Harassment in Public Life
Peter Kyle Excerpts(6 years, 4 months ago)
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Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)
The most common question I get asked by young people these days is, “How do you put up with all the abuse?” I know the Home Secretary will find that as heartbreaking as I do. Young people know that a corruption has entered our politics, whereby people now believe that if somebody honestly disagrees with them they are unprincipled. As soon as we accept the principle that somebody is unprincipled simply for disagreeing, that opens the door to all sorts of really bad behaviour. This cannot be tackled purely with legislation. What can we do to drive this notion out of our body politic?
Amber Rudd
I wholeheartedly agree with the hon. Gentleman. When I visit schools or universities, I too get exactly the same question: “How can you put up with this abuse?” That is why it is so important for us to call it out. He asks what we can do and I urge him to look at the report. But it is not enough to just act on the report, which we will, or to consider additional legislation, which we may. We all have to make sure that we call it out often and firmly. Sometimes it is difficult when people come after us and we think that this is the role of a Member of Parliament. But no, it is not just about that. [Interruption.] I am getting a certain amount of heckling, Mr Speaker. I referred earlier to somebody from the Labour party. I just remind hon. Members that another person who needs calling out is the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell).
EU Nationals in the UK
Peter Kyle Excerpts(7 years, 10 months ago)
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Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)
I feel slightly sorry for the Immigration Minister, who has been sent out to defend the indefensible for the second time this week by his Home Secretary. I hope that he has got a very good promise of a very good job out of this. It is not the first time that he and I have debated in this House when he has been sent out while the Home Secretary has gone to hide.
The Minister’s position is still indefensible, though it has moved in the past few days alone. The Home Secretary said on Sunday that there could be no movement until the negotiations had started, and one of her aides said that the issue was a “negotiating point”, even though there was all that stuff about this not being a bargaining chip. The Foreign Secretary said that it was “absurd” to agree on the status of EU citizens before anything could be agreed in wider negotiations, and the Minister himself said that it would be “unwise” to agree the status of EU citizens before wider negotiations had taken place.
Here is where I would probably disagree with the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Heidi Allen), with whom I have agreed many times on other issues: I do not think that it is okay to leave this issue to become the first priority for a new Prime Minister in many weeks’ time. It is not okay simply to leave this question to the process of EU negotiations, when we have no idea how long that will take, given that people are worried about their jobs, homes and kids’ futures right now.
Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the issue is not just the terms that will need to be negotiated for people from the EU who are living here? The leadership that is needed is about the welcome that we give to people, who should be treated as equals in this country. She might be shocked to know that I spoke to the manager of a coffee chain recently, who was worried about the name badges that his staff wear because so many customers are making terrible comments to people serving coffee, such as “When are you going home?” Such comments have become regular now. Leadership is needed to set the tone that we have as a country, not just in relation to the nuts and bolts of people’s status in this country. It is about the welcome and what kind of country we are now, after Brexit.
Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend is right. This is an immensely sensitive period and all of us have a responsibility not to give succour to extremists who want to exploit it. That should mean giving confidence to people who have been settled here, often for many years, contributing to our public services or working setting up businesses.
Investigatory Powers Bill (Thirteenth sitting)
Peter Kyle ExcerptsThursday 28th April 2016
(8 years ago)
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Mr Hayes
I am a little hurt, frankly. I regard the caricature that the hon. and learned Lady has painted of my approach to all of these considerations as—I would not say insulting—hurtful. Far from the stony-faced zealot that I think she seeks to portray me as, I am the very model of this listening Government.
Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)
The Minister demonstrates a listening Government in action by giving way to me and I am extremely grateful to him for doing so. With regard to clause 196(6), which would be removed by the amendment, Sir Stanley Burnton, the expert witness, said:
“We wonder what the function of clause 196(6) is. It is either telling a judge the obvious or it is a big stick to wave at the judge, to say, ‘You have to approve this because if you don’t, you’ll be jeopardising the success of an intelligence operation.’”––[Official Report, Investigatory Powers Public Bill Committee, 24 March 2016; c. 74.]
Would the Minister care to comment on that point?
Mr Hayes
Now the Committee is getting exciting; it often happens, as one gets deep into consideration. I must say that the hon. Gentleman—unsurprisingly, given his reputation, but in a most welcome way—has illustrated a diligence in the consideration of the detail of this measure, which does him great credit.
