Investigatory Powers Bill

Debate between Mark Spencer and Nick Clegg

Tuesday 15th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Nick Clegg (Sheffield, Hallam) (LD)]

I associate myself with the remarks by the Home Secretary and others, and join in sending heartfelt condolences to the family and friends of the prison officer who tragically lost his life in Northern Ireland.

I shall start with the positive. Of course, my colleagues and I acknowledge that this Bill represents progress in some important respects. It is far more comprehensive than any previous piece of legislation and now covers all the powers that were previously unavowed. It contains important improvements in oversight and accountability, and compared with its predecessor, RIPA, it is easier to understand. However, as the Home Secretary, who alas has just departed, will know, she and I discussed the Bill yesterday. I am not a supporter of it, not for technical reasons but for reasons of principle, which I will come to. We feel that her Department has not responded in full to the criticisms of the three parliamentary Committees and that the Bill is, therefore, not yet in a fit state.

There are many problems, but I would like to highlight two in particular. First, as the former Attorney General, the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), said, the Intelligence and Security Committee was heavily critical of the way in which privacy protections were articulated in the draft Bill. In responding to the ISC’s request for a new part dedicated wholly to privacy, the Government have in effect done little more than change one word in a title. They have demonstrated precisely the point that the Committee made when it described the privacy protections in the Bill as an “add-on”.

I share the Committee’s concerns. The powers authorised by this Bill are formidable and capable of misuse. In the absence of a written constitution, it is only the subjective tests of necessity and proportionality that stand in the way of that misuse. The Bill should be far, far more explicit than it currently is that these powers are the exception from standing principles of privacy and must never become the norm.

The Home Office appears, unfortunately, to be institutionally insensitive to the importance that should be attached to privacy. A Department that cared about privacy would offer more than a one-word response to the ISC. A Department that cared about privacy would not have quietly shelved the privacy and civil liberties board, which this House voted to establish just last year. A Department that cared about privacy would have examined more proportionate alternatives to storing every click on every device of every citizen, instead of leaping to the most intrusive solution available.

[Mark Spencer]

What would the right hon. Gentleman say about privacy when it came to a victim of child abuse who was unable to find the perpetrator because of some of the restrictions he wants to put in the Bill?

[Mr Clegg]

As I know from my time in government, one of the greatest tools in going after precisely the perpetrators of such heinous crimes is matching the devices they use to them through IP addresses. That is why we passed legislation—the unfortunately acronymed DRIPA—which is being challenged in court by other Members of this House right now. It is also why, as I will explain in a minute, there are much more effective ways of achieving that objective than having a great dragnet, which is being advocated in the Bill.

Internet connection records, or ICRs, are my principal concern. We have been here so many times before—in 2008, 2009 and 2012. I cannot think of another proposal in Whitehall that has been so consistently championed, not, I should stress, by the police and the intelligence services, whose punctiliousness, scrupulousness and expertise I admire as much as anyone else, but by the Home Office, despite its failing to convince successive Governments. That is not the way that policy ought to be made.

The Home Secretary said that ICRs are significantly different from weblogs. The only differences that I can see are the exclusion of third-party data, welcome though that is, and the addition of some restrictions on the purposes for which the data can be accessed, although I note that some of those restrictions have now been relaxed again in clause 54 of the new Bill.

In terms of collection and retention, the scheme is the same—the name might be different, but the scheme is the same. Service providers will be required to keep records of every communication that takes place on their networks, and of potentially every click and swipe where there is an exchange of data between someone’s device and a remote server, for 12 months. It is the equivalent to someone in the days of steaming open letters keeping every front cover of every envelope from across the whole country stored in some great warehouse somewhere for 12 full months. It did not happen then, and it should not happen now.

The implication of this is very big indeed: it is that the Government believe, as a matter of principle, that every innocent act of communication online must leave a trace for future possible interrogation by the state. No other country in the world feels the need to do this, apart from Russia. Denmark tried something similar, as was referred to earlier, but abandoned it because the authorities were drowning, of course, in useless data, as they would have drowned in useless envelopes many years ago if they had tried this then. Australia considered it, but the police themselves said it was disproportionate. Many European countries, interestingly, have recently gone exactly the other way, relinquishing data retention powers following the ruling of the European Court of Justice in the so-called Digital Rights Ireland case in 2014.

At the request of David Anderson, QC, the Home Office has produced a so-called operational case for internet connection records, which we can all read. I would suggest that students of politics and government would do well to study that document, which is a model exercise in retro-fitting evidence to a predetermined policy. Naturally, it sets out how these data could be useful to the police and intelligence agencies. What it does not do, but should do, is to start from the operational need, where a lack of data is obstructing criminal investigations, and explore different options for meeting that need, while balancing the twin requirements of security and privacy.

