UK Borders Control Bill

Martin Horwood Excerpts

Friday 9th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

I rise briefly to support the Bill. Whenever I carry out surveys among my constituents, immigration is always one of the top two issues that they are concerned about, and no wonder given the figures cited by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) on the level of net immigration into this country, which is running at around a quarter of a million people a year. To me and many of my constituents that is simply unacceptable, but it is also unsustainable, which in many ways is the biggest issue. Immigration is putting a huge strain on our public services, whether the NHS or school places. We simply do not have the wherewithal to build the number of houses that would be needed to house such a level of immigration. It is perfectly obvious that it is unsustainable in the long run and that the numbers need to be brought down dramatically.

As my hon. Friend said, the Prime Minister made his pledge at the previous election, and I do not doubt the sincerity with which he did so. I am sure that he was certain in his own mind that that was what he would deliver were the Conservatives to win that general election. As a caveat, I should say that we did not win the general election, so the Conservatives had to form a Government with our gallant Lib Dem colleagues. Whatever anybody thinks about them, they are not renowned for being tough on immigration. It was inevitable that any coalition with them would result in a weakened immigration policy. I accept that backdrop, but I am sure the Prime Minister, even with a hand tied behind his back, would accept that he would have hoped to do better than he has on immigration.

My hon. Friend was right to make the point that the levels of immigration are similar to those under the Labour Government, but there is a difference. It is fair to point out that, in this context, Peter Mandelson made it clear that the Labour Government sent search parties out to find people from around the world to come to the UK. Having that level of immigration was a deliberate policy of the Labour Government, whereas it is not a deliberate policy of the current Government. Those levels of immigration have happened despite their intentions and best efforts. In many respects, they have faced a perfect storm.

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

Fascinating as it is to hear the hon. Gentleman’s views on what Peter Mandelson thought about immigration, thousands of people in this country today hope to hear a debate on Second Reading about the dangerous, costly and unpopular practice of pavement parking, my private Member’s Bill that is a little further down the Order Paper. As the hon. Gentleman promised to be brief, I wonder whether he will be able to bring his remarks to a close at some stage. That would be very helpful.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. The hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) was making a speech on the current Bill. It is not for the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) to stand up and give an advert for his Bill. The hon. Member for Shipley is in order and has been speaking for a very short period of time thus far. We should allow him to make his points without interruption. That might help the speed of business.

Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill

Martin Horwood Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr Mahmood) who made a heartfelt speech and spoke as an authentic voice for British Muslims in a way that extremists of various ideologies do not.

I often speak in the House on international issues rather than domestic home affairs, but it is important to reinforce the importance of the international context. If we talk about tackling the free flow of potential terrorists to and from various countries in Europe to states in the middle east, and if we ask the Gulf states to stop the flow of funds and support to those organisations, or ask Turkey and others in the neighbourhood to stop the flow of people across its borders, we must also play our part. It is important that we respond to the new challenge of people going as potential fighters from this country and other countries across Europe to play their part in atrocities and the awful war in the middle east that is spreading from country to country.

We can do that in our own self-interest, not only because we are legitimate potential targets for Daesh, or IS, or whatever we want to call it, but because it is the right moral and humanitarian response to try to inhibit those who would cause such unimaginable brutality, and instead to promote peace and an end to the suffering. That in turn would reduce the need for us to contribute enormous resources in humanitarian, political and even military terms to help solve these crises.

The right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) was right to support the Government in saying that there is a clear and present danger to the UK from IS, as indeed there still is from al-Qaeda and other similar extremist organisations that pose a threat to the security of this country. However, it is important to remember that we have faced terrorism before, and while the dangers may be new and extremely violent, we must guard against over-reacting or reacting in such haste that in some way we compromise the liberties we seek to protect.

I am a great defender of our security and intelligence services—I have to be as the Member of Parliament for Cheltenham. I see a great tradition stretching back to the code-breakers of Bletchley Park. People regard them as absolute heroes for their contribution to surveillance and intelligence during the second world war, but the same people sometimes forget that the self-same organisation under the new name of GCHQ has continued through to the present day, and protects our liberties in a vital way. In fact, GCHQ works under a much more comprehensive scrutiny, legal and oversight framework. Such a framework did not apply to the Government code and cipher school during the second world war so, in a sense, we could say that Bletchley Park was illegal. GCHQ certainly does not act illegally.

Even my constituents in Cheltenham who work for what is euphemistically called “the office” would be the first to say that it is not for them to tell the Government or Parliament where the line should be drawn between liberty and security. It is also not for hon. Members to over-respond to the fears of the intelligence and security services in drawing those lines. We must take a measured view and judgment, and be cautious about where the line is drawn.

The Labour Opposition and Liberal Democrat Ministers have accepted that the Bill broadly strikes the right balance, and will support the Bill today. Therefore, it is right to point out that the modifications to people’s right to come back into the country with a British passport are not the same as making them stateless, and that the differences have been carefully drafted in the Bill; that the new version of TPIMs are not control orders, and that there are many differences between them; and that the data retention elements of the Bill on IP addresses were not objected to in the original draft Communications Data Bill by, for instance, the Liberal Democrats.

There are differences and the safeguards have been thought about, but there are serious questions. The former Attorney-General, the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield, and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell) raised some of those questions. They spoke of the process of temporary exclusion and asked where precisely it leaves the legal status of those who are temporarily excluded or denied passports, and what their rights are to challenge those orders. There might be a suggestion in the explanatory notes or the Government’s response that we need not worry, and that processes will ensure that the orders are designed only temporarily to interrupt someone’s return to this country, so that they can be met either by a person or by a legal measure designed to make them less of a threat to the public, but that detail or explanation needs to be in the Bill. Perhaps the question whether the phraseology of the Bill is clear enough will be addressed in Committee.

The same goes for the questions about TPIMs. Liberty and others have suggested that TPIMs reinstate aspects of control orders that allowed for internal exile, which led to some control orders being declared illegal. They say that that is not just the wrong thing to put into legislation, but a weakness, because it would make the measures less effective.

The Open Rights Group and others have focused on some of the loose definitions in the data retention portion of the Bill. If we follow the trail of what constitutes relevant data in the Bill through the various clauses to the annexes and the explanatory notes, we find that it is not absolutely clear what relevant data are in the Bill. Internet providers are not absolutely defined, so perhaps more clarification is needed and more safeguards need to be built into the Bill in Committee.

There is a slightly deeper question. The House often responds to a challenge to security and public safety with legislation, but the response we need is often not a legislative one. The hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) and others talked about ideology. There is good evidence that many young people who go out to the middle east to take part in these battles are not really seduced by any sophisticated form—or even a perverted form—of Islamic ideology. In fact, they know very little about Islam at all. They are more seduced by attractive slick internet videos, social media and social pressures from within a peer group who have become alienated from their own communities. That is not about ideology, but a propaganda war that has to be fought. The best response to that is not always legislation. The best response may be to understand what mainstream society needs to feed back to communities and young people, and to understand why they are so alienated and why they are being seduced by these social media techniques.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that these people are not steeped in the religion of Islam, and are receiving a perverted and simplistic message. Our side of the argument still needs to be put in a comparably efficient way.

[Martin Horwood]

The hon. Gentleman makes a reasonable point. My underlying point is that legislation is not always the forum through which we will provide the answers to these questions.

It seems there is consensus across the House that the Bill should go forward, but there are serious questions to be answered. There needs to be careful examination in Committee to ensure that the Bill strikes the right balance between liberty and security.

Business of the House (Today)

Martin Horwood Excerpts

Monday 10th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

That is very cheeky indeed. Other Members might wish to speak in the debate. It is not only Front Benchers who have a right to speak. Other Members might wish to express themselves as well. I am sure that the hon. and learned Gentleman was, as always, trying to be helpful, but let us hear from a couple of other Members.