However, having been nice about the hon. Gentleman, now let me be less nice. The hon. and learned Lady wants to weaken public interest; he wants to take out a whole chunk of the Bill—
Immigration Bill
Peter Kyle Excerpts(8 years ago)
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James Brokenshire
I was going to come on to that very point. Let me just say that it is about supporting those front-line member states and our other European partners to stand by their responsibilities. In essence, Europe should be a safe space; it is not a conflict zone. Therefore, we judge that the best way to make a difference and to help the greatest numbers of those in need is to support the majority of refugees to enable them to stay safely in their home region, which is why I made those points about aid and assistance. Where people have made that journey to Europe, we should help our European partners to fulfil their duties to them and to provide support on this issue of family reunification.
Peter Kyle
I am very grateful to the Minister for giving way; he has indeed been generous with his time. May I point him to what the Home Secretary said in her speech to the Tory conference last October? She said:
“We’ll develop a community sponsorship scheme, like those in Canada and Australia, to allow individuals, charities, faith groups, churches and businesses to support refugees directly.”
I have met the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and many of the groups that she mentioned in that speech. They are ready to do it, and they have the systems in place, but the thing that is stopping them is the Government.
Investigatory Powers Bill (Second sitting)
Peter Kyle Excerpts(8 years, 1 month ago)
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The Chair
Q77 Welcome to the afternoon session. We will now hear oral evidence from the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and Mr Ray McClure. We have half an hour for this session. Could the witnesses briefly introduce themselves?
Alan Wardle: I am Alan Wardle. I am head of policy and public affairs at the NSPCC.
Ray McClure: I am Ray McClure. I am the uncle of Lee Rigby, the fusilier who was brutally murdered on the streets of London. I am the eldest brother of his father.
Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)
Q Thank you both for appearing today; it is good to see you.
Mr McClure, could I start with you? We have been talking about the prevention of terrorism to date, but from your perspective this is about crime prevention. Perhaps you could say a few words about that and the measures in the Bill that would benefit crime prevention from your perspective.
Ray McClure: The forces of law and order and security need information in order to prevent crime. Surveillance is a necessary part of crime prevention. You go down the high street or go into shops and you are on CCTV cameras all the time. That is surveillance. The public know what it is for: to prevent crime and to gather information in order to prosecute those who are guilty of committing crime.
This whole thing to date is also about making sure that the forces of law and order—the police and the security forces—have the means of gathering the information that they need in order to prevent crime, be it on the internet or terrorism, as well as being able to gather the evidence in order to prosecute people who are guilty of crime.
Modern society works by having rules that are understood and agreed, and by having those rules policed and enforced. Without those rules and laws in place, we are living in anarchy.
Peter Kyle
Q Thank you. Mr Wardle, do you want to give the NSPCC’s position?
Alan Wardle: I am happy to. As you would expect, our interest is less to do with the counter-terrorism aspects and more to do with the investigation and prosecution of specific crimes against children. We know, and the Committee will know as well, that the police’s ability to investigate and prosecute some of the high-profile crimes we have seen in recent years—online grooming of children and the number of people who are viewing illegal images of children online, which has grown exponentially— is increasingly dependent on communications data. I think it is vital that this Bill ensures that the police have the powers and capabilities to continue to do that.
Peter Kyle
Q So from your perspective—and this is from reading the evidence from the NSPCC—this is not just about collecting data; it is about sharing data and intelligence in a joined-up way between the services. Is that correct?
Alan Wardle: It is about collecting data so that, as and when the police need to investigate, there is a dataset that they can specifically and forensically look into to investigate. So data sharing is part of it, but not all of it. Say a child is being groomed online and you are trying to establish where that child was met by someone who has groomed them. Did they actually meet in real life for contact abuse? In the case of a child being trafficked across the country, was a hotel booked? Was a car booked? It is about being able to piece that information together. So traditional policing methods—being able to use the internet and the data that are available from people’s online activities to identify people and prosecute them—is the main concern, but the sharing of data, where relevant, is also relevant.
Peter Kyle
Q We have seen delays of sometimes 12 months in gathering and processing evidence, insufficient training in the collection of digital evidence—all things you have cited in your evidence—and a lack of awareness of the legal processes to access communications data. Bearing those things in mind, the new powers, even if we had them, could not really be used effectively unless there was the right training in the first place.
Alan Wardle: Absolutely. This is not a silver bullet; it is another tool that the police need in their armoury to help them deal with these kinds of crimes. Equally important is that local police forces particularly have the forensic capability to analyse a mobile phone or computer, and the technical tools and skilled officers to be able to do that.
Being able to access the data is one part of it, but not all of it. The kind of tools that we see at the National Crime Agency and the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre are very helpful, but the issue is the extent to which that expertise and those technical tools are disseminated throughout the entire police force across the UK. I would argue that communications data was only ever going to be part of the answer—an important part, obviously.
