Reports into Investigatory Powers

Louise Haigh Excerpts

Thursday 25th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

It is a great honour to have listened to two maiden speeches today, by the hon. Members for Rochester and Strood (Kelly Tolhurst) and for Falkirk (John Mc Nally). It is clear that at least the former is a significant improvement on her predecessor.

I am pleased to be able to speak in today’s important debate. It is clear that there is agreement throughout the House that surveillance is necessary to protect the public from the serious threats that we as a country face. However, in recent years we have gradually become aware that there is also surveillance of perfectly legitimate activity. For instance, just this week the Investigatory Powers Tribunal revealed that GCHQ had spied on two international human rights organisations: the South African Legal Resources Centre and the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights. Both are entirely legitimate civil liberties organisations, and are co-claimants in a legal challenge against GCHQ, alongside Privacy International and Amnesty International, brought after the Edward Snowden revelations.

The IPT ruled that GCHQ’s mass surveillance systems violated the Egyptian NGO’s fundamental rights by intercepting, accessing and then unlawfully retaining material for longer than permitted. For the other NGOs that took the case, including Privacy International, Amnesty International and Liberty—all UK-based civil society organisations that are leaders in their field—no statement was made by the IPT as to whether they were spied on. The court’s finding of no determination means either they were not spied on, or, more worryingly, they were but the spying was done in line with GCHQ’s internal rules and so, under the current inadequate law, the spying was done lawfully.

It is not just perfectly legal NGOs that have been put under surveillance, as we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell). The intelligence services routinely intercept legal privileged communications between, for example, lawyers and their clients in sensitive security cases, according to internal MI5, MI6 and GCHQ documents. We also now know that the Metropolitan police used RIPA to access the phone records of journalists to expose their sources. A number of leading civil liberties lawyers believe they have been put under surveillance by the Metropolitan police. Former undercover police officer, Peter Francis, even disclosed that Scotland Yard had a special file on the leading London human rights firm, Bindmans.

As Anderson notes in his report, there can be no fairness in litigation involving the state if one party to it has the ability to monitor the privileged communications of the other. Anderson’s report, as we have already heard, makes a serious recommendation that could help to prevent abuses of power such as these, namely his call for judicial commissioners to approve surveillance warrants. This recommendation is critical and I hope the Government take heed of it in their deliberations. Introducing impartial arbiters into the process of authorising surveillance would put us in line with the practice undertaken in other democracies, and make the system more rigorous and accountable. Clearly, this should be taken by the independent judiciary.

I also hope the Government listen to Anderson’s recommendation that legislation should not be brought back to Parliament until a strong operational case has been made. Anderson is clear that so far the Government have failed to do so.

We need targeted surveillance against those suspected of breaking the law, but the case for mass untargeted surveillance against entirely innocent British citizens has simply not been made. We need to ensure that journalists, lawyers and human rights activists can go about their lawful democratic activities without the chill from surveillance that is enabled by an overly broad law and too few legal safeguards. Both Anderson’s report and the ISC’s make the case for fundamental legal reform. I hope the Government do this in a way that respects the recommendations of both reports.