Wilson Doctrine

Lord Strasburger Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd July 2015 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Strasburger]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government which methods of communication used by members of either House of Parliament are not presently subject to the Wilson doctrine.

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen (Con)]

My Lords, as the noble Lord may be aware, there is an ongoing litigation in the Investigatory Powers Tribunal on the Wilson doctrine. In fact, there is a hearing tomorrow. One of the issues that the tribunal is looking to consider is the scope of the doctrine. Given this ongoing litigation, it would not be appropriate for me to comment further at present.

[Lord Strasburger (LD)]

My Lords, David Anderson’s recent report confirmed what we already knew from Edward Snowden—namely, that, every day, GCHQ is hoovering up the private data of millions of innocent citizens without the informed consent of Parliament. Can the Minister explain how the Government manage to comply with the Wilson doctrine by excluding the private data of parliamentarians when they are scooping up everyone else’s indiscriminately?

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

As I said, there is a tribunal hearing on the Wilson doctrine tomorrow, and the noble Lord can understand why I am not in a position to say more about the doctrine with a court case ongoing. Perhaps I may quote the Home Secretary from a recent debate in the other place. She said:

“Obviously, the Wilson doctrine applies to parliamentarians. It does not absolutely exclude the use of these powers against parliamentarians, but it sets certain requirements for those powers to be used in relation to a parliamentarian. It is not the case that parliamentarians are excluded and nobody else in the country is, but there is a certain set of rules and protocols that have to be met if there is a requirement to use any of these powers against a parliamentarian”.—[Official Report, Commons, 15/7/14; col. 713.]