The Chair
We clearly have two excellent witnesses here, and I am sure that many colleagues will want to ask questions. Who is trying to catch my eye? Would Mr Matheson like to ask a question?
The Chair
That brings us to the end of this session. May I thank our witnesses, who gave extremely strong performances? I know that being a witness before a Committee is very nerve-wracking, but you both executed your role fantastically, so thank you very much indeed. It was very kind of you to come before us today.
Examination of Witness
Mark Hughes gave evidence.
Matt Warman (Boston and Skegness) (Con)
Q On the Joint Committee on the draft Bill and on the Science and Technology Committee, we heard CSPs talking about the level of engagement they have had from the Home Office, and we have heard from the Home Office that that has increased recently. That seems to tally with what you are saying. Could you give us a sense of the scale and extent of that engagement, and some reassurance that, in this fast-moving world, you are confident that the relationship is such that that engagement would be there in future as well, rather than it just being about getting the Bill to this stage?
Mark Hughes: We have had extensive periods of consultation and meetings on a very frequent basis. The Home Secretary has invited many of us representatives of the CSP community to meetings with her on two occasions before this, as well as to many working-level meetings with various Home Office officials. We discussed the technical, legal and procedural points about the proposed legislation as well, which is markedly different from how things have been before.
On the point about the future, which is important here, the Bill itself clearly specifies and puts in place a regime whereby consultation is enshrined in the legislation through the consultation process that has to happen before a notice is issued and, indeed, because the reconstituted technical advisory board can be called to come together at any time. That power did not exist in the past. The consultation is in a better place and I think that the Bill itself will help to ensure that that continues in future, because it will be a point of law.
Peter Kyle
Q Is everything in the Bill technically deliverable?
Mark Hughes: There is nothing that we have yet come across that we think is technically not deliverable. However, I will caveat that by saying that we provide many different services. There are different service providers that do different types of things and operate their communications networks differently from us. I can only really comment on BT and our networks, both mobile and fixed, but from where we are coming from it is—
Peter Kyle
Q So through technology that is already in existence and already within your grasp as a company, everything in the Bill is within the bounds of deliverability.
Mark Hughes: What I would say is that, as I said at the beginning, the things in the Bill that we need to retain are what bits we can do technically. We have not yet gone through in detail how we constitute some of that information, because we have not yet done it. I cannot comment on something that we have not done yet, but on the face of it, it does not look unfeasible.
Peter Kyle
Q To follow up briefly on Mr Matheson’s question about security, I hear your answer, which is quite broad. I will rephrase the question in this way: would existing BT customers expect a different level of security protection for their data once the Bill is enabled and passed, compared with what they expect and what is at their disposal today?
Mark Hughes: Again, different types of data, depending on the concentration, volume and type of data, require different levels of security. We always assess the risk of that data becoming exposed in a way that it should not, and we assess the security against that clearly.
Peter Kyle
Q Are you saying that because the quantity and volume of data being stored will increase and you are storing it for longer, those are two contributing factors that could potentially lead to the weakening of security?
Mark Hughes: No. On the contrary, because that is the case, we will assess it and have to put additional security controls around those data. Again, some of those data sets do not currently exist. In assessing how we would build the storage for those data sets, we would obviously factor in security, and some of the factors would include the volume and type of data, which would lead to the solution that we put in place. That is part of some of the cost estimates that have been worked through in the pamphlet produced by the Home Office.
Peter Kyle
Q Sir Stanley, in response to Sir Keir’s question, you said that you felt that judges would be compelled to give weight to the person applying. Will judges, considering that it has been signed off by the Home Secretary, feel compelled to give weight to the fact that the Home Secretary has already authorised the warrant?
Sir Stanley Burnton: Well, you give weight to it, but you none the less look at the material to see whether she was entitled to come to the decision she came to.
Peter Kyle
Q There is a lot of weight already by the time it gets to the judge to make the decision, so the bar is high for you to overturn the application.
Sir Stanley Burnton: These are serious matters. To authorise or to approve a warrant is a serious matter, but equally not to may be a serious matter.
Peter Kyle
Q Thank you so much for a great answer. Joanna, following on from the Minister’s question, have you ever come across a Bill of this complexity, size and importance in your career?
Jo Cavan: No.
Peter Kyle
Q So it is unique, and therefore the conditions that lead up to it are unique as well.
Jo Cavan: That is right, although I defer to the individuals in this room who have been involved in this type of stuff for far longer than I have. Six codes of practice containing the operational detail were published on 1 March accompanying the Bill. That is a huge amount of material to examine.