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I am one of those who were waiting to speak, but I would happily forgo my place in the queue if the Home Secretary could be allowed to tell the House in a little more detail whether we are voting on the European arrest warrant or not.

[Mr Speaker]

That is very generous of the hon. Gentleman, and I think that it will be taken by the House in that spirit, but Members must have their head. If they wish to demonstrate generosity similar to that of the hon. Gentleman, they can, and if they do not, they will not.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I agree with my right hon. Friend; we should be having the time to debate the issues that really matter, not obscurities.

[Martin Horwood]

I would not want the hon. Gentleman to leave the Liberal Democrats out of his list. Those of us who support the European arrest warrant would really value the opportunity to argue in favour of it and to vote in favour of it; we want to get the hashtag “Toriessoftoncrime” trending on Twitter and we want to have a real debate. We want that opportunity as well. I do not often agree with the hon. Gentleman on matters European, but on this one I do.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point, because I hope it brings home to those on the Treasury Bench the deep discontent. I was saying earlier how deeply grateful I am to you, Mr Speaker, that you are protecting the rights of the legislature against the Executive by clarifying the terms of this debate. As I look down from here at the Treasury Bench, I want to see something that is solid, but I am worried that it is made of increasingly crooked wood. We want to have it re-solidified and we want this motion withdrawn.

Criminal Law

Martin Horwood Excerpts

Monday 10th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, there were cases before the introduction of the EAW when it took years to extradite suspects—for example, suspected terrorists back to France. We should not be in that situation. If we have people in our country wanted in France for serious crimes, particularly terrorists allegations, we should be able to deport them to face justice.

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

Is not the important point that in a completely multilateral system we do not stand out, whereas if everybody else opted into the justice and home affairs measures and the EAW, and we alone stood outside, we would become a safe haven, because it would be much easier to stay in this country for extended periods than in any other EU state?

[Yvette Cooper]

The hon. Gentleman is right. It is suggested that we could arrange separate extradition treaties, but in the past when we did that, they took too long and caused immense problems. In the case of Rachid Ramda, the Algerian national arrested in the UK in connection with a terrorist attack on the Paris transport system, France sought extradition from the UK in 1995. The process was completed in 2005. That was when the EAW was not in place.

--- Later in debate ---

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

In a fit of enthusiasm earlier this evening, I voted with the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) and the Labour party along with a rather distinguished collection of rebels from at least two diametrically opposed positions on Europe and from at least four different political parties. That was because we all shared her frustration at the outcome of the procedural shenanigans that have landed us in this situation in which we are voting on only 11 of the 35 justice and home affairs measures, and not specifically the European arrest warrant, which is the very one that we all wanted to debate and vote on. Now, the right hon. Lady has got a bit carried away. I cannot see any earthly reason, however frustrated we all are with the situation, for not voting on the 11 that we all agree on. There is no logic to that whatever. What justification is there for not voting on co-operation between asset recovery offices of the member states in the field of tracing the proceeds of crime? That is something on which we all agree.

[Yvette Cooper]

rose—

[Martin Horwood]

I am making only a brief speech, but I will happily give way.

[Yvette Cooper]

Let me clarify this matter for the hon. Gentleman. We think we should vote in support not just of these 11 measures but of all 35 so that we have a vote from this House that puts it all beyond legal doubt, and we should do so tomorrow. We will work with him and the Government Front Bench to make that happen. The Government can have our Opposition day debate if they do not want to do it tomorrow.

--- Later in debate ---

[Martin Horwood]

There is actually nothing to stop the Opposition using their Opposition day debate for a further indicative vote on the European arrest warrant. I would entirely support the right hon. Lady if that is the motion she chose to bring to the House. However, that does not justify not voting on the statutory instrument that is required by the deadline of 1 December, and voting on it tonight. I am afraid that she is trying to sow more procedural confusion and the Home Office has already provided us with enough of that for one night, so I will not be supporting her in this Division.

UNHCR Syrian Refugees Programme

Martin Horwood Excerpts

Wednesday 29th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

I am pleased to follow the moving speech of the hon. Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern). I strongly welcome the announcement by the Deputy Prime Minister and the statement by the Home Secretary today. As several hon. Members have pointed out, it is fitting that this change has taken place in the week of Holocaust memorial day.

I attended a very powerful and moving event in Cheltenham earlier this week. We talked about not only remembering the past, but learning from it and, in particular, about the importance of challenging the hysterical stereotyping of foreigners and of reaching out to those at risk of persecution. I reminded people at that event that I am the successor of Daniel Lipson, who was the Independent MP for Cheltenham during the second world war. He was also president of the Cheltenham synagogue. He spoke out in this House for the rights of refugees and for tolerance, particularly for the peoples of the middle east. I am very proud to be his successor.

I confess that when the Refugee Council first came to me and asked for my support for this campaign, which I was happy to give, I was a little sceptical of its chances of success in the current political climate. Its success is a real tribute to the Deputy Prime Minister and others in government, as well as to hon. Members on both sides of the House, including many Conservatives, who have pressed for a change of policy, but most of all it is a tribute to the Refugee Council, Amnesty International and other organisations and their supporters who have campaigned for change. They can be very proud of what they have achieved this week for some of the most vulnerable people in the world.

I am very pleased that the Government have adopted a scheme that will prioritise those most at risk, particularly women and girls at risk of sexual violence. That group is also a priority in the UNHCR programme, and I remain slightly puzzled about why the Government have not simply adopted that programme. May I ask Ministers to agree to keep the idea of a separate arrangement under review, and perhaps consider adopting the mainstream UNHCR programme in due course?

I want to echo two remarks made earlier today. First, the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) asked about the separation of families in the process. I am pleased that the Home Secretary replied that the Government have no intention of separating families, but I wonder whether a slightly firmer guarantee might be given.

Secondly, the point about the difference between refugees and migrants has been made several times. The right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) and others have asked whether refugees could be excluded from the net migration figure used by the Government, and I support that idea. If the right hon. Lady agrees with Mr Nigel Farage on that point, the Conservative party can probably be reassured that its right flank has been well and truly covered, and that Government policy might helpfully be modified.

It is important to remember the context in which this step is being taken. This will be a valuable and good drop in the ocean, but it will still be only a drop in the ocean. If hundreds or even a few thousand refugees are accepted into this country, that number will still be only tiny compared with the millions who are refugees or displaced persons in Syria. We have even heard distressing examples of Iraqi refugees inside Syria who have been doubly displaced: they are now refugees again elsewhere, and still cannot return home.

Nevertheless, the British Government have done a huge amount: we are the leading humanitarian aid donor; we are actively supporting the Geneva II peace process, which is enormously important; we have taken more asylum seekers already than many other European countries; and we are supporting those who are still fighting for freedom and democracy in Syria. We have a proud record of supporting the Syrian people, but it has just got a little better.

Intelligence and Security Services

Martin Horwood Excerpts

Thursday 31st October 2013 Westminster Hall

[Dr Huppert]

There is definitely a strong case for it. I am pleased that those people will appear in public, as there has been a long tradition of reluctance about talking about such issues. A senior Home Office civil servant has even refused to give public evidence at the Home Affairs Committee; that, fortunately, is about to change.

When the Foreign Secretary spoke at the London conference on cyberspace in 2011, he championed freedom of expression and privacy online, and he specifically criticised Governments who incorporate surveillance tools into their internet infrastructure. I agree that that is a problem. He also said at that conference that

“it is increasingly clear that countries with weak cyber defences and capabilities will find themselves exposed over the long term”.

