Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill

Simon Reevell Excerpts

Tuesday 15th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Simon Reevell (Dewsbury) (Con)]

I accept that the timing of the Bill is unfortunate. This is the second time in three years that a Court case that was known about well in advance has produced a result that has caught the Government flat-footed and necessitated emergency legislation. It is also unfortunate that this is being done so quickly, because there is great cynicism towards the state among the general public, and dealing with these matters in this way does nothing to address that problem. However, it is the content of the Bill, rather than the timing, that is the central issue.

The content of the Bill maintains existing powers, and those powers are important where it counts, which is at the sharp end of these things; at the criminal trial of the person accused of serious criminal activity, where the sort of evidence that these powers produces can mean the difference between conviction and acquittal. I know that because I prosecute those cases and have used the evidence produced as a result of these powers.

It is worth bearing in mind the alternative. It is worth thinking about what would happen if it was not possible to have access to that sort of information. Imagine two alternatives. First, consider an individual who is stopped by the police and has his telephone on him. Nobody would suggest that his telephone should not be looked at. Nobody would suggest that it should not be plugged into a computer so that the content can be interrogated. Nobody would suggest that, if his telephone was known to be in his house, the police should not be able to go through his front door, break the lock on a cupboard and retrieve it if that was necessary for the purposes of evidence.

Secondly, consider another individual who has no telephone on him but in whose home the police find a telephone bill. Is the suggestion that they could not use the telephone bill to go to the service provider and see whether they can find the same sort of information that they would have been able to take from the telephone had it been in the individual’s jacket pocket? Is it really being suggested that we should not use technology at all in the investigation and prosecution of serious crime? If that is not being suggested, and there is therefore no difficulty about the use of the technology, the only issue is the extent to which that is fettered by regulation and law, and that is not a matter for this debate, because the Bill is about provisions that already exist.

In serious criminal trials up and down the country today, people are using evidence that deals with the fact of a text message and its content, the fact of a telephone and information that has been retrieved from answerphones, information from social media, and the fact of an e-mail and its content. However, there is a distinction between what can be taken from a computer, if a computer is found, and the data that can be retained and accessed if the hardware is not there, but that is a debate for another day.

As far as the Bill is concerned, its effect, which is to maintain powers that have previously existed, to allow access to data that have previously been accessed and to prosecute people in the same way they have been prosecuted in the past, does not deserve the general challenge that it is receiving from those who simply do not like the idea of retaining data, and the criticism that it somehow opens Pandora’s box as far as privacy is concerned. The idea that the police should be able to identify someone who might become a criminal so that only their data are retained is absurd. The idea that data need be retained for only a short period of time ignores the way in which drugs conspiracies, for example, are investigated, where the drugs are traced from the individual on the street back to the wholesaler, from the wholesaler to the central supplier, and then from the central supplier to the importer. That all takes time, and if the data are not retained for a period, by the time the importer is identified, all their data have gone and the link cannot properly be established.

It is all very well to talk about the importance of privacy—I completely understand and respect those who prioritise that—but there is a conflict between the effective use of data to prosecute serious crime and privacy in the sense that the fact of something or the existence of something will not be made available to law enforcement bodies and a recognition that with that will come an inability on the part of the police and the prosecutor to deliver convictions that, at the moment, go a long way to keeping people safe.