Keir Starmer
Q I know there is no such thing as a typical case because they are all shapes and sizes but, in the main, would you have expected a signed statement from somebody setting out the case for necessity and proportionality—why it was necessary—and drawing your attention to the relevant material?
Lord Reid: Yes. That would be the top introduction, but there may well be further papers behind it. In some cases, there may be papers behind it in some depth.
Charles Clarke: If the question is whether there would normally—I am trying to think whether there is any exception to this—be a recommendation by an official based on the data that existed, the answer is yes. I am trying to think whether there are any exceptions to that. I cannot think of any offhand.
Peter Kyle
Q One of the innovations of the Bill is the double lock. When you were Home Secretaries, most warrants would have been signed just by the Home Secretary. Will the knowledge of having judicial oversight and a second authorisation before the warrant comes in change the behaviour of the Home Secretary when approaching the decision?
Charles Clarke: I tend to doubt it. Speaking for myself and, I am sure, for John—actually, for all Home Secretaries I have ever discussed this with—we have all been exceptionally aware of the severity and seriousness of what we were looking at. I do not think that the idea that there was going to be a judicial review of what we were doing would have changed our behaviour significantly. There is quite a serious, in-principle issue about the role of the judge as opposed to the role of the Executive.
I saw you taking evidence from Lord Judge just now. I bumped into him as I was coming in. The question of the relationship between the judiciary and the Executive is a key point. I gave evidence on it to the House of Lords Constitution Committee in 2007 because I think it has all been changed by the Human Rights Act 1998. I think there has been insufficient consideration of the changing nature of the relations. In response to your particular point, Mr Kyle, I do not believe that there would have been a significant change in behaviour.
Lord Reid: I do not think there will be a change in behaviour from the point of view of the person who is ultimately accountable to Parliament for the decisions, which is the elected Member and appointed Minister. Probably even before RIPA, which I think Charles took through the House of Commons, there was an awareness that there were degrees of oversight and you were working within certain constraints and certainly with oversight.
I confess that where I would worry—you would perhaps say, “Well, he would, wouldn’t he? He was the Home Secretary.”—is in case the judicial oversight became a co-decision. I think that is a recipe, in some cases, for obstacles to the efficient operation of aspects that I mentioned earlier, for instance in a hostage situation. I know that allowances are being made for that.
I guess that the additional oversight—judicial oversight—that is in the Bill is a result of a number of factors. One is the concern—I do not know whether it is public concern; I do not think it is, but it is certainly published concern—over the Snowden revelations, the general distrust of politicians and the fact that there was a Liberal-Conservative coalition. All of this is compromise, is it not?
I have no in-principle objections to it, provided that the first decision is made by the person accountable for it, through Parliament, to the public and the role of judicial oversight is the judicial element of it.
Joanna Cherry
Q On 4 November last year, when the Home Secretary introduced the draft Investigatory Powers Bill to the House of Commons, she informed us:
“the acquisition of bulk communications data, both relating to the UK and overseas…is not a new power. It will replace the power under Section 94 of the Telecommunications Act 1984”.—[Official Report, 4 November 2015; Vol. 601, c. 971.]
May I start with you, Mr Clarke? When you were Home Secretary, how many times do you recall authorising the use of
“the power under Section 94 of the Telecommunications Act 1984”
to collect the telephone records of everybody in the UK into a single national database?
Charles Clarke: I do not recall the answer to your question at all, I am afraid; I have not prepared for this meeting, or gone back to my files, so I cannot answer the question. I think what the Home Secretary will have been trying to communicate is that the purpose of this legislation is to update legislation in the light of massive technological change, even since 1999, when I took the RIPA Bill through Parliament. As you will recall, that was to make what was being done compliant with the Human Rights Act, which required us to have a basis on which all of this was understood. Previously, this had all been done without any basis, and I was very proud to take that legislation through.
I said at the time—if you go back to the records of those hearings—that it would be necessary to update that Bill as technology moved forward, and I think that is what the Home Secretary meant in what she said. However, I apologise that I cannot give you the precise answer that you are looking for.
Investigatory Powers Bill (First sitting)
Peter Kyle Excerpts(8 years, 1 month ago)
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The Chair
Can we keep questions and answers as brief as possible to get everybody in, please?
Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)
Q I, too, am not a lawyer but, unlike Mr Hoare, I do not apologise for it. Mr King, it was quite striking when you gave a flavour of the quantity of data that is being harnessed. Do you know whether that has ever led to an unlawful arrest, or a wrongful arrest?
