Investigatory Powers Bill

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Report: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 11th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, all I can say in response so far is thank heavens we do not have the coalition Government in power. I support entirely what we have just heard from the noble Lord, the former Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation.

I will choose my words carefully. One of the things that is worth thinking about with legislation like this is that we have the Government today, but we are legislating; we are Parliament. How would the Opposition use this? When I look at my friends in opposition, frankly, I will support the Government to vote this down. I am not prepared to abstain on such a barmy and dangerous amendment, as the noble Lord just said.

I will not go through the amendment. In fact, the noble Lord who moved it did not go through it. He did not explain what it meant by “professional qualifications, achievements” and “public stature” for the appointments. It is preposterous and a nosy parker’s charter into investigatory powers because it does not talk about looking at things; it demands access to all material from an agency and requests information from any agency or government department. There is nothing about the staff of the body. Forget the fact it is envisaged that three out of five members of the board will be of the same political party—it is envisaged to be party political—there is nothing about the security aspects of the staff, let alone the vetting of the people.

It is not, as the amendment says, just about civil liberties. It is in many ways trying to second-guess the powers of the commissioners. It is trying to second-guess the Joint Committee on Human Rights and the parliamentary security committee. We should have nothing to do with it. I hope the noble Lord will think twice if he is thinking about calling a Division on this. They will be laughed out of court.

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, I fully support what the noble Lords, Lord Carlile and Lord Rooker, have said. The amendment would create a security nightmare and be a recipe for obfuscation, muddle and confusion. Indeed, it is a dangerous proposal and I am amazed that it has been put forward. If the House divided, I would vote against it. Accepting it would be a grave error, and I am surprised and shocked to see such an amendment.

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, I wonder whether I might be helpful to the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, in his quest in some way to emulate the American model. I was recently at a conference in Vienna as a member of the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy, where we discussed the issue of financing global terrorism. I had the pleasure of meeting two distinguished members of the American civil liberties board. They spoke at great length; they were eloquent, distinguished and had great expertise. I asked them the question: do their Government have to listen to them? The answer was no—there was no point.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Rooker]

My Lords, I am not a journalism specialist like the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, and the noble Lord, Lord Black. Having listened to the debate, I have a couple of points which I hope the Minister will find supportive. The overall package of the Bill that has now been presented on Report is far more liberal than would ever have come forward from the Labour Government of which I was a member for 12 years. We would have been far less willing to give in the way this Government have. What they have brought forward is remarkable. I can almost prove that. I attended the Labour Party conference in Liverpool, where there were hundreds of fringe meetings every day. I scanned the book, dozens of pages of it, because I was there the previous year when the situation with this Bill was slightly different. Not one fringe meeting was advertised in relation to any part of this Bill. There was nothing about journalism, lawyers or investigatory powers; absolutely nothing compared to the previous two years. I find that quite practical and I hope the Government will find it reassuring.

[Lord West of Spithead]

My Lords, to add to that, I too am most impressed with the package the Government have come up with. It is really impressive. It shows a great willingness to compromise but does not compromise our security at all. I also pass my good wishes to the noble Earl on the 219th anniversary of his ancestor raising the siege of Gibraltar.

[Lord Paddick]

I also thank the Minister for this impressive package of amendments. It clearly has to be necessary and proportionate in some circumstances to investigate a journalist. However, I am a little concerned about a law enforcement chief being able to authorise such acquisition through equipment interference, although there is now the reassurance of a judicial commissioner, which did not exist before. I accept what the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, and the noble Lord, Lord Black of Brentwood, said about the concern of the National Union of Journalists that there should be prior notification and the ability to make representations. However, I think it is reasonably clear how difficult it would be to differentiate between the cases to which the measure would and would not apply. In all the circumstances, I think that this is more than the best that we could have hoped for. We are very grateful.

Investigatory Powers Bill

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 31st October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the Minister on this group of amendments. As I do not propose to speak on the next and final group, I just want to make a couple of general points about the Bill, which will take only a minute or two.

This is the final day of our deliberations on the Bill, which has had a remarkable passage through Parliament. That is mainly due to the fact that the Government had a draft Bill, and there was also the independent report on surveillance and the work of the Joint Committee. Added to that, the Government were willing to respond to points made by amending the Bill. There will of course be only one issue for the Members of the Commons, who will see a non-government amendment on the matter on which we have just voted and on which I do not wish to comment.

I hope that Labour Party Members in the House of Commons will support the hundreds of Lords amendments. Many of these have been proposed by members of parties other than the government party, although a lot have come from the Government. They make this legislation more than a government Act; in my view, it is truly a parliamentary Act, given the input from other parties.

When the Bill was introduced in the Commons in March this year, I broke a 15-year vow of silence by speaking at the Parliamentary Labour Party to oppose the idea that Labour should abstain if there was a vote at Second Reading. I pleaded for support for the Bill at that point. However, there are still people on the Labour Benches in the Commons who oppose the Bill and I think that my colleagues there should ignore them. It is not a snoopers’ charter; it is not draconian; and it is not a stop-and-search power for the digital age. It will make UK citizens safer. Whether one looks at things like the request filter, the oversight procedures, the privacy protection or the obligations on communications service providers, just to take four aspects, it is a Bill that deserves active support, not sniping from the sidelines or the Front Bench.

