Investigatory Powers Bill

Matt Warman Excerpts

Report: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 7th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I would like to call the Solicitor General no later than 5.48 pm, and there are three people whom I wish to accommodate before then—Members can do the arithmetic for themselves. We have just under nine minutes to go. I call Matt Warman.

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

I rise to talk briefly about both journalists and internet connection records. I have heard an awful lot of comments about journalism, and I agree with all of them. Indeed, had the Government not moved some of the material from the codes of practice into the Bill, I might have struggled to support it. At every stage, we will struggle to construct anything useful unless we define what a journalist is, and I find it hard to see how that is possible. In this modern age, I am painfully conscious that, in some senses, we are all journalists ourselves. Almost all of us write columns for our local paper. Arguably, we could all be regarded as journalists simply because we commentate via Twitter on what is going on in politics. I struggle to see what more the Government can do—as much as I would like them to do it and as much as I would like to support new clause 27. Unless we come up with a workable definition of journalism, I struggle to see how we will make what I regard as genuinely very necessary and very helpful progress on a hugely important issue.

On the second point on internet connection records, it strikes me that although they have frequently been compared with a telephone record or an itemised phone bill, it is simply not a sensible comparison in the modern world when we make far fewer voice calls. That sense of an ICR telling us simply that a user has gone to Facebook misunderstands the fact that knowing that someone has gone to Facebook if they are a missing person, for example, allows us then to go to Facebook and make that crucial next step to find that person. Although an ICR does not tell us a huge amount of information, it tells us enough. We in this House have a duty to do everything that we possibly can in this regard and to bear it in mind that it is not us but communications providers who hold that information. I very much welcome what the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) said about having concerns about access, rather than about the principle of what I hope we can all agree is a potentially vital tool in this vital battle against both crime and missing persons.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Matt Warman]

It has been my privilege to serve on not one, not two, but three Committees examining this Bill. Whether it is the Joint Committee, the Bill Committee or the Select Committee on Science and Technology, they were just three examples from a huge number and an unprecedented level of scrutiny that this hugely important Bill has received.

In the Bill Committee, on which I served with the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry), we saw a remarkably conciliatory approach from those on the Front Bench. I also thought it was a genuine privilege to be in the same room as an Opposition who took a view that went so far above party politics, because this is a Bill that is above party politics. That is because what our constituents worry about, even more than the vital privacy concerns that the SNP has persistently raised, is the threat that we face in a global and unstable world. The threats that we have seen on the Committees examining this Bill are greater than they have ever been before and they need to be tackled in a fundamentally different way from that provided for in the broken legislation that is currently in force.

I would therefore argue, and I hope the whole House would agree, that this is legislation that transcends party politics and goes beyond what we have seen from the legislation that exists today. What is demanded from us in this House is legislation that understands and is adaptable to technology that is unlike that in the world that the previous legislation was built to combat. I believe sincerely—from a principled position, I could even say—that, whether on ICRs, protection for journalists, bulk powers or bulk datasets, this Bill struggles and finds the balance that we all need to keep our constituents safe. That is why I will be voting for it this evening.