Eric King: No. At the moment we have almost no visibility on how our security and intelligence agencies work on a day-to-day basis with our National Crime Agency. We know that they co-operate very regularly and we know there is a lot of material that is shared around, particularly for organised crime circumstances. I imagine that lots of the relevant material is passed to the NCA and others, and that will lead to arrests and occasionally presumably also unlawful arrests. But no, that is not material that is in the public domain.
Victoria Atkins
Q Mr King, there was a phrase you used quite a few times during your evidence. That is, “We don’t know.” How long have you worked for the security services?
Eric King: I don’t work for the security services.
Victoria Atkins
Q In the nightmare scenario that there was a wrong ’un in the agencies, how would they be able to find that person and prevent them from misusing their powers?
Lord Evans: It is inevitably the case that you cannot ensure that everybody in the service is brilliant and saintly, because it’s human nature. As a result, we maintain a strong, continuing vetting procedure. Your vetting is reviewed on a regular basis and it is built into the way we do our appraisal to raise security-related issues. Also, particularly in the management of access to sensitive information, there are arrangements to ensure independent oversight of what is being done on the systems that the service has in place. In the same way that, if you were running a trading system in a bank or something, you would monitor the activities of the traders to try to identify improper activity, something similar is applied to the systems operating within the intelligence services. We rely on good recruitment and on continuing security vetting, but we also have some wired-in ways of trying to identify misuse of official resources for personal use or whatever.
Peter Kyle
Q I would like to turn your attention from the efficacy and professionalism of your staff to that of the politicians you have had to deal with over the years. You have had to have relationships with several different Home Secretaries in your time. Have you always been able to get the time and attention you need from each of them at the moment at which you need it?
Lord Evans: I served under four Home Secretaries from both the Labour party and the Conservative party. I saw the Home Secretary without fail once a week, and quite often twice a week. All of them took a great interest in the work that the service was doing and its operations, and were regularly briefed. From that point of view, I think we were given very good airtime. In addition to that, there is the question of the time to look at warrants. They were not presented by the director general but were processed and nominally presented by the Home Secretary’s officials, so on top of that there was a lot of time spent by Home Secretaries on warrants. I can say, without going into great detail, that they did not all go through with a tick. Occasionally, warrants would come back and they would say, “Actually, the Home Secretary doesn’t want to sign this.”
Peter Kyle
Q You have answered my second question, which does great service to your profession. Does the same stand for you, Mr Inkster?
Nigel Inkster: Yes. Obviously, our service’s interaction was more with the Foreign Secretary, but our experience is comparable. I cannot think of a single case of a Foreign Secretary who did not take a serious and sustained interest in this area of work. I cannot think of a Foreign Secretary who did not take a serious and sustained interest in the kind of warrants and submissions that they were asked to approve. My experience, like Jonathan’s, is that these did not go through on the nod. There was lot of self-policing in the system, because we knew that a weak case would not stand. There was no point in putting it forward, because its fate would be clear, so one did not do that. The only other thing I would add is that my experience has been that, without fail, the senior politicians involved in this business owned the decisions that they took, stood by them and did not, as they well could have done in many cases, try to fend them off on to somebody else.
Peter Kyle
Q My final quick question is: is there much difference in the behaviour towards issuing warrants between Home Secretaries, or do you find it a consistent experience?
Lord Evans: Broadly speaking, all the Home Secretaries took a similar view on this. I have never come across a Home Secretary who was pro-terrorism, obviously. I suppose, in practice, what happened early on in the time of a Home Secretary being in post was that you tended to get more questions, which is entirely as you would expect. If a new Home Secretary came in, quite often they would say, “I don’t understand that. Bring me somebody to explain it.” So they are doing their job. Of course, that is an iterative process because if you understand that a Home Secretary has particular concerns about area x, you will put a little bit more effort into explaining it and making the case. You would tailor it to some extent to the particular concerns of any particular Home Secretary, but the overall threshold employed was roughly the same.
I would say one other thing. I do not want to name names for this purpose but I can remember at least on one occasion briefing a new Home Secretary on something we were doing that was really quite intrusive, although it was lawful. I said, “I need to tell you about this.” Their initial reaction was, “That’s fine,” and I said, “No it isn’t. You need to think about this. You cannot just say ‘This is fine.’ You need to be aware that this is potentially quite audacious. May I suggest that you look at this in a little more detail rather than go with something off the top of your head?” We did try to ensure that Ministers really were internalising this. We were not just trying to get it past them without them thinking about it, not least because if something then comes up, you do not want to be in a position where the Home Secretary says, “You never told me this could get me into trouble.”
