Draft Data Retention and Acquistion Regulations 2018

Nick Thomas-Symonds Excerpts

Monday 15th October 2018 General Committees

[Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Graham; I thank the Minister for the information he has shared with the Opposition regarding this statutory instrument.

Following the ruling of the European Court that the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 was incompatible with European law, the Opposition welcome this instrument, which brings the legislation into line with that European law, together with the code of practice. We have accepted the ability of particular public authorities, including law enforcement and intelligence agencies, to have access to communications data, and we recognise that that can often be vital to ensuring public safety and national security. The proposed changes to the legislation and the code of practice would refine these data retention and acquisition regulations in two major ways: first, as the Minister has set out, by introducing an independent administrator who can authorise the use of these powers, and secondly, by,

“restricting the crime purpose for acquiring retained communications data to serious crime”,

making the use of this power proportionate to the crime being investigated. We in the Opposition support strong powers and strong safeguards, and we welcome the refinement of this legislation.

While the Opposition are not opposed to these changes, I seek clarification from the Minister on one point. The divisional court has required that the Government make legislative changes to bring the Data Retention and Acquisition Regulations in line with European law by 1 November 2018. While I understand that the proposed serious crime threshold will take effect in November 2018, the Government have stated in their explanatory memorandum that,

“the associated requirements for independent authorisation”,

will come into force from April 2019, six months after the deadline set by the court. The information provided by the Government cites complexity of implementation as the reason for that six-month delay, but I wonder whether the Minister can offer further clarification on the reasons.

As I have stated, the Opposition do not plan to oppose these changes, although I note that my former colleague, now the Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, warned the Government in June 2016, when the Investigatory Powers Bill was being debated, that the threshold had to be a precise one. He said that,

“we must…legislate to put in place a very precise threshold, so that the circumstances in which those data can be accessed are explicitly clear…we need a very clear definition of what level of crime permits the authorities to access those records.”—[Official Report, 7 June 2016; Vol. 611, c. 1121.]

I am pleased that the Government have made the reasonable adjustments required to this legislation, so that that balance can now be appropriately struck.