fact that they are an existential threat to so many regimes and to so many dreadful leaders around the world is exactly what puts them off. Few bunkers and no society could survive a nuclear attack, and that is exactly why nuclear weapons work: nobody wishes to face them.

[Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is giving a very powerful speech. Does he agree that NATO is about making a conventional or a nuclear attack on its members absolutely futile? In short, in the nuclear age, the enemy is war itself.