Investigatory Powers Bill
Peter Kyle Excerpts(8 years, 1 month ago)
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Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)
I pay tribute to my colleagues in the Joint Committee who have scrutinised this Bill for their sterling work, and I particularly thank our Chair, Lord Murphy, and the Clerks and experts who did such a fantastic job in supporting us. Most importantly, I thank those who provided written and oral evidence to the Committee, including all those who work so hard to protect us from terrorism and serious crime. They made our understanding of these issues much clearer, even if resolving them remains incredibly difficult.
The issues are many and varied. A number of hon. Members have focused on the right balance between security and privacy, which is fundamental to the Bill, but there are also other issues. By attempting to plug one gap in security, do we create a different problem elsewhere? That issue arises in relation to hacking and encryption. Why should we put future-proofing ahead of clearly defined powers and responsibilities? What precedent does the Bill set for other countries? There are also more practical questions, such as whether everything the Bill proposes can be done—that issue arises for internet connection records. We must assess the implications of the Bill for important freedoms and protections, including its effect on journalism, and its influence on relationships between lawyers and clients, and between whistleblowers, constituents and their MPs. What are the implications for UK tech businesses?
Despite those questions, there is undoubtedly need for legislation—no one in the House is denying that—because, as various reports have pointed out, the existing scattered miscellany of provisions across various obscure statutes undermines the rule of law. We must also remember that we are here in part thanks to Edward Snowden’s revelations, and the breakdown in trust that followed between the public and business on one hand, and intelligence agencies and law enforcement on the other. As we know, MPs—never mind the public—had no idea of extent of the capabilities that services and agencies were using.
Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)
Does the hon. Gentleman accept that public trust is undermined when laws that are designed for serious crimes are used for minor crimes and things such as antisocial behaviour? Does he agree with the shadow Home Secretary, who called for a proportionality clause to be included in the Bill to ensure that that does not happen in practice?
Stuart C. McDonald
I have severe difficulties with some of the provisions on internet connection records in the Bill. There are tests of proportionality in the Bill, but the shadow Home Secretary was proposing a different threshold for the types of crime for which we could use internet connect records, and we will consider that proposal with an open mind.
The context informs the tests and standards we need to apply to the Bill, so we can restore the trust the hon. Gentleman talks about. First, the Bill must comply with and support the rule of law by clearly defining the investigatory powers that public institutions have available, and the limits and safeguards that apply. Of course, it must itself be consistent with the law, including international human rights law and the right to privacy.
Secondly, there must be strong oversight of the use of these invasive powers and a body that can independently scrutinise the work of the organisations using them. Going further, that body must also have the powers and expertise necessary for ensuring that the powers are not being exceeded or abused. The ability to look under the bonnet, as some of the witnesses to our Committee described it, and see what is really going on is the only way we can avoid another Snowden incident in future.
Thirdly, there is a need for the Government to shoulder responsibility for justifying each and every one of the invasive powers sought and avowed. Parliament should not give an inch without being properly persuaded of their absolute necessity. This is the first time Parliament has debated many of them. Some, as has been said, go further than our European neighbours or even our “Five Eyes” colleagues.
In the time available, I will focus on the second of those areas of concern, the oversight and limits on powers. The introduction of judicial oversight is, to my mind, very welcome. I do not want to re-tread the debate about whether judicial review is the appropriate standard. The minutes of the Joint Committee will record that I voted to remove that test so that a general merits test was instead what was applied. My view, for what it is worth, is that if we are going for a double lock, it should be a proper double lock with two proper bolts of equal strength. The Bill Committee will form its own view on that.
I welcome the fact that the Government have made some attempt to respond to recommendations, strengthening the oversight role of judicial commissioners through the use of an in-house legal adviser, appointment of counsel and access to technical expertise, and through their ability to communicate with the tribunal directly, and to hear from whistleblowers. However, other recommendations have been rejected, including significant proposals to make the tribunal more transparent, broader rights of appeal and public hearings. The Bill Committee will want to push further on issues such as the appointments process and the process for agreeing the commission’s budget.
Very significant question marks still remain with regard to legal privilege and the protection of journalistic sources. Much more scrutiny work is required in this area. I also remain utterly dissatisfied with the Government’s response to one important criticism of the ability to significantly modify warrants without judicial oversight, something that risks running a coach and horses through judicial protections. I accept the principle of the Bill, but there is still a lot of work to be done to persuade me to vote for it.
