Investigatory Powers Bill

Debate between Lord Strasburger and Lord Reid of Cardowan

Monday 27th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strasburger]

I have no idea, is the answer to that question.

My point is that, contrary to what some people assert, the risk of death from terrorism is not as high as it was 30 or 40 years ago, so we must take care not to surrender the freedoms that our parents and grandparents fought to protect in the Second World War on the basis of alleged unprecedented threats.

[Lord Reid of Cardowan (Lab)]

Since the noble Lord has no idea, I will give just one example, occurring and culminating on 6 August 2006: the attempt to bring down seven airliners—which, were it not for the powers in the Bill, would have resulted in 2,300 deaths on one day alone.

[Lord Strasburger]

Thank you.

Sometimes, possibly well-meant attempts to improve our safety by treating every citizen as a suspect and collecting everyone’s private data could have the unintended consequence of making us less safe. I am thinking of bulk surveillance powers, which some experts say risk hiding data about the bad guys under a tsunami of personal and private data about the 99% of us who will never be terrorists or paedophiles. Furthermore, by storing 12 months of our internet activity at our service providers to derive a debatable security benefit, we would be exposing all internet users to the entirely new and self-inflicted risk of the theft of that very revealing data by thieves, blackmailers and foreign spooks. There is plenty of experience of cyberthefts to tell us that our personal data will be stolen, whatever bland assurances we get from the Government that they will not.

So the Bill has the potential to be a good one, but it is not yet there and we have much work to do to get it there. I look forward to working with my colleagues on these Benches to achieve that—and, importantly, I hope also to work with noble Lords on the Labour, Cross-Bench and Government Benches to make the Bill fit for purpose and the best it can be.