There is one hole in the Bill. The Bill is about the state and its duties and responsibilities. The gaping hole now is the use that commercial service providers make of personal information given to them by citizens as they use the services. On page 41 of the report of the RUSI panel, on which I had the honour to serve, we listed the word length of the terms and conditions of popular internet services, and I do not propose to go over those again. All we do as users is tick a box, which means that companies analyse the content of our search results and the content of our emails when we send and receive them and when they are stored. This is done so that we can receive targeted advertising. Indeed, one service provider has filed a patent about being able to sense the mood of the user so that it is better able to make more profit. The Government will not be allowed to do that under this legislation, and Labour MPs should think about that if they are asked to oppose the Bill.

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, I support these amendments and I strongly support my noble friend Lord Rooker in everything that he has said. This Bill is a classic example of how a Bill should come through this place. The way in which it has been built up across Parliament has been remarkable. It meets all the requirements for our security and for personal liberty, and we should be very proud of it.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I was going to speak later but I will speak now, as I am driven to do so by the comments of previous speakers.

The Bill is undoubtedly better than it was at the start. It could not help but be because of all the effort that people have put into making it better, but it is still a most appalling piece of legislation and I should like to read something to noble Lords:

“Today, an ordinary person can’t pick up the phone, email a friend or order a book without comprehensive records of their activities being created, archived, and analysed by people with the authority to put you in jail or worse. I know: I sat at that desk. I typed in the names. When we know we’re being watched, we impose restraints on our behaviour—even clearly innocent activities—just as surely as if we were ordered to do so. The mass surveillance systems of today, systems that pre-emptively automate the indiscriminate seizure of”,

private records, constitute a sort of surveillance time machine”,

“—a machine that simply cannot operate without violating our liberty on the broadest scale. And it permits governments to go back and scrutinise every decision you’ve ever made, every friend you’ve ever spoken to, and derive suspicion from an innocent life. Even a well-intentioned mistake can turn a life upside down. To preserve our free societies, we have to defend not just against distant enemies, but against dangerous policies at home. If we allow scarce resources to be squandered on surveillance programmes that violate the very rights they purport to defend, we haven’t protected our liberty at all: we have paid to lose it”.

That sums this Bill up. It was written by Edward Snowden, who, as he said, sat at that desk. It was written for Liberty.

[Lord West of Spithead]

My Lords, does the noble Baroness accept that Edward Snowden, by releasing millions of bits of classified material, has actually made all of us less safe than we were? It is a certain fact that he has done that. He is hardly someone to quote as a great and noble person.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb]

I think that we will find in the future that this legislation will return again and again to bite us, and many of us here will regret having passed it.

Investigatory Powers Bill

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Ping Pong (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 2nd November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Prescott]

I am here; I am in the other part of Parliament. They did not mention the victims, who were promised justice by every one of us. What do you think those victims feel, reading in the paper now that we are preparing to consult? They were involved in the consultation following incidents in which they suffered press intrusion. I do not believe the situation has changed, and we will have to have a debate about the independence of the complaints system. But I am quite shocked that we are now about to back out of what appeared to be an overwhelming commitment from Prime Ministers and party leaders.

Consultation? It is not consultation. It is leaving via the back door because we do not have the guts to implement a charter that was first agreed to some years ago, and which we all agreed to for good political reasons some months ago. Everybody felt under pressure. Now they feel free to get out of their obligations. That is terrible. It is the start of Parliament reducing its powers. This is a terrible step towards getting rid of the obligation to the individual in our society, who has the right to privacy.

There has been lots of talk about security and about terrorism, but the ordinary person, for whom we all have to be responsible and accountable to, should be protected from such abuse. Frankly, even this Bill is giving more powers to the police. We have seen with the police and the press that it did not stop with Leveson. It is still going on. We have seen what has happened with the police at Hillsborough and Orgreave. All this is a massive way of ignoring our responsibilities in this matter, which we are not carrying out. I agree that it is a diversion, but it is bigger than that: it is a move to get rid of any recommendation to ensure the rights of the individual against the press, in the name of the freedom of the press. I disagree with that, as we all should.

I will support the amendment. If your Lordships really want to settle it, tell the Minister to implement the law and Section 40. That was the will of this House. Let the Government now do what they were supposed to do in agreeing that legislation and carry it out in the name of the freedom of the individual.

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, all my experience from three years as Chief of Defence Intelligence and three years as the Minister for Security and Counterterrorism makes me realise how crucial the Bill is for the security of our nation. The Bill has been worked through now over a long period. It has had amazing input, it has amazing cross-party consensus and it is really very important. We have just had 37 minutes of emotive discussion, most of which has nothing to do with the security of our nation. I am very concerned that this amendment might well have an impact against the Bill that none of us intends. I have heard people saying, “There won’t be any difficulty”, but I am worried. If it does, that will be a problem for us. The Bill is too important for it to be delayed to a state where it is not implemented in time. I hear people saying, “That’s not a problem”, but all my experience of government and of life is that things suddenly crop up. I will be much happier knowing that the Bill has been put to bed, because our nation will then be much safer.