Oral Answers to Questions
Peter Kyle Excerpts(8 years, 2 months ago)
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Karen Bradley
I thank my hon. Friend for his question. I also congratulate him on the arrival of new baby Quince, in whose delivery I believe he was very involved. I am very aware of the concerns about knife crime in Essex, and I recently had a meeting with my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Sir Simon Burns)—I would be more than happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss precisely this issue. We are taking a range of steps, and earlier this month we supported 13 police forces, including Essex, that undertook co-ordinated action against knife crime.
Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)
Knife crime, like much other crime, is best dealt with pre-emptively and at the community and neighbourhood level. In Sussex, crime has gone up 8%, but Government inspectors said today that front-line neighbourhood and local policing is “routinely” being taken away. Will the Minister please look again at the issue of the 1,000 police officers and staff who are being taken from the frontline, which will further impact on neighbourhood policing?
Karen Bradley
May I start by congratulating Katy Bourne, who has been an excellent police and crime commissioner in Sussex? I met her recently, and we discussed the many steps she is taking to deal with crime. Obviously, the deployment of operational resources is a matter for the chief constable, in consultation with the police and crime commissioner. However, the hon. Gentleman should remember his vote in this House to cut police resources by 10%—something that Government Members disagreed with.
Policing
Peter Kyle Excerpts(8 years, 6 months ago)
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Mrs May
I am happy to do so. I know that my right hon. Friend the Policing Minister has been conducting a number of meetings with colleagues to hear their views on the proposed police funding formula. I am happy to set up the sort of meeting that my hon. Friend suggests. The consultation on the police funding formula is still open and no decisions have been taken in relation to it.
Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)
The funding formula as it stands is out for consultation, but the proposals would lead to a 5.1% cut for Sussex police and a 5.2% increase for Surrey police next door—urban to rural. Would the Home Secretary say that that is fair, and that a city such as Brighton and Hove, which has very specific challenges, could cope with another 5.1% cut, on top of all the others?
Mrs May
The point I made is very simple. The police funding formula has been out for consultation for a while. We are listening to the representations and then decisions will be taken. He refers to the specific needs of certain parts of the Sussex police force area, Brighton and Hove being one of those. I take this opportunity to commend the work that Police and Crime Commissioner Katy Bourne has been doing in relation to certain communities in Sussex and the very real attention that she has given to the sort of issues that the hon. Gentleman refers to.
Stephen Twigg
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Our right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary was right to remind the House that PCSOs were a major reform under the noble Lord Blunkett, the former Home Secretary, of the nature of policing in this country, and it is a great shame to see its reversal as a consequence of these cuts.
The motion rightly focuses on the cuts in the CSR, but I want to comment on the police funding formula. My hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington (Jeff Smith) spoke about the impact of cuts to the central police grant on Greater Manchester police. It is similar in Merseyside. We receive 85% of our funding from central Government—the third highest of any police force in the country—whereas 51% of Surrey’s funding comes from central Government. That means that the impact of a reduction in funding from central Government is much greater in Merseyside than in Surrey, which is protected by the council tax base. I do not think the Government have shown sufficient regard to that as they have made their cuts.
Peter Kyle
I have sympathy with my hon. Friend’s argument, but does he realise that down in Sussex it is even more absurd? Sussex police are being cut by 5.1%, as the review stands now, while neighbouring Surrey is getting an additional 5%.
Stephen Twigg
My hon. Friend has made that excellent point already, and it is made even more emphatically by his repeating it. He is absolutely right.
The consequence is striking. Over the last five years, Merseyside has lost one in five of its police officers, whereas Surrey has lost just 1%, and this contrast has a direct impact. The proposed changes to the funding formula will also have an impact. As others have said, there will always be gainers and loser when we change the funding formula, but under the current proposal, which I accept is still out for consultation, Merseyside will see a further cut of more than £5 million in our police budget. So, we have the cuts I have mentioned, the impact of our being much more reliant than average on central Government support, and a new formula that, if not changed—I very much hope it will be—will take another £5 million out of our budget.
I pay tribute to the entire police team in my constituency and across Merseyside for the fantastic work they do, and to the leadership of Jane Kennedy and our chief constable, Sir John Murphy. He has said:
“We will not deliver as good a service as we have done before. In some instances, it will take us longer to get there. In some instances, we won’t turn up. That’s an inevitable consequence of having less people to do more work.”
It is as straightforward as that.