The Foreign Secretary is right. That is why it is a problem when people break encryption systems. If anyone—whether it is the US, the UK or anybody else—puts a back door in an otherwise secure system in order to access it for intelligence purposes, that makes it easier for anybody else to break the protections, whether they are from the intelligence community or cyber-criminals. It makes no sense to argue that we should defend cyber-security and simultaneously be part of the effort to break it. If that means that we can no longer rely on the encryption of financial transactions, for example, that would be catastrophic for the global economy.

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

Can my hon. Friend name a single intelligence agency anywhere in the world that he thinks is not trying to break encryption systems?

[Dr Huppert]

My hon. Friend makes a helpful point. Of course, I do not have a list of every single intelligence service. The difference is between trying to break encryption after things have been encrypted and trying to break the entire system, leaving a back door open, which fundamentally means that anybody can access it. That is different from brute-force methods or other techniques used.

My hon. Friend makes the good point that this is an international issue. How would we feel if it were not GCHQ or the American National Security Agency but the Chinese who were involved? How would we react if the Chinese admitted that they had been tapping the Prime Minister’s phone? Would we be annoyed and concerned, or would we say, “That’s fine; that’s business as usual”? Clearly, we do not take the situation seriously enough.

For example, we allow the Chinese company Huawei to supply a lot of the equipment that makes up the core of our infrastructure. I suspect that our intelligence agents would not miss the chance to install some equipment if we were given the chance to put in the backbone of the Chinese internet, so we should not assume that the Chinese would miss such an opportunity. That was criticised by the Intelligence and Security Committee, which highlighted the disconnect between the UK’s inward investment policy and its national security. If we can understand it sometimes, we should understand it more broadly.

A change is occurring. Individual surveillance is one thing, but the mass hoovering up of information enabled by new technologies has changed the system completely. It means that suspicion no longer comes first. I think that very few people think it inappropriate to target individuals where there is a serious suspicion of wrongdoing, but in the new approach, we are all suspects whose personal histories can be foraged through if ever there is interest in us later.

The Foreign Secretary spoke at the conference of his passionate conviction that all human rights should carry full force online—not just the right to privacy, but the right to freedom of expression. I agree. How we choose to respond to the challenge will define the age that we live in. As parliamentarians and as Parliament, we must be at the heart of this debate.

In America, Dianne Feinstein, the chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, has spoken out about the revelations that America has been spying on Angela Merkel in Germany and on 34 other world leaders. She said:

“Congress needs to know exactly what our intelligence community is doing.”

She then said:

“It is abundantly clear that a total review of all intelligence programs is necessary.”

She criticised the fact that her committee was not satisfactorily informed. I have not yet heard the Chair of our Intelligence and Security Committee being so outspoken. Perhaps we will hear from him later in the debate, but would he know whether he was not being told things in the way that Dianne Feinstein was not?

There are differences in the debate between the UK and the USA. The US Constitution and Bill of Rights sets out a contract between the state and its citizens with a bias towards favouring individual liberty and privacy. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why the debate is happening so loudly in the US but not here.

In Germany, too, there is a loud debate. It is deeply concerned about what has happened. It has the history of the Stasi, which operated within the law as it then stood, but well beyond the bounds of morality and ethics. I am sure that no member of our current intelligence agencies would dream of following the Stasi’s lead; I do not suggest that for a moment. Germany is aware of what can happen when such systems go wrong.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Huppert]

The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point, and there are a number of routes to that. For communications data, he will be aware that no warrant is required. He will also be aware that, with the sole exception of evidence collected by local councils under RIPA, there is no judicial oversight of any kind at any stage. I am not aware of exceptions to that, and that is a weakness. There is an internal process—I do not doubt the good intentions of the people who work on this—but there is no independent external oversight from a judicial process, which is what many of us would like to see.

Let me return to the ISC. It works extremely hard, but its reports are redacted by the security services and the Prime Minister, and it is hard to know whether that is done in the interests of national security and not just to avoid embarrassment. Sir Francis Richards, a former senior intelligence official, has said that it is

“not a very good idea”

for an ex-Minister to head it. There is the problem of people being asked to scrutinise the consequences of decisions that they made, and that makes it hard to develop the right sort of relationship.

The ISC is under-resourced and not properly accountable to Parliament. There is a real issue to understanding the detailed technological components of much of this. I am not certain whether there is enough support to ensure that members understand the consequences of fake secure socket layer certificates and how phishing or man-in-the-middle attacks work. I am sure that the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears) will be happy to explain them when she speaks later.

We need better scrutiny generally and not just of the Intelligence and Security Committee. We keep hearing messages about the risk of “going dark”—we heard all about that in relation to the draft Communications Data Bill. It is simply not true. There is far more information available now to the intelligence and security community and to the police than at any time in the past. People now carry mobile phone devices that keep track of where they are almost constantly. I do not blame the agencies. Of course I can see the argument that there will always be for having more information, but we must provide a counterbalance. Dame Stella Rimington, former head of MI5, said:

“It’s very important for our intelligence services to have a kind of oversight which people have confidence in. I think that it may mean it is now the time to look again at the oversight.”

I agree with her.

We have seen further calls for even more information to be collected. The previous Government established the interception modernisation programme to create a vast database designed to log all details of text messages, phone calls and e-mails in the UK. In the interests of cross-party unity, I will not go on about other authoritarian measures: the drive for 90-day detention without charge, ID cards, control orders and allowing people to be forcibly relocated. They are all now things of the past, and I am pleased that that is the case.

Given such concerns, I was pleased with much of the coalition agreement. We Liberal Democrats insisted on a particular element, which was a commitment to ending

“the storage of internet and email records without good reason”.

That was accepted by both parts of the coalition. I am not sure whether the Home Secretary saw that, because she then pushed ahead with the draft Communications Data Bill, which would have required the storing of e-mail and internet records for everybody, which blows a hole through the idea of “without good reason”. It was envisaged that an extra £1.8 billion would be spent over 10 years to keep those extra records. That would have allowed the Home Secretary to require internet service providers to keep track of every website that everyone in the country goes to—everything that we do on Facebook or Google—with a huge growth in surveillance.

[Martin Horwood]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Dr Huppert]

I want to make a little more progress. I am sure Members will want to speak later.

The Deputy Prime Minister insisted that the draft Bill be scrutinised, and the Joint Committee that did so produced a damning report. It stated that the Bill paid

“insufficient attention to the duty to respect the right to privacy, and goes much further than it need or should for the purpose of providing necessary and justifiable official access to communications data.”

The report was a unanimous cross-House report, which described information provided by the Home Office as “fanciful and misleading”. I am pleased to say that that Bill is now dead.

We said that the information was misleading before we knew that the intelligence and security services already had access to much of the information that they claimed was missing. To quote the Chair of the Joint Committee, the former Conservative Home Office Minister, Lord Blencathra:

“Some people were very economical with the actuality. I think we would have regarded this as highly, highly relevant. I personally am annoyed we were not given this information.”

The Home Office needs to be clear with Parliament when asking for new powers.

Even our current laws are incredibly broad. Although we have very welcome reassurances from the Foreign Secretary that the agencies stick to the law—I absolutely credit that—the law is vague and broad. Section 94 of the Telecommunications Act 1984, for example, allows secret directions

“of a general character”

that are

“in the interests of national security or relations with the government of a country or territory outside the United Kingdom.”

So if the US asks for something, we are supposed to provide it. The information does not have to be provided to Parliament, and it gags whoever the directions are served on.

When the Joint Committee looked at this, we had to admit that we could not find any information about how the power was being used. There was no ability to have any oversight. RIPA has drawn lots of criticism for its widespread use. It was originally introduced to take account of technological change, but it is so broad that it led to serious abuses of privacy. It allowed council officials to put children and their parents under surveillance at home and in their daily movements to find out whether they lived in a particular school catchment area. Most of us would not think that that was in the same vein as counter-terrorism. That is clearly disproportionate.

