Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Monday 26th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blencathra]

If the Home Office were to come along with a whole range of those clauses as proposed in our Select Committee report, I would be the first to commend them and to propose them. In the political climate coming up to the election, it may not be possible to produce those clauses and get the consent of both Houses of Parliament. There may be time, but there is severe political difficulty in trying to bounce those new clauses on an unsuspecting public or legislature at this stage.

I congratulate my noble friend on some other key issues in his proposed new clause. He is right to dump all those extraneous public bodies which our committee was very concerned about. The Home Secretary repeatedly says, and rightly so, that she needs the data Bill to tackle terrorism, paedophilia and serious crime. That is the mantra. The committee agreed, but there should not be 600-odd public authorities in the Bill which are allowed to use some of the powers. They do not have the full powers of MI5 and M16—of course not—but it tarnishes the importance of the big players getting access to data if local councils are in there. Of course local councils say that serious crime is involved. They say that fly-tipping is not just someone chucking an old mattress over the hedge of a farmer’s field because gangs are making millions from it, so it is serious crime and local councils want to be in there. I say that they should use other measures rather than a Bill which has constantly been touted as dealing with paedophiles, terrorists and serious crime. In that case, the organisation which is responsible for putting the little lion on British eggs should not be included either. It is: it made a case to be included because apparently, if it is done improperly or wrongly, the EU may cut off £20 million of our funds, and therefore it is serious crime. A distinction has to be made between serious crime related to gun running, people trafficking and big money and the rest of crime.

My noble friend has included the police and the two security services. My committee recommended that we should include the National Crime Agency, HMRC, which also does a lot of work on this, the United Kingdom Border Agency—or whatever we call it now—and the FSA, whatever that is called now too. Those big bodies make up 99% of all requests for data. The other 1% are all the extraneous other bodies.

The committee also made some other very important recommendations which touched on many other aspects of my noble friend’s proposed new clauses. The committee believed that the SPOC—single point of contact—system is far better than anyone ever expected. Nearly all of us on the Joint Committee felt that we could not have the SPOC system as it would be one policeman going up to another and saying, “Hey, Sarge, sign this on the nod and we’ll get access to data”. When the committee visited the Metropolitan Police, we were delighted—perhaps I should have said amazed first—to find that the system was exceptionally good and exceptionally well run and should be no cause for concern. The police, being the police, of course invented a computer program. No one officer can move on to the next stage to authorise the collection of data until all the boxes have been filled in—not ticked, but filled in. Then another policeman has to review it. In some ways, we should have guessed that the inevitable bureaucracy of the police would come up with a system which was pretty fool-proof and pretty safe. In fact, the committee recommended that the police system was so good that the other extraneous organisations should go through the police and the system should go out to tender. I hope the Met would get it. If the Met got that tender, it would be running a rather good SPOC system in the rest of the country. I hope that placates the noble Lords, Lord Blair and Lord Condon, because I am opposed to some of the rest of the proposed new clauses.

If we go ahead with my noble friend’s proposed new clauses, I am very concerned that we will hit a huge storm of criticism that we are introducing the snoopers’ charter by the back door.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

So far, no one who has spoken in this debate has referred to the final amendment in this group, Amendment 99. It is the sunset clause for 31 December next year. So it will go, but it will go because the other legalisation goes anyway. In other words, after the election, we know that both Houses have got to spend a lot of time on this because of the sunset clause. Surely putting the sunset clause in this group, plus the other amendments from the Home Office, meets a lot of the objections that anyone could make to this because this is not a free-for-all for ever. We are legislating to say that at the end of next year it goes and Parliament has to replace it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Rooker]

I do not want to delay the Minister, but let us not beat about the bush. I do not speak for anybody other than myself, but I listened to every single speech, and those opposed to these amendments seem to be in favour of them being amended in line with the views of the committee that looked at the draft Bill. Will the Minister go back to the Home Secretary after this debate and make the request on behalf of this House for us to see, if not the draft Bill, the amendments to the amendments by Wednesday or Thursday this week, so that this House can make its mind up as to whether or not it wants to debate them and ask the other place? At the end of the day, Parliament has to decide but, as he knows, we are up against a time limit. Will he go back and say to the Home Secretary—these need not be his views, as he can just say he is the Minister with the message—that the House has asked whether it can see this information in time to do something with it?

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, before my noble friend responds, and without making any comment about whether we should or should not be shown things, I do not think it is appropriate to characterise all the opposition to these amendments as solely being about the way in which they have been put. My noble friends have made points of principle which we should not ignore.