I want to say three things in conclusion. First, the scale of these cuts, as the shadow Home Secretary said so clearly at the beginning of the debate, is unacceptable—and that is what the motion says. Secondly, the proposed formula change for areas such as Merseyside, Lancashire, Cumbria and indeed London will result in a loss that will exacerbate the impact of the cuts. Finally, we need a recognition that many areas of the country, particularly those with the greatest levels of deprivation and social and economic need, including Merseyside, are more reliant on support from central Government. When that support is cut, therefore, we are hit the hardest. It is the same with the local government cuts. The Government should recognise that as they go into the comprehensive spending review.
I appeal to Conservative Members, who represent a party that used to be known as the party of law and order, to think again about the scale of these cuts. No longer can they be seen as belonging to the party of law and order or the party for police and communities. In all parts of the country, but particularly in areas like mine that have suffered from serious incidents of crime and antisocial behaviour, it is vital that we have a visible, effective local police service. I know that Jane Kennedy and John Murphy will do their utmost with whatever resources they are given, but let us give them the resources so that they can do the job properly.
Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)
Mr Deputy Speaker, it is a pleasure to be called to speak by you. Most often when I have spoken in the Chamber it is you who have called me, so I am always relieved to see you walk through the doors. [Interruption.] I shall say something nice about the Minister in a second as well, so he should prepare himself.
It is interesting to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith). We have heard from hon. Members who have been affected by crime and there are many different perspectives on crime and policing on both sides of the House. I welcome those and enjoyed listening to them because it is important to get different perspectives. I have seen the impact and importance of policing from many different perspectives and angles. I have been a victim of crime—a victim of serious crime—and saw at first hand during that experience the humanity, professionalism and determination of good policing. When I hear from Conservatives who have had experience of policing, from the Minister to the hon. Member for Gower (Byron Davies), I never fail to have respect for their profession and the dedication they showed when they were serving, even though I disagree with the conclusions they draw. Similarly, my hon. Friend the Member for Dewsbury (Paula Sherriff) spoke about her work with victims of crime, which she did for 10 years. I saw that work at first hand too, and have absolute admiration for it.
I have spent time work shadowing with Sussex police. I recommend that all hon. Members do that if they have the opportunity. I spent time with the antisocial and hate crime unit in Brighton and Hove police—it is one of the very few police forces to have a dedicated unit for antisocial behaviour and hate crime. I learned an extraordinary amount about the complex work they do, and about the interdepartmental work they do on the ground, working with councils, social services and so forth to make policing integrated and to make it work for the long term.
As an MP, I see things from another angle, particularly representing Brighton and Hove. It is a complex place to police. We have 8 million visitors to our city every year and two universities, which bring with them specific opportunities and challenges. We have the highest number of pubs and clubs outside London. Being a party town is great fun, but it brings with it a price to police. We have very diverse communities. Some of the most privileged communities in our country are in the city of Brighton and Hove, but we also have communities in the bottom 3% for deprivation in the whole country. We also have Pride, which brings in 200,000 people.
I understand that good policing underpins our economy, something that has not been mentioned enough in the debate. Our economy in Brighton and Hove is dominated by retail, small and micro-businesses, small traders and the self-employed. Our economy is not hidden away in tall buildings with private security on the front door. Our economy happens on community high streets and people’s neighbourhoods. That requires good, solid community policing. Our economy needs a safe space to thrive.
Sussex police have already implemented a 20% cut, as a result of which 500 front-line staff have gone. This is where I extend an olive branch across the House. I have had many frank conversations about this matter. The hon. Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse) was slightly patronising earlier when he suggested that we needed to get out and speak to police. We do, and they have told us about their innovation and what they did to survive the first round of 20% cuts. In many cases, these are examples of best practice, doing more for less and learning from experience. There has been innovation, but the CPR will mean a further cut of between 25% and 40%. To put that in context, of its current budget of £250 million, my police force could lose up to £96 million. I do not believe Conservative Members who say that this will not have a direct impact on the frontline. Add to that a funding formula that could take another 5.1% away from our police force, and it is impossible to see how this is anything other than a Government waging a war against policing in cities such a Brighton and Hove.
Migration
Peter Kyle Excerpts(8 years, 7 months ago)
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Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)
From my experience of working in a previous refugee crisis, I know that the UNHCR is one of the most overstretched and underfunded of UN organisations. Now that the Government are relying so heavily on the UNHCR to help them with this crisis, can the Home Secretary assure us that it is adequately resourced and that British officials are working alongside in situ?
Mrs May
Yes. That is exactly one of the issues that I discussed with António Guterres when I saw him on Monday—we stand ready to provide support, probably in the form of personnel who can help to bolster the UNHCR effort to the extent that it requires. He already has plans for refocusing some of its effort to ensure that such support can be provided, but if further support is needed in the form of people in situ, we stand ready to provide it.