So what now? Before we even consider new powers, whether explicitly granted or acquired through new technology, we need a pause. We need a proper and full investigation into the powers already available to the intelligence and security services, and it has to be done competently and with an element of independence. We should commission independent, post-legislative scrutiny of both RIPA and the Intelligence Services Act 1994, and other related legislation, to see how they interact with each other. We would then have a clear, open understanding of where we stand now.

As Lord Carlile, the former independent reviewer of terrorism legislation said:

“the current legislation, including the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, should be re-examined and rewritten to fit the current situation.”

That is not a radical suggestion. In the US, the Obama Administration have realised that proper and competent oversight is needed, and he has established the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, which includes those within the Washington system and those outside it. It includes people with experience of working for not-for-profit organisations. It is citizen engagement and shows trust. We could follow that model and create such a board.

We could do much more to fix the loss of trust and confidence. We could publish, as happens in the US, the legal opinions used to underpin the surveillance framework. We could provide a clearer account of such expenditure and lift the legal restrictions on British companies publishing transparency reports about the requests that they receive. We should proactively publish information about the surveillance requests made: in bulk, the broad purpose, with no identifying details.

In the long term, we should look at signing up to the international principles on the application of human rights to communications surveillance. The 13 principles are legality, legitimate aim, necessity, adequacy, proportionality, competent judicial authority, due process, transparency, public oversight, integrity of communications, safeguards for international co-operation and safeguards against illegitimate access.

We should absolutely defend the right of our intelligence and security services to go after the bad guys, to use the powers that they have to protect us and make the UK and the world a safer place. However, it should not be at a disproportionate cost to the liberty and privacy that form the very foundations of our society.

The work that our intelligence and security services carry out on behalf of us all is valued and important, but we should not give them carte blanche. We would not want that. We need to have an open debate about what the rules are, what is acceptable and what we consider goes too far. It has taken us too long to get into this debate, but now that we are here, with so many right hon. and hon. Members, I hope we are now firmly here to stay in this discussion.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Tom Watson (West Bromwich East) (Lab)]

Information can be the most powerful thing in the world. It has changed everything more quickly and universally than ever before. The internet is all about information. The power of the internet is the power of information. Data can do almost anything. That is why it is so important that they do not end up in the wrong hands, and so important that our data, which we as individuals own, and which are our stake in the data galaxy, just as our vote is our stake in our democracy, are not unnecessarily taken without our consent.

I ask colleagues to remember in the rest of this debate that an individual’s data are just like his or her vote: almost insignificant by itself, privately expressed; but massively powerful when aggregated. We should no more unnecessarily tamper with our citizens’ data than we should impede their ability to vote. The capacity to deduce human behaviour and activity in the modern world of big data is impacting on our daily lives, from insurance premiums and health prevention through to online advertising and traffic management. Corporations are crunching data to learn about the way we live our lives.

At the heart of this cross-party debate today is GCHQ’s own big data programme—Tempora—and its impact on our citizens’ fundamental rights. It is a new and profoundly challenging issue for policy makers. We have to answer questions about the nature, scale and depth of surveillance that should be tolerated in our democracy. My concern about this area of public policy in the UK is that the question has not yet been put. We have avoided discussing this matter in all but whispered tones, while the legislatures of the US, Brazil and Europe have been rocked by the Snowden revelations. Yet in the UK, the main parties have paid scant attention to the issue.

The problem is this: the GCHQ Tempora programme has been mining our internet communications data without public knowledge on a colossal scale. There has been little public and parliamentary debate about whether that conforms to article 8 of the European convention on human rights, which protects the right to private and family life and correspondence. Nor has there been sufficient public or parliamentary debate on whether RIPA legally permits the mass collection of our citizens’ internet data.

[Martin Horwood]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Watson]

I can’t. I have no time.

Nor has there been sufficient public or parliamentary debate on whether Tempora is authorised by any other pieces of legislation. In fact, we only know of the existence of the Tempora programme because of the actions of Edward Snowden and The Guardian newspaper. I think that they have acted courageously in the public interest to uncover and reveal a secret Government programme that has gained access to the private communications of millions of individuals without their knowledge. A brave whistleblower and a courageous newspaper have enabled us only now to start to have a full and proper debate about whether such surveillance is proportionate and, indeed, legal under our existing legislation, treaties and agreements. That is the secret state laid bare: the Government acting without the knowledge or permission of their citizens, which is a flagrant breach of individuals’ moral and, probably, legal rights, for what they believe is the common good. Just like when they take away the votes of the misguided, the common good is not a defence. Our basic rights as individuals have to be sacrosanct.

Let us be clear. If the Minister is telling us that the law permits such fundamental abuse of liberty, the law is wrong and must be changed. I suspect that he may point to section 16 of RIPA to suggest that the Tempora programme is legal. Interpreting that section requires the unravelling of a triple-nested inversion of meanings across six cross-referenced subsections linked to a dozen other cross-linked definitions, which are all dependent on a highly ambiguous “notwithstanding.” The section is probably the single most confusing and complex drafting ever put on the statute book, and I have heard that a former GCHQ director said it was drafted in that way intentionally; it is what a computer programme would call “spaghetti code.” There is not a snowball’s chance on a hot day in Strasbourg that the section would pass the tests of foreseeability and quality of law required by the European convention on human rights. The UK already lost a critical test of the case on those grounds in 2008. One thing is abundantly clear: they are not extra safeguards, as is falsely claimed in the section heading; they are intended to allow GCHQ to trawl inside the UK, as Lord Lucas observed in another place on 12 July 2000.

This week we saw a major shift in the policy of the United States when the chair of the Senate intelligence committee, Dianne Feinstein, criticised the National Security Agency’s monitoring of the calls of world leaders. She said:

“With respect to NSA collection of intelligence on leaders of US allies—including France, Spain, Mexico…—let me state unequivocally: I am totally opposed.”

I am sure that the Prime Minister will be relieved that his phone is not the subject of surveillance by an ally, but is the Deputy Prime Minister exempt from surveillance? Will the Minister or Members who have put their necks on the block by taking part in this debate be exempt? What about their researchers or families? The assurance is not good enough for me.

We know that the “five eyes” co-operate closely and that UK data are available to the USA. Can the Minister give us any reassurance today that UK phone records are not routinely handed en masse by companies to GCHQ and, by implication, to the NSA? We know that basic internet logs are also held by Virgin, Sky, BT, TalkTalk and other internet service providers. Will the Government reassure us that those data are not routinely handed over in bulk to British intelligence and the NSA?

Parliament has a right to know what records are handed over and why. Yesterday, The Washington Post claimed that the NSA and GCHQ were tapping into the fibre-optic cables used to supply the data centres of Google and Yahoo! To achieve that, the telecoms companies that provide infrastructure to those organisations had to have knowledge of, and probably collaborated with, the procedure. Was any member of the UK Government aware of that facility?

To make it clear, The Washington Post is saying that telecoms companies have been illicitly aiding the security services to tap into data being processed by internet companies with which they have a commercial relationship. Those telecoms companies, which are the backbone of this wonderful thing called the internet that has allowed two decades of free expression and creativity to explode into the lives of our citizens, have been operating in the shadows to allow our security services to tap all of it.

The security services have clearly made the trade-off that the intelligence obtained is worth the invasion of privacy. They are judged on the quality of the intelligence they obtain and little else. Of course they are going to make that trade-off 100% of the time. I want to know whether the telecoms companies have voluntarily entered into that agreement, or whether they have been obliged to do so under UK or US law.

Before I conclude, I draw the Minister’s attention to a submission to the Select Committee on Defence—I draw hon. Members’ attention to my entry in the register—by the all-party group on drones, which I chair. The submission examines the idea of citizenship stripping in detail. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism has highlighted the uneasy relationship between the deprivation of citizenship, intelligence sharing with the US and the targeting of former British citizens in drone strikes in Somalia.