It is simply false to claim that this dragnet approach is the only way to provide the Government with better tools to go after criminals and terrorists online. For example, as I said earlier, we could incentivise companies to move to the new industry standard for IP addresses at a much faster rate. That might sound terribly technical, but it is important, because our doing so would, at a stroke, go a long way towards solving the key problem of how to tie IP addresses on individual devices to suspects, which is one of the principal purposes of this Bill.

During my time in government, I saw very little sign that the Home Office had devoted any serious consideration to alternatives to ICRs. As the operational case illustrates, that is because this is a case not of evidence-based policy but of policy-based evidence. On top of that, we still do not know how it will actually work and how it would be defined. The Internet Services Providers Association states in its briefing for this debate:

“In its attempt to future-proof the Bill, the Home Office has opted to define many of the key areas in such a way that our members”—

these are the experts—

“still find it difficult to understand what the implications would be for them.”

The costs of ICRs are also unclear. The Government’s estimate is just over £170 million over 10 years, but the Internet Services Providers Association says that it does “not recognise” that figure, and BT has said that it believes the costs will be significantly higher.

Internet connection records are at the heart of this Bill. They are not just a technicality: they are principally at the heart of what information is stored on all of us for long periods by the Government in our name. This dragnet approach will put us completely out of step with the international community, there are practical problems with the proposal, and the terms used in the Bill are still unclear. That is why I urge Members in all parts of the House to scrutinise properly this far-reaching and poorly evidenced proposal, and to withhold parliamentary consent for such a sweeping power until the questions that I and others have raised are properly addressed.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mark Spencer and Nick Clegg

Wednesday 10th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his question. He is quite right to say that this heart-wrenching issue has dragged on for a very long time. If I may, I shall write to him about it. I know that steps have been taken to address some of the many legitimate outstanding claims, and I shall look into the matter and write to him.

[Mr Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)]

Q8. The Deputy Prime Minister will be aware that Sherwood Forest Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is currently in special measures. What assistance can he give to the Health Secretary as he works with the trust to ensure continued improvement despite its having to wrestle with its £40 million a year repayments on a private finance initiative deal signed under the previous Government?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I am afraid this is another example of the Janus-faced approach to the NHS by the party opposite. The Labour Government entered into this appalling PFI contract, along with other such contracts in the NHS, and those contracts are now costing the NHS £1 billion a year. It is an absolute scandal that the Sherwood Forest Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has been crippled by a botched PFI deal entered into by the previous Government. The trust is now receiving central support to address its underlying financial deficit, and it has developed a plan showing year-on-year improvements in its position, including 145 extra nurses, nursing support staff and doctors since going into special measures.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mark Spencer and Nick Clegg

Tuesday 10th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I do not think they would be dictatorial powers in the hands of someone who has been democratically elected, but perhaps the hon. Lady sees some consistency between that position and defending unelected Members of the other place. I do not.

[Mr Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)]

T7. It is vital that the electoral roll is accurate, but young people are quite poor at getting their names on to it. What measures can the Deputy Prime Minister take to ensure that they are engaged in the democratic process and put their names forward to cast a vote?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

Interestingly, registration rates among young people in Northern Ireland are now higher than they are here, so we have looked carefully at what has been done in Northern Ireland to reach out in different ways to young people in order to tell them how to register and, crucially, to ensure that they are informed at the right time, so that they go on to register and get their names on the electoral roll.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mark Spencer and Nick Clegg

Tuesday 20th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

Next month, this Government will take more than 1 million people on low pay out of paying income tax altogether. Next month, we will deliver the largest cash increase in the state pension ever. There will be no more of Labour’s 75p pension insults. Next month, thousands of children from disadvantaged backgrounds will receive an uplift in the pupil premium to give them the head start in life that they never got under Labour. That is a record that I am proud of.

[Mr Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)]

T2. The Deputy Prime Minister will be aware that many small businesses are struggling to gain access to credit, which is why I am delighted that the national loan guarantee scheme was introduced today. However, what can the Deputy Prime Minister do to ensure that small businesses with a turnover of less than £5 million can access the scheme?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

The banks that are participating in the NLGS—the announcement on that has now been made—must use all their branches, and all their contacts with small and micro businesses in each area where they have branches, to make this new credit-easing facility available to the largest number of small businesses, for whom it has been very difficult to access credit on reasonable terms in recent times.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mark Spencer and Nick Clegg

Tuesday 1st March 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

As the hon. Lady may know, we are basing the boundary reviews on the electoral register rather than the census. That has been standard practice for a long time, and we do not intend to change it.

[Mr Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)]

What action can the Deputy Prime Minister take to ensure that local authorities make every effort to ensure that young people find their way on to the electoral roll?