Investigatory Powers Bill

Matt Warman Excerpts

Tuesday 15th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Matt Warman (Boston and Skegness) (Con)]

We have today heard much talk about this Bill being rushed. I have had the privilege—that is one word for it—of serving on not one but two Committees looking at this Bill. I am talking about the Joint Committee and the Science and Technology Committee. I can assure the House that neither of those Committees felt that it ran short of time when it came to scrutinising this Bill. Who knows? I might get lucky and find myself on the Bill Committee to scrutinise it yet further. Importantly, the level of pre-legislative scrutiny that this Bill has undergone is extensive and will be followed by the standard level of scrutiny that all Bills face in Parliament.

I wish to talk briefly about two specific points. The first is on internet connection records. We have heard today that they are not equivalent to a mobile phone record. I would accept that point but for the fact that the internet connection record clearly is, in many ways, the modern way in which we are able to track what sort of surveillance is necessary. If we were looking at the lives of people around 10 or 20 years ago, we might simply have used the telephone. The way that we all live our lives today is through our mobile phones, through the internet, so the level of surveillance is a modern equivalent, proportionate response if we look at it through the lens of modern life. It is a marginal difference to move from the phone record, with which we have become so comfortable, to ICRs. That is why the Joint Committee was comfortable with the concept of ICRs, although I accept that there was not total unanimity on that point.

The second point relating to the ICR is that it is not a dragnet, despite what we heard from the Liberal Democrats, because it still requires approval from a judge or the state for any of this information to be accessed. I believe it is irresponsible to call it a dragnet, and I praise both the Labour party and the SNP for avoiding phrases such as “snoopers charter”. Secondly, I would praise the Government for not asking for keys to encrypted communication—for making explicitly clear the point that we are not asking Apple to build in a backdoor to everybody’s iMessages, and we are not asking for major technology companies to do things that they say “protect” their users.

However, I would raise a final point, which I think is more important. The Bill is an acceptable, to me, and sensible way of living with the modern world of encryption, but it does not address the modern world in which we live that says it is sensible for every citizen to have access to weapons-grade encryption. I fear that if it is accepted that there are dark spaces where the state simply cannot ever go, we are not having the debate in Parliament and in the nation that says it is not sensible for citizens to be perpetually suspicious of the role of the state in their lives, when in fact the state is that which may best keep us safe, rather than that which we should seek privacy from in every possible circumstance.