The concern is that citizenship may remove one obstacle to information sharing for the purposes of targeting British people. In particular, one former UK citizen, Berjawi, was targeted immediately following a telephone call to his wife in London, who had just given birth and was recovering in hospital. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the family allege that Berjawi and his wife’s mobile telephones were tapped and location data were shared with the CIA to target him.

David Omand, the ex-head of GCHQ, in his submission to the Select Committee on Home Affairs wrote about the likely intensification of tension between nations that unilaterally defend their interests with military means, including targeted killings, and those that seek collective security under international human rights law. He mentioned the “ethically ambiguous” position of the British public because they had benefited from the US drone programme, even though it would not be permitted in the UK. That cannot be right. The British public would surely be alarmed to hear that data collected in the UK might end up being used to implement the US targeted killing programme described as a “war crime” by Amnesty International.

I have other questions, but I must wrap up now.

--- Later in debate ---

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) on securing the debate, which has been helpful in several ways. First, it allows us to reflect on the changing nature of communication in our society; these days, the best way of achieving secure communication is probably to send an open postcard rather than putting it on Facebook.

Secondly, the debate enables us to correct the slightly partial accounts of the current state of things such as article 8 of the European convention on human rights. The hon. Member for West Bromwich East (Mr Watson) correctly quoted the section relating to the right to private correspondence, but he left out the second half, which refers to exemptions for national security and the fighting of crime.

Thirdly, the debate allows us to correct a few of the really inaccurate assertions in the wider debate, such as the one about the presentation on “Mastering the internet” that was portrayed as some Orwellian plot to dominate cyberspace when it was actually about enabling people to use search engines better. Much nonsense has been talked in the wider debate, but the issues are serious.

I must declare an obvious constituency and family interest in this debate. My parents both worked at GCHQ and, before that, at Bletchley Park. My father, Don Horwood, was involved, under Tommy Flowers, in building Colossus, the world’s first programmable electronic computer. He was one of the people who kept it secret for decades, enabling the Americans, God help us, to take credit in the meantime for building the first electronic programmable computer.

My mother went back to Bletchley Park with me only recently, after 60 years’ absence. Only then did she reveal to me that she had not just been a linguist, as I had always thought, but had interpreted intelligence as well. The habit of keeping secret things that need to remain secret is one of the enormous debts we owe that generation of code breakers.

That continued in GCHQ during the cold war. We cannot know about all the secret victories our intelligence services won then, and are winning now, because they must, quite properly, remain secret. If we cast too much sunlight on some of these things, they stop working; it is not so much that we would always endanger agents’ lives, as that talking too much in public about precise techniques and sources makes those sources disappear and those techniques more difficult to apply. That endangers people in different ways.

I would love to think that we had entered a safe post-war world, where that level of secrecy was unnecessary, but that is simply not the case. We still face hostile states and hostile state intelligence services. Frankly, if the cyber-attacks and counter-attacks going on now took place in some physical realm, they would, in some instances, almost constitute an act of war. Some states are certainly engaged in hostile activity towards this country, but there are also the new threats of terrorist networks and organised crime.

It is not only the threats but the technology that is changing. We cannot make it childishly simple for those who would do us harm to evade surveillance. We must move with the times, and we must give our intelligence services the capability, under proper oversight, to access the communications they need to access.

Of course, much of the discussion is about when access crosses the line into surveillance. A lot is said, and a lot of allegations are made, about mass surveillance, but if it was really taking place, it would—apart from being wildly impractical—be straightforwardly illegal. In his statement to the House, the Foreign Secretary made it clear that he still regarded the situation in this way:

“To intercept the content of any individual’s communications in the UK requires a warrant signed personally by me, the Home Secretary, or by another Secretary of State…Warrants are legally required to be necessary, proportionate and carefully targeted, and we judge them on that basis.”

He added that all those authorisations were

“subject to independent review by an Intelligence Services Commissioner and an Interception of Communications Commissioner, both of whom must have held high judicial office and report directly to the Prime Minister.”—[Official Report, 10 June 2013; Vol. 564, c. 32.]

As Members have pointed out, we have a sophisticated system of democratic oversight. The Labour Government passed the Intelligence Services Act in 1994, establishing the Intelligence and Security Committee. RIPA has been referred to. The coalition’s Justice and Security Act 2013 became law only in April, further refining and defining that Committee’s responsibilities.

There is a degree of anger at GCHQ and among my constituents. People at GCHQ understand that there will inevitably be some misunderstanding of what they do, because it is not very public, and that there may be some naivety and inaccuracy. However, they find it difficult to forgive the accusations of bad faith and illegality. Their perception is that they operate under one of the most exacting sets of laws and systems of ministerial and independent oversight applied to any intelligence agency anywhere in the world.

Of course, there are things that will remain secret, and there are things that are done that would surprise us if they became public. Hon. Members have referred to the interception of Angela Merkel’s mobile phone communications by the NSA. I find that very surprising, although anyone who knows West German intelligence history will know that the Federal Chancellor’s office has not always been the most secure place. I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) could find similar stories of insecurity in unexpected places.

Of course, Angela Merkel’s intelligence agency—the Bundesnachrichtendienst—employs 6,000 people and has a sophisticated electronic capability, so I would be amazed if she, even with her East German background and the obvious sensitivities that go with that, was as surprised at what has been going on as she has made out in public.

[John McDonnell]

Would the hon. Gentleman be surprised at this morning’s reports that the Pope was bugged as well? Is that a venial or a mortal sin?

--- Later in debate ---

[Martin Horwood]

The hon. Gentleman makes a humorous point, but the activities of the Vatican bank and other things have been the subject of conspiracy theories, so who knows? Yes, of course, it is surprising that the Pope was bugged. However, the point is that we do not know the rationale for any of the intercepts, the precise thinking behind them or the precise techniques involved.

Quite apart from the overall democratic oversight, there is a sophisticated whistleblowing process, leading right up to the independent tribunals outside the intelligence services. The test for the hon. Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick) is not whether Edward Snowden is obviously a traitor, but whether we would have thought he was a traitor if, instead of going through the medium of The Guardian, he had simply handed thousands of pages of top-secret documents directly to foreign intelligence agencies or terrorist networks, because that is, in effect, what he has done. In those circumstances, if he had not used the media as a medium, nobody would have hesitated to call him a traitor.

[Mr Winnick]

Does the hon. Gentleman recollect what happened in the 1970s, when Daniel Ellsberg released papers relating to the Vietnam war? He was described as a traitor at the time by some in the United States—certainly in the Nixon Administration—but he is now considered to be a hero who did a great service for his country.

[Martin Horwood]

Given my age at the time, I do not actually recall that. However, the principle here is that if illegality is alleged, there are methods by which people can address it. In our system, the powers of the tribunal in RIPA are very broad. It is able

“to consider and determine any reference to them by any person”.

It is

“the appropriate forum for any complaint if it is a complaint by a person who is aggrieved by any conduct falling within”

the relevant subsections

“which he believes…to have taken place in relation to him, to any of his property, to any communications sent by or to him, or intended for him, or to his use of any postal service, telecommunications service or telecommunication system; and…to have taken place in challengeable circumstances…on behalf of any of the intelligence services.”

The tribunal has a broad remit, and systems have been set up in addition to all the democratic oversight through the Intelligence and Security Committee, and the fall-back processes involving the commissioners. People can use those processes in a responsible way, rather than act in the way we have seen.

In terms of having a debate, quite properly, about whether the oversight processes are working properly, the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) made some important points, including about whether people are overseeing decisions they made in office. There is an issue there, and perhaps there is further refinement and definition of the Intelligence and Security Committee’s work to be done. However, if we are to find needles in a haystack, we need to allow people to look at the haystack. We need to accept that there is a balance to be struck between access and surveillance, but that access is an important part of that balance.

