Home Affairs and Justice

Pete Wishart Excerpts

Thursday 10th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

The hon. Gentleman knows very well why it has been necessary for the Government to cut police budgets: because of the deficit that we were left by the Labour Government. As he reflects on the decision to reduce those budgets, perhaps he will also reflect on the fact that reductions of the same order are supported by his party’s Front Benchers, as they have made clear.

Improving the efficiency and effectiveness of our justice system means reviewing and reforming aspects that are not operating as they should. All Members will be aware that our current libel laws are having a detrimental effect on freedom of expression and on academic and scientific debate, and that our courts have become a magnet for libel tourists. That is why all three parties included a commitment to reform in their manifestos. We are introducing a Defamation Bill rebalancing our libel laws to offer more effective protection for freedom of speech and reasonable debate, while at the same time protecting those who have been genuinely and unjustly defamed.

The Bill has benefited from extremely detailed and helpful scrutiny in draft by a Joint Committee of both Houses, as well as having been the subject of public consultation. That has been a great advantage, enabling a wide range of views to be expressed and carefully considered in a thorough and open way. It has helped us to draw up proposals that we believe address core issues of concern where reform is needed and where legislation can make a real difference.

The Government's second Session programme contains measures to fight serious and novel crime and to strengthen justice, but we must also ensure that we keep pace with all the threats to our country. The internet revolution has benefited us all—we now communicate and interact in ways that would have been unimaginable even a few years ago—but the communications revolution also presents an opportunity for terrorists to plot attacks, for serious criminals to arrange drug deals, and for paedophiles to share illegal and abhorrent images.

For many years our police, law enforcement and security and intelligence agencies have used communications data from landline telephones and mobiles—that is, the context but not the content of communications—to catch criminals and to protect the public. Understanding whom suspects have contacted, when they did so and where they were at the time can be central to building a case, proving associations between criminals or terrorists and showing that a suspect was at the scene of a crime. Over the past decade, communications data have been used in every major Security Service counter-terrorism investigation and in 95% of all serious crime cases.

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

As the Home Secretary will know, I practically cheered on the Conservative Government as they began to roll back the rotten anti-civil libertarian state that Labour had left them. Why is it now business as usual? Why does what the Home Secretary is saying suggest the worst excesses of new Labour, and why is she embarking on a snoopers’ charter?

[Mrs May]

Perhaps if the hon. Gentleman listens further to my explanation of the Bill, he will recognise that it is not a snoopers’ charter. Why am I standing here saying that we are introducing a communications data Bill? Because over the past decade, communications data have been used in every major Security Service counter-terrorism investigation and in 95% of all serious crime cases. The Metropolitan Police Commissioner has said,

“it is an essential and irreplaceable tool for protecting the public.”

If we allow our capabilities in this area to be degraded, criminals will go free who otherwise would not. The ability to use that tool is disappearing. As more and more criminal communication moves online, the ability of the police and agencies to access those communications is being degraded.

In the past, phone companies needed, for billing purposes, to log who a person had called, who called them, when, and for how long the conversation lasted. We can see that they keep such information just by looking at our itemised phone bills. Internet service providers have a different business model. Nobody charges per e-mail, and there are no itemised bills of Facebook posts. That means that modern communications companies do not store all of the communications data the police need. The police and agencies estimate that about 25% of requests for communications data can no longer be met because the data have not been stored, compared with just 10% six years ago.

In a recent case, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre received intelligence of unique internet addresses from the UK that had accessed child abuse material. Because some of the communications data were not available, nine out of 41 members of an international paedophile ring could not be traced. This Government are not prepared to allow more paedophiles to go free, more serious criminals to go on committing crimes, and more terrorist plots to go undetected, so we will bring forward legislation to ensure that communications data are available in the future, just as they have been in the past.