Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill

Lord Beith Excerpts

Tuesday 15th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

We have just had an hour-and-a-half debate in which Members have been talking about the importance of parliamentary process. We have a parliamentary process called Committee stage at which amendments to the Bill will be properly considered, and that debate will take place then. I have indicated to the House that I understand the desire of some Members to ensure that the review of the capability and powers that are needed and the regulatory framework is on the statute book to ensure that that does, indeed, take place. David Anderson, the reviewer of counter-terrorism legislation, has indicated that he will lead that review and there is widespread support for that given the excellent job he does in his current role. However, I want to make sure that, in looking to ensure we undertake that review, the Bill is drafted in a way that delivers what we all want to be delivered. I would have thought that that was entirely reasonable. That debate will take place at the Committee stage, when the hon. Gentleman will be free to wax lyrical about the nature of the amendment.

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

May I bring the Home Secretary back to what she was talking about before, which is what is loosely described as blanket retention? It is not possible for the police to identify, before a crime has been committed, the range of telephone calls made and received about which it would be helpful for them to have communications data in order to pursue that crime. Therefore, the retention of data for a period is the only way the system can work.

[Mrs May]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. People often argue, “Actually, all you need to do is retain data from the point when you’ve identified a suspect or that a crime has taken place,” but when somebody has been murdered, for example, it may be necessary to go back and identify calls between the victim and a number of people. That is why it is important to be able to retain data from the past, but that is for a limited period. Previously, under the regulations that were agreed by this House, 12 months was the set period for retention. One issue that the European Court of Justice raised was that there should not just be one period of retention for all types of data. We are addressing that by making it a maximum period of retention, so it would be possible in any notice to a communications service provider to say that a particular type of data is required to be retained for a period of less than 12 months. We are, therefore, introducing the flexibility that the ECJ required.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alan Johnson (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind). I am not sure whether he and I are the best people to support the Home Secretary. It seems to be de rigueur in some quarters to believe that members of the Intelligence and Security Committee and former Home Secretaries lose any sense of the need to support the noble causes of protection of privacy and promoting civil liberties as soon as they come into office. We are supposed to have all that sucked out of us as we walk down Marsham street.

Sometimes, as a non-tweeter, I am lectured about the importance of privacy by people who send a tweet every time they brush their teeth. Leaving that aside, I suppose that, just as it is impossible to imagine a new Foreign Secretary arguing for Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union, it is impossible to imagine a Home Secretary being caught up with the more fundamentalist wing of the civil liberties group. That does not mean that we do not care about civil liberties.

Leaving aside Home Secretaries and distinguished Chairs of the Intelligence and Security Committee, the people who work in the security services and the police and the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre are equally concerned about issues of privacy. The one thing that sometimes irritates me about this debate is the idea that we could direct them. In this country, with all our values, which we sometimes seem to believe exist only within this Chamber or within Members of Parliament and Ministers, that is a ludicrous suggestion.

For me, there is one test for the Bill—the Ronseal test: does it do what it says on the tin? Let me assure Opposition Members that the Home Secretary prior to 2010, who was me, operated entirely on the basis of this Bill. I have sprinkled rosewater on it, I have held it up to the light, I have closely examined all six clauses. Apart from the ambiguity, which others have referred to, we always believed that we had protection in respect of CSPs based overseas and that they were subject to the law on communications in the UK. We always operated in that way, and it is as well to make that clear. Would it not be ludicrous if it worked any other way?

[Sir Alan Beith]

It would not only be ludicrous; it would be an invitation to companies to re-site themselves outside the United Kingdom, for fear of placing themselves at a competitive disadvantage.

[Alan Johnson]

Of course. The right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) made a very important point earlier about the need for a blanket provision. We need to keep blanket information. How will we resolve the cases that the shadow Home Secretary set out so effectively without that provision?

I admit before this House that I believe these laws ought to go further. I have made that clear before. I agreed with the Home Secretary in the foreword to the draft Bill a couple of years ago, which says that we cannot allow continuing and new technologies to remove this capability, but I accept that this is not the place to argue for that. Indeed, I believe that the new provisions set up under David Anderson, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board and the examination that David Anderson will carry out, make it more probable that we will have an informed debate when the matter comes before Parliament.

The right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), who is not in his place, spoke about telecommunications, but before telecommunications, there was the Post Office. It has always been the case that we have used these kinds of powers to protect this country against our enemies. When I joined the Post Office as a postman in 1968—I know that is a long time ago—there was a whole unit in St Martin’s le Grand occupied by MI5, or the service, as it was called, where technicians wore rubber gloves and sat with very strong lights and large kettles, steaming open letters. I add, incidentally, that I was not one of those people. I know that by reading “The Defence of the Realm”, the splendid history of MI5 written by Christopher Andrew.

Christopher Andrew also tells us that in 1969, 221,000 postal items were opened in this way. There had been an increase of 135,000 on 1961. The interception of communications commissioner’s report in 2013 shows the total number of interception warrants authorised by the Home Secretary. Bear in mind that 221,000 letters were opened in 1969. The number of warrants authorised in 2013 was 2,670. That shows that, although there is a more complex problem, although the challenges are more complex and, I would say, the threats to this country are more severe—that our citizens are in a more perilous position than they were in the 1960s is arguable, but that is what I believe—it is incredible that we have a much greater grip on the issue now. We have far more surveillance and far more oversight of these matters than we had, and that is very healthy.

In my view, we are today defending what is there already. If there was an addition to those powers—I was pleased to hear the Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee say that the Committee had looked at this—I would not support the Bill and I would not have supported the programme motion earlier. Members in all parts of the House see this as important. Let us not lose the capabilities that we have before we debate whether those capabilities need to be added to.