When Winston Churchill talked about the role Bletchley Park played in the second world war, he called the staff there the geese that laid golden eggs and never cackled. We owe similar respect to the staff of GCHQ now.

European Public Prosecutor’s Office

Martin Horwood Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

I add my congratulations to you on your election, Madam Deputy Speaker.

It is important that we retain some sense of proportion in this debate. We are, after all, discussing an idea which, in practice, would tackle the simple issue of crime against the EU, particularly fraud against the EU budget. While I welcome the Minister’s fairly practical approach, I think that the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) doth protest a bit too much in painting such a cataclysmic picture of the complete collapse of the European criminal justice system were this to go ahead. That is completely out of proportion, and I think she is just trying to prove her Eurosceptic credentials. This is not quite the massive issue that some might imagine. I recognise, however, that there is a thin end of the wedge argument in that the proposal sets out a different principle in creating a new kind of European competence, albeit one already recognised in treaty. I also recognise the specific acknowledgement in the coalition agreement that Conservative Members, in particular, do not want to pursue such a solution to the problem.

In this case, on balance, the Government are right in their interpretation of the subsidiarity principle. The Commission has not demonstrated that the proposed path has to be taken because nation states are incapable of tackling fraud against the EU budget, and it therefore fails the subsidiarity test as currently presented. There is an important role for pro-European Members of this Parliament and other Parliaments in applying the subsidiarity principle properly. We should not allow any kind of drift towards dealing at a European level with competencies that are really better exercised at a lower level.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

rose—

[Martin Horwood]

I am happy to give way to my friend on the Labour Benches.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

Yet again the hon. Gentleman talks about Europe rather than the European Union. Many of us love Europe in all sorts of ways but do not necessarily love the European Union.

--- Later in debate ---

[Martin Horwood]

I had picked up that impression from many hon. Members, but I understand the point that the hon. Gentleman is making.

However, there is a problem. As the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North rightly said, it is estimated that there is a vast amount of fraud against the European budget—some €500 million a year—and that is unacceptable. National law enforcement against that is fragmented across the member states. While the UK may have a robust record on tackling it, that is not always true of all member states. In fact, only one in five of the cases transferred by the European anti-fraud office—OLAF—to the national prosecution authorities leads to a conviction, and those conviction rates vary considerably among member states. There is, therefore, a problem that needs to be tackled. I accept what the Minister has said about improvements to OLAF, but the European Commission and European Union authorities also need to take a more proactive stance against EU budget fraud. I do not think, however, that a European public prosecutor’s office is the solution at this stage.

The Commission’s proposal has an additional problem, in that it suggests locating the EPPO in Eurojust, but that would seriously muddy the waters of the role of Eurojust, which is a very effective and important organisation. I am pleased that the coalition has agreed that, with certain reforms, we should opt into it. Eurojust is important in stimulating investigation and co-operation on judicial and prosecutorial matters. The impetus for it emerged after 9/11, when the importance of tackling cross-border terrorism was made very clear. It helps European authorities to tackle serious organised crime, people trafficking, drug trafficking, the smuggling of illegal immigrants, illicit trade in human organs, kidnapping, trafficking works of art and computer crime. The list goes on and on and it is a very good example of how European Union institutions help us to tackle cross-border crime in a way that would be impossible for 27 different countries trying to co-operate on a bilateral basis.

To confuse the role of Eurojust, which is one of encouraging co-operation and stimulating investigations, with that of a prosecutorial authority would change the role of Eurojust and create an additional complication, which might, in the domestic political context, reduce support for opting back into Eurojust. Practically, politically and in principle, I think that locating the EPPO in Eurojust would be the wrong step to take.

I will not detain the House any longer. The Liberal Democrats support the Government’s motion. The problem of serious fraud against the European budget needs to be tackled, but the proposal oversteps the mark in terms of the principle of subsidiarity, so I am happy to give my support to the Government tonight.

Border Force

Martin Horwood Excerpts

Wednesday 4th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

I welcome the remarks of the Chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee. He raised three questions, which I shall endeavour to answer. The first was about resources, and given that the checks were not being conducted as they should have been in all cases, it would be fair to say that in responding to the chief inspector’s report and implementing the operating mandate, it was clearly necessary to increase the resources going into the Department. As to whether we have the balance right, it is obviously something that we keep under review, and it is a challenge for all operational managers. I refer back to the National Audit Office’s last report, not the one published today, that looked into our detection and seizure of serious goods—class A drugs, firearms and so forth—that people were attempting to get through the border. The report said that in all those cases we were meeting and exceeding our seizure and detection targets. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and I think that we are succeeding.

I do not have time to go in detail into the right hon. Gentleman’s point about the legal loophole, but I can say that we are making considerable progress and that his general point about the importance of partnership working is absolutely true. I recall a visit last autumn when I met the new French Interior Minister, and I visited Calais and Coquelles this summer in order to see for myself the co-operative work going on between the French port authorities and our Border Force officers. Such co-operation is excellent and we need to keep it in that good shape as we go forward.

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

Does not the report demonstrate that endless headline-grabbing reorganisations and legislation—with four Acts coming from the last Government alone—were always less important than ensuring that the system we have is effective, efficient and well managed? Is that not something on which we should all be able to agree, instead of turning this serious issue into a party political football?

[Mr Harper]

I agree with my hon. Friend and Gloucestershire near-neighbour. It was clear from the chief inspector’s report that we had inherited an organisation that was not doing the day job properly, and was not checking everyone who was coming into the country. The whole point of splitting Border Force from the UK Border Agency was to improve that situation. The NAO report has made it clear that we have made progress in regard to all the chief inspector’s recommendations, that we are dealing with the issues that have been raised, and that Border Force is in better shape. However, we are not complacent. There is always more to do, and we now have an excellent director-general who is leading that important job of work.

2014 JHA Opt-out Decision

Martin Horwood Excerpts

Monday 15th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

If the right hon. Gentleman is challenging the fundamental idea of an international arrest warrant operating among the 28 member states, is my maths correct that he would have to replace it with 784 bilateral extradition treaties, and that is just on one of these justice and home affairs measures?

[Mr Redwood]

My maths tells me that there are far fewer countries in the European Union than in the rest of the world, and we manage to have pretty good arrangements with the rest of the world. I have every confidence in the ability of the current and future Home Secretaries to restore our bilateral arrangements with the other 27 members of the European Union just as surely as we have bilateral arrangements with most of the other 200 countries in the world. The hon. Gentleman will remember that there was a time before this country was in the European Union, and certainly before we were in this current set of criminal justice arrangements, when we had perfectly good working relationships. I am sure that he and I would have liked them to be improved—one can always improve and make progress—but he should not be so defeatist about the ability of our Ministers and civil servants to defend Britain’s interests and come up with a good answer.

--- Later in debate ---

[Martin Horwood]

The hon. Gentleman is making a very good case for a much simpler system that does not involve the clumsy and risky process of opting out of the things that we want to opt into, and then having to opt back into them. Does he now regret that his Government landed us with this precise system?

[Steve McCabe]

I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman was in his place when I raised this point earlier, but that is what the other member states forced on us at the time. I would be first to concede that it is not an acceptable arrangement, but it highlights how difficult it might be to opt back in without any difficulty. Has the hon. Gentleman considered that?

There seems to be some question about whether we will opt back in to the European arrest warrant. The Government indicated earlier today that we would seek to opt back in, but I could not miss the hon. Member for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless) celebrating the decision to accept amendment (b), which means that there is now no guarantee that we will seek to opt back in. In any event, at the point that we opt out, the Government’s intention is to fall back on the 1957 Council of Europe convention. Even the Government’s own Command Paper acknowledges that there are difficulties and shortcomings with that approach. Like the hon. Member for Belfast East (Naomi Long), I am worried that having opted out we will find ourselves without the power to bring major criminals to justice. That is an atrocious state of affairs.

