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Lord Triesman Excerpts

Monday 10th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Triesman]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement made in the other place. It is important to start with some clarity over the precise subject that we are discussing today and we do so on this side against a background of agreement that I think is shared in both Houses, and across all sides of both Houses, about the values that are expressed in the Statement and the importance of protecting the United Kingdom and those values. It is clear that that is absolutely common ground.

The Guardian newspaper has revealed information obtained from Mr Edward Snowden, a former CIA contractor, that the National Security Agency in the United States has, so far as we understand it, collected huge quantities of information on telephone calls, e-mails and other online information. Some, but by no means all, of this surveillance has been focused on United States citizens. Much is said to have come from Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Skype and other digital sources. It will therefore include surveillance of people who are not US citizens.

While the United States Administration have acknowledged the truth of the telephone surveillance, the technology companies have denied that any online information has been provided that was not covered by a federal court warrant before it was handed to the US Government.

I do not want, and it is not my place, to comment on United States policy on this matter or on the extent to which the Patriot Act makes such actions in the US legal. Those are matters for US politicians and US courts. However, I accept what the Foreign Secretary has said—that all the surveillance is directed not just against terrorists but against many different kinds of criminals, such as cybercriminals, paedophiles and people who wish to steal intellectual property.

We need to focus on the issues for the United Kingdom and to allay the plain anxieties of UK citizens and the UK media about the extent of UK involvement, its character and the legal basis for anything that has happened in our country. As Douglas Alexander put it on the “Today” programme this morning in response to Simon McCoy, “We need to be able to reassure the public ... there is an understandable level of public concern, given the reports in the newspapers over the last couple of days, and given how much we all rely on the intelligence agencies here in the United Kingdom to keep us safe”. There have been assertions and counterassertions. Today we begin the process of understanding what has happened from the United Kingdom’s point of view.

First, I will deal with what might be called the straw dogs. I want, for complete avoidance of doubt, to be clear about what we are not saying today. I do not doubt for one second that in the complex battle with terrorism or organised crime we need to collect data. It is an intrusive but entirely essential task for our security services. I will not accept from these Benches that we would ever willingly or knowingly put UK citizens or others at risk. We, too, will give no comfort or inadvertent assistance to terrorists, as the Foreign Secretary said.

Secondly, we have no doubt whatever that this means that there will be co-operation between friendly states trying to achieve the same objectives.

Thirdly, the balance between surveillance and privacy is a very hard one to strike. Perhaps it is impossible to get it entirely right as circumstances change. The Foreign Secretary said, in replying to questions on the Statement, that mistakes will always be made. I am not even saying that mistakes have been made, but this is obviously something that we will all want to keep in mind. Privacy will be compromised to some extent, whatever balance we agree. However, there has to be a proper balance if we regard the proper privacy of citizens as important—important not at the risk of their life and limb but important none the less in a democratic society where we enjoy private life within the law. The United Kingdom would never have settled for a Stasi-style state. This weekend, the Foreign Secretary described his approach as “necessary” and “proportionate”. That is a matter of the balance. We try to enshrine the balance as best we can in law, and I must return to this point in seeking clarification from the Minister. We need better to understand the terms that the Foreign Secretary has used.

Fourthly, every Minister who has dealt with the intelligence services, including GCHQ—and I am proud to have been one of them—knows that we are dealing with people of the greatest integrity, and it is not any part of my submission to your Lordships that we have grounds for suspicion. They are excellent as a group and are outstanding in their service to the United Kingdom. I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, made essentially the same point on television over the weekend, and it is a view that I share.

Fifthly, I hear the expression that law-abiding British citizens have “nothing to fear”. We have probably all used that kind of phrase on one occasion or another, but it often conceals more than it reveals. Of course those acting within the law should not fear oversight but most of us also value our privacy, at least to some extent, and can value it without wishing to commit any acts of terrorism. I am never happy about the extent to which search engines inspect my tastes, purchases, and whereabouts and so on in pursuit of business, even when I do not want them to. Prism is therefore a concern for honest reasons, not dishonest ones. How we use it or perhaps contribute to it is also a concern for honest reasons, not dishonest ones.

On the “Today” programme this morning, Sir Malcolm Rifkind said that no access surveillance data of the kinds that I have described could be collected without explicit ministerial approval. I think that that was reflected in the Statement but I want to check. As I understand it, Sir Malcolm was referring either to material that the UK’s intelligence agencies may wish to collect for themselves or to material collected by a foreign agency that the intelligence services here might wish to access. He said, “The law is actually quite clear. If the British intelligence agencies are seeking to know the content of e-mails about people living in the UK then they actually have to get lawful authority. Normally that means ministerial authority”. I understand that the foreign agency might offer material out of mutual friendship and concern for the well-being of our or other citizens, and I repeat that this has an unavoidable impact on privacy but is very important for our safety. However, Sir Malcolm’s point was that there is an explicit law on permissions. He was not making the point that we should never try to catch terrorists by such means—quite the contrary.

Therefore, none of my questions is intended to help any terrorist. I have thought carefully about these questions, which in the past I would have been able to answer or would have been inclined to say I could not answer before your Lordships in this House for security reasons. These questions are not hostile; rather, they are exploratory. I ask them against the clear background of saying that we want the criminals whose attacks may be directed towards this country and who are never constrained by the question of any international border to be prevented from causing us harm and brought to justice.

How many instances of data acquisition by our intelligence services have taken place in the past three years in the ways that have been alleged by the Guardian? What precisely is the legal framework, what are the procedures and what are the protocols under which a United Kingdom Minister could ask for information from American agencies?

Did Ministers authorise each and every one of these applications for data? I suspect that there will be a yes or no answer. The assurance of legality can be made clear today by answering that question. It will not aid a terrorist in any respect to know the answer but it should be a source of reassurance to honest, law-abiding citizens of the UK.

Would it be lawful for GCHQ to request information from Prism and for this to fall outside the scrutiny of any UK Act, including the Intelligence Services Act and the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act? Mr Hague appears to have said in the Statement that that could not happen, but I would welcome confirmation.

What is the status of the request to search United States data? Would that be covered by a proper warrant just as would requests to obtain that information in this country?

Did the Intelligence Services Commissioner and the Interception of Communications Commissioner have oversight of the process that they exercised? I do not mean “Do they?” in a general sense but “Did they in these circumstances?”.

Will the Foreign Secretary be willing to discuss all these matters in detail in an appropriately confidential meeting of the Intelligence and Security Committee? Will the ISC be put in a position where it can add to the assurance that the public seeks without disclosing anything at all that may assist anybody who intends us harm? Will the Foreign Secretary set out for Parliament any concerns that he may have about the surveillance of United Kingdom citizens, or, if he has none, will he explain how he reaches a conclusion on that matter? He cannot regard this as something within the reach of the “nothing to fear” answer. How rapidly could the Government respond to these deeper questions which have been brought to the surface by these events?

I ask these questions in exactly the sense in which I started when responding to the Statement. We are as committed as anybody to the effectiveness of an intelligence service which, from experience, I know is among the best in the world, operated by the best civil servants this country could hope to have. The public are not often exposed to the nature of the service’s work—this is perhaps a necessary fact about that kind of work. However, some clarity on these questions will give real reassurance.