I am slightly perplexed by the view of the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) that we can have a notional opt-out on Europol. I do not know what his coalition partners would make of this, but he seems to think that we can opt out for a matter of hours, and then opt back in. I cannot believe that a single person in the country would think that a worthwhile state of affairs. It would involve an inordinate amount of time and energy for very little. I have to assume that optimistic though the hon. Gentleman is—it is quite likely that once we opt out of Europol we will be allowed back in; I have no doubt about that—his hopes of keeping the present occupant of the job in his post is slim indeed.

What consideration have the Government given to article 10(5) of protocol 36, which I understand specifies overarching conditions regarding the opt-out, and that Commission members need to be satisfied that there is nothing in the UK’s behaviour in making the decision to opt out and then seeking to opt back in that will affect the practical operability of the measures. That will play an important part. Two things occur to me. The first is that it was not quite so easy for Denmark to opt back in. Secondly, how will we maintain the positions that we hold within some of these European institutions while we are no longer part of them? One of the prices that we have to pay for the opt-out may be to diminish rather than strengthen British influence within some of those institutions.

These are all matters worthy of some consideration and scrutiny. I cannot understand why the Home Secretary, on such a matter where one would have thought she needed quite a few allies, is not trying to find greater consensus. It would not be difficult to get agreement in the House that we should now exercise the block opt-out. It is a cumbersome process, but it would not be difficult. I do not see why we are not then using the time available to let Parliament and the Select Committees reach maximum agreement on what we want to opt back into. The Home Secretary opening negotiations and then finding herself in a position where Parliament does not agree with her will hardly strengthen her hand. Rather it will weaken her position. It would be much easier to make requests for transitional arrangements if there were a clear, strong body of opinion behind her in the House. At the moment, since we are not sure what she will try to opt back into and how many of her Back Benchers will support her or undermine her, it is difficult to know which transitional measures we should be getting behind her on. I fear that she is putting the political needs of her party ahead of the need to get this right.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr James Clappison (Hertsmere) (Con)]

I begin by welcoming the revised motion tabled by the Government and their acceptance of the amendment from the Chair of the Justice Committee, which I think reflects well on the role that each of the Select Committee Chairs has played and on the Government’s preparedness to listen to the views of Select Committees. As a member of the European Scrutiny Committee and the Home Affairs Committee, I look forward to taking part in the scrutiny that we now understand will take place.

I cannot separate the question of the European arrest warrant, or the other measures that the Government have announced they intend to opt into, from the European area of freedom, security and justice. My view on these matters is determined by my view of the European Union’s so-called area. I do not believe that it is a question of simply looking at individual measures and deciding whether opting in or out or co-operating here or there is in the national interest; my view is that the national interest is a question of this House and this Parliament determining the laws to which we are to be made subject.

I have heard the case that has been made for the European arrest warrant. It might be that, on balance, it is helpful in co-operation, but I do not know about that. If one accepted that view, one would have to ignore the many cases that have been brought to attention where it has been used disproportionately, for example for the theft of a piglet, a pudding, a wheelbarrow, as we heard earlier, or some wardrobe doors.

There are also cases in which the extradition of UK citizens from this country has been sought by European Union member states in which the standards of justice to which they have been exposed have been well below those that we would expect to see in this country. That includes people being put on trial for very serious offences, having already been acquitted of those offences, only to be told much later that the whole charge against them was to be dropped. There is a long list of such cases in which the European arrest warrant has gone wrong, and they have been well documented, and I think that was reflected in the critical testimony that Lord Justice Thomas, the senior extradition judge, gave the review on extradition led by Mr Justice Scott Baker.

It has been interesting to hear in the debate how the civil liberties guns have in some cases fallen silent as the guns for pro-European integration have been fired on all cylinders. Even if one accepted that, on balance, the European arrest warrant was a good thing and that it was necessary in fighting serious crime and bringing serious criminals and terrorists to justice—we have certainly heard a long list of those cases produced—heaven help us if it occurs to those serious criminals and terrorists to move from a European Union country to a non-member state because, on the basis of what we have heard today, it would seem impossible to bring about their extradition unless the European arrest warrant was involved, which it would not be in those cases.

Even if we accept that, the question is whether we should be part of the European area of freedom, security and justice at all. There will be those who say that that would be a good thing, that it would help to fight crime and that we should sign up to it lock, stock and barrel. I think that if the Opposition were honest, that would be their stated position—their underlying position, at any rate. I notice that no dissent is coming from the Opposition Benches to that last comment.

However, if we sign up lock, stock and barrel, or to individual measures in the area of freedom, security and justice—including, obviously, the 35 suggested measures—we will, in each case, be handing legislative and judicial supremacy to the European Union institutions and the European Court of Justice. That means that voters in this country will no longer be determining through their choice of Government the laws to which they are subject; instead, the law will be made through EU processes, with the European Commission having the right to initiate proposals, and qualified majority voting and co-decision operating at a European level. In such cases, British courts can be overridden by a European Court.

I note in passing a point well made in an intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg): henceforth we would be subject to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice and the infringement procedure of the European Commission in respect of whatever measures we decided to opt into. I find that curious, particularly in light of the cases that have arisen in the past week as a result of this country’s being subject to the overriding jurisdiction of a European Court—another European Court admittedly, but a European Court none the less. Those cases have been an example of what happens when we sign up to supranational jurisdictions. What frustration have our voters felt over the years over the case of Mr Abu Qatada and the repeated occasions on which—

[Martin Horwood]

If we establish that we are participating in a body of European law or any international law, we obviously need some kind of jurisdiction process to judge whether those laws—not all laws—are being fairly applied. Otherwise, every member state would make up the rules as they went along. Presumably, the hon. Gentleman would be the first in line to accuse other countries of not sticking to the rules.

[Mr Clappison]

The hon. Gentleman should be aware of the frustration felt in the House, which led the Government to say that they were leaving open the option of leaving the European Court of Human Rights altogether. Such was their frustration, which, obviously, he does not feel. The frustration is that British courts and the Supreme Court of this country have been overridden by a supranational jurisdiction. Through the measures under discussion, we would be signing up to more supranational jurisdiction. Heaven knows how much more frustration the voters of this country will feel in the future when that jurisdiction is exercised as it has just been.

[Martin Horwood]

I am afraid the hon. Gentleman is hopelessly mixing up his European Courts. The European Court of Human Rights has nothing to do with the fair application of European Union law; we abide by it through our own choice by virtue of our membership of the European convention on human rights.

[Mr Clappison]

The hon. Gentleman is being less than fair, as I made it clear that I was referring to another European Court. My point is about supranational jurisdiction conferred on courts outside this country. That applies in this case because we are signing up to the European Court of Justice’s jurisdiction, just as we are signed up to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights. That means that British courts and the will of the British people as expressed through this Parliament can be overridden.

One can add to the case of Abu Qatada the frustration that voters have felt over whole-life sentences no longer being allowed as a result of the European Court of Human Rights. There are multifarious other cases as well.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant]

I have read it only in Spanish. It is obviously a little bit more difficult when dealing not just with one coalition partner but with 26 of them.

[Martin Horwood]

I would like to say that I rather agree with the hon. Gentleman about the Command Paper, which could do with some treatment from the Plain English Campaign. As regards scrutiny by Select Committees, however, I am rather puzzled by the hon. Gentleman’s assertion. The Lords European Union Committee has been able to consider these matters in great detail and has produced a weighty report—an option that was open to the other Select Committees as well.

[Chris Bryant]

Yes, but the Lords Select Committee makes exactly the same condemnation of the Government’s process as all the House of Commons Committees and it reached the same conclusion, which I will come on to. I would argue that scrutiny is important and is not quite as simple as some Members have suggested. The process of opting back in is complex in itself, but as Commissioner Reding said earlier this year, one measure sometimes impacts on another. Whether or not the Government choose eventually to seek to opt into the precise set of measures that they listed in the Command Paper, their choice will not necessarily be deliverable.

As I have said, the Command Paper is pretty impenetrable, but it makes some pretty bold assertions. On child pornography, it states:

“If the UK were to exercise the opt-out and decide not to rejoin this measure, there would be little practical impact”.

Is that true? Can we not at least test it in Committee—or, for that matter, test the Government’s assertions on the investigation and prosecution of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes? [Interruption.] I can hear what the Home Secretary is saying. She must bear in mind that what we are discussing now is not the amendment that has been accepted, but her motion. That is all that is on the table at the moment.

Should we not also be able to test the Command Paper’s assertion on the European arrest warrant? I should have thought that the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) and many others would want to do that. According to the paper,

“If the UK were to decide not to participate in this measure, we believe the UK would revert to the ECE”

—that is, the European convention on extradition. It continues that

“work would need to be taken bilaterally, but there is no guarantee this would be possible where Constitutional barriers exist.”

As the hon. Member for Belfast East (Naomi Long) pointed out, an important process of negotiation must be undertaken with the devolved Administrations in Northern Ireland in particular—because of the relationship with the Republic of Ireland—and in Scotland to ensure that there are no unintended consequences.

Let me now turn to whether the motion is necessary. It is absolutely clear that it is not necessary for discussions to take place with the Commission and with other member states. Indeed, the Government told the Commission in no uncertain terms that even if a motion in this House or in another place were voted down, they would reserve to themselves the right to proceed with the process of opting out. It is true that protocol 36 —which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Stone —sets out a formal process, but we all know that the process that will actually be engaged in will be complex and political, and that there will be plenty of “behind doors” conversations.

What concerns me is that without indications about the opt-ins and without knowing whether we will be able to secure them at the same time as the opt-outs, we cannot genuinely weigh the risk of opting out against what we stand to gain. That is why we tabled our amendment, on which we still intend to divide the House. The amendment does something very simple: it insists that we should have guarantees of what we can opt into before choosing formally to opt out.

The hon. Member for Stone said earlier that our idea was nonsensical, but where did we get it? It comes directly from the Command Paper, page 5 of which states that

“there is nothing preventing the Commission giving an immediate response, nor to agreement being reached informally ahead of the UK’s formal application.“

In other words, the motion is completely unnecessary, and potentially dangerous.

Proposed Europol Regulation

Martin Horwood Excerpts

Monday 15th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)]

I beg to move amendment (a), in line 4, leave out from ‘2005/681/JHA;’ to end and add—

‘and calls on the Government to consider the views of the Association of Chief Police Officers in deciding when to adopt the measure.’.

I am pleased that there is consensus across the House that Europol does a good job for the citizens of the United Kingdom, and that it is beneficial to this country. A quick scan of the Europol website will show that, just in the past few months, it has taken action on false domains for websites, worked with the UK on Italian organised crime, looked into issues relating to counterfeit euros and targeted the enforcement of drug laws, to name but a few. The Minister also mentioned other areas of its work.

The agency is led by a Briton, Rob Wainwright, and it uses its information capabilities and expertise to identify and track the most dangerous criminals and terrorist networks in Europe. It engages in about 13,000 investigations each year. This year, recent successes in the fight against crime have included tackling match fixing in football. In March 2013, Europol broke up a criminal syndicate that was involved in match fixing in 380 top international FIFA and UEFA games, including one Champions League tie in this country.

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

The right hon. Gentleman is making a very good case for Europol, which makes me curious as to why his amendment seeks to take out the commitment to opt into Europol subject to the red lines mentioned by the Minister, and to replace it with a provision that is much more ambiguous than the one put forward by the Government in the first place.

[Mr Hanson]

I can assure the hon. Gentleman that we wish to opt into Europol. I will explain our amendment in a moment. This is a take-note motion, and I want to put on record the Labour party’s view on these matters.

Europol has also dealt with investigations into credit card fraud, making 44 arrests this year in its investigation into a massive credit card fraud network, much of which was located in the United Kingdom. In answer to the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood), yes, Europol is a good thing, and we wish to remain in it, but we also wish to discuss with the Association of Chief Police Officers the question of how we can remain in it in a way that is effective for the coalition Government and for the United Kingdom.

--- Later in debate ---

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

This has been a short but confusing debate. The right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) made what sounded like a pro-European speech, but, despite his protestations, he proposed an amendment that would remove the Government’s commitment to Europol. The contributions from the Conservative Back Benches have lacked the usual recitations from places like Stone and North East Somerset, and we instead had a constructive and positive contribution from my constituency neighbour, the hon. Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael), and a merely mildly Eurosceptic contribution from the hon. Member for Northampton North (Michael Ellis). The Minister made what was supposed to sound like a Eurosceptic speech but he was none the less moving a motion that undoubtedly commits us to opt into the regulation post-adoption, subject only to red lines which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) said, are perfectly reasonable conditions to set on the negotiations. Perhaps unlike the Minister, and like the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), I would have rather had us at the table throughout those negotiations. I slightly regret that we are trying to influence the negotiations but not be part of them; we might be accused of wanting to have our gateau and eat it at the same time. Nevertheless, the Minister is proposing a bit of reasonable, coalition pragmatic compromise, which I think delivers the goods. It will commit us, in the end, to opt into Europol and that is absolutely the right thing to do.

Hon. Members have made many mentions of the positive aspects of Europol’s work, including Operation Golf, which led to the arrest of 126 individuals, seven in the UK, for trafficking children and the release of 181 children across Europe. It also probably saved the UK £400,000 by stopping related benefit fraud. Mention has also been made of Operation VETO, which has been led by Europol across 13 European countries and has uncovered an extensive criminal match-fixing network. A total of 425 match officials, club officials, players and serious criminals from more than 15 countries are suspected of being involved in attempts to fix more than 380 professional football matches.

However, one of the best examples of Europol’s work is outlined in the document we were debating earlier today—the Government’s decision document on the mass opt-out. It provides a description of Operation APAR, which tackled drugs, firearms and money laundering. It said that Europol co-ordinated an operation that included

“a series of coordinated arrests and searches…carried out resulting in the apprehension of 32 people and seizures including drugs, firearms, property, vehicles and electronic equipment.”

It continued by saying that Europol

“provided analytical support, facilitated information exchange between investigating law enforcement agencies and arranged operational meetings.”

The Europol mobile office was deployed in the UK, Ireland and Spain.

The Government document is clear about the importance of Europol as opposed to bilateral arrangements in this operation. It states that if Europol had not been involved

“we judge that the results of operation APAR would have been more limited and the operation would have been significantly more expensive….The UK would have had considerable difficulty securely exchanging real-time intelligence and developing operational action plans with those countries”

if it had simply been doing it bilaterally. The description goes on to state:

“Additionally Europol’s secure IT systems enabled timely and effective communication between all four Member States on the day of the operation.”

It is possible to construct such collaborations bilaterally, but in practice if we simply say, “This is what we would like to do” but we rely on everybody else to collaborate by constructing an operation such as Europol, we are acting irresponsibly.

Europol is a very important organisation and I am extremely pleased that, out of the negotiations on the mass opt-out, we are securely committing, subject to just a few red lines, to opt back into Europol. The fact that Rob Wainwright, a Brit, is leading this organisation shows us a new model of the way in which we should approach European issues across the board, with Britain in a leadership role, making a real difference, delivering not just for the people in Britain, but for all the people of Europe.