Computer Misuse Act 1990

Debate between Steve Baker and Stuart C McDonald

Tuesday 19th April 2022 Westminster Hall

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Sir Mark. We do not always have such a knowledgeable Chair in relation to such technical matters.

[Mr Steve Baker]

He will answer questions later!

[Stuart C. McDonald]

Indeed.

I thank the hon. Member for Bridgend (Dr Wallis) for securing the debate and for his expert introduction of the topic. He rightly highlighted events in Ukraine, and, indeed, today’s reports of attacks on No. 10 as providing a stark backdrop to this discussion. He and all hon. Members made a strong case for revisiting and revising the 1990 Act.

The point I agree with most fundamentally was made by the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker), who highlighted the complexity of these issues. I feel rather underqualified at the moment, particularly given the CVs on display today. Nevertheless, I approach this topic with an open mind and am open to persuasion by the experts. I welcome the Home Office’s call for information last year. The recent cyber strategy hints at this legislation being looked at again. If the Government proceed with reforms, the Minister will have our support and we will play as constructive a part as we can to ensure that they are the right ones.

As we heard, the 1990 Act was pretty much rushed into effect via a private Member’s Bill when it seemed to be established that hacking—shoulder surfing in one particular case—was not against the law. Obviously, that had to change, so the legislation put criminal offences on the statute book for unauthorised access, unauthorised access with intent to commit other crimes and unauthorised modification of computer material, but things have changed significantly since then. The hon. Member for Bridgend said he was a toddler back when the legislation was passed. I certainly was not; I would have been sitting, as a teenager, with my BBC Micro computer taking 20 minutes to load “Football Manager”. He is right to point out that, back then, a tiny percentage of the population had access to computers. The internet was something for the future. Technology has changed in unbelievable ways, with computer use now absolutely ubiquitous. People are also using a large number of smart internet-connected devices. That all radically alters the threat landscape from when the legislation came into force.

As the Act explicitly mentions computers and not other internet of things devices that can connect to the internet and be hacked, things such as smart fridges or nanny cams must be argued to be computers to fall under scope of the legislation. We had reference to the submission by the NCA to the House of Commons Russia inquiry, highlighting the widespread use of mobile phones as a reason for urgently updating and reforming the CMA. The legislation does not appear to be effective: one report I read recently suggested that less than 1% of reports of hacking led to prosecutions. There are issues about whether it even works in bringing criminals into the court system for justice.

It is right to acknowledge that it is not the case that the Act has not been updated at all. Changes have been made: punishments have increased and, significantly, the offences of impairing the use of a computer and provision of articles to facilitate misuse have been added. The Government have also started to address the problem of securing smart devices through the Product Security and Telecoms Infrastructure Bill 2022, but revisiting and broadening the scope of the CMA would improve on that and complete the move to address the internet of things security dilemma.

Perhaps a more pressing issue, which Members have rightly focused on, is that the Act does not attempt to differentiate between the motives of hackers: malign cyber criminals who intend to exploit or harm other users or their systems are treated the same as those identifying weaknesses and flagging them up for altruistic reasons. Often, ethical hackers test a company’s systems accurately by using the tools that hackers themselves would use. Those concerns have led to the CyberUp campaign and the idea of a statute of defence to protect cyber researchers identifying vulnerabilities in computer systems and company networks not to exploit them but to help fix them. I pay tribute to that campaign for helping me try to understand what this is about.

As the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (Simon Fell) put it, all this is holding us back. While US IT security companies can offer whole-of-supply-chain vulnerability scanning to identify weaknesses that could compromise systems, UK companies cannot offer those services for fear of prosecution under the CMA. He pointed out that that has a knock-on effect on our ability to grow our expertise and talent base. If those working legitimately to uncover vulnerabilities or using hacking tools to simulate attacks are left at risk of prosecution for doing their jobs, that leaves companies, organisations and our key infrastructure more vulnerable to attack.

Adding a defence to the Act seems a sensible way to proceed. I accept that the scope of any such defence has to be judged carefully. This is not a straightforward. The hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Matt Warman) was right to raise the difficulties. While a defence should protect those engaging in legitimate vulnerability scanning or ethical hacking, the defence must be defined in a way that does not encourage vigilante activity or any sort of free-for-all. He suggested as an alternative the idea of using guidance. I must say that, as a lawyer, I slightly shy away from using guidance when the alternative is to put something on the face of a Bill; from a rule of law perspective, that is always more desirable but, again, it is something that I am open to persuasion on.

All these concerns have been recognised by the CyberUp campaign through inclusion in its proposals for various tests, including a competency element, to ensure that only a person engaged in activities covered by the Act who is competent to do so and who has good intent is protected. While it is complicated, I believe that it can be done and should be done.

I finish by again welcoming the debate and the chance to put on record our support for reviewing, revising and updating the 1990 legislation. As I said, we will work constructively on any proposals to do that.

Offensive Weapons Bill

Debate between Steve Baker and Stuart C McDonald

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Wednesday 28th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

It is good to finally get down to further consideration of the Bill, at the third attempt. Let me say at the outset that my party welcomes the Bill. There has been close working between the UK and Scottish Governments in relation to it, and we are largely, but not completely, happy with where it has got to after a pretty thorough Committee stage.

The Bill covers a mixture of reserved and devolved matters, with legislative consent from the Scottish Parliament required for some parts of the Bill. How far the legislation should encroach on devolved issues such as Scots criminal law has been carefully worked through by the Governments to serve specific purposes, and we take the view that that is pretty much as far as the encroachment should go.

There are a number of amendments that I will speak supportively and sympathetically about and will not oppose, but in so far as they are drafted in a way that extends to Scotland, we ultimately take the view they would be better left to the Scottish Parliament to exercise its devolved competence. That includes the three new clauses relating to air weapons. I am sympathetic to what the hon. Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth) seeks to achieve with those new clauses and the work she is doing, but as she pointed out, the regulation of such weapons was devolved to the Scottish Parliament, which has established a new licensing regime under the Air Weapons and Licensing (Scotland) Act 2015. For those reasons, as far as Scotland is concerned, we wish to leave any further reform of air weapons licensing and regulation to the Scottish Parliament.

There are other amendments, however, that are clearly in reserved territory and that we will consider supporting, including new clauses 3 and 4. For the sake of time, I will not repeat all the arguments made by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh). I will simply say that we agree with her analysis.

On high-energy and .50 calibre rifles, having looked at all the evidence in the round, we would have supported the position set out by the Home Secretary and the Minister at every previous stage of the Bill’s passage. We echo much of what the shadow Minister has said today. In Committee, we heard persuasive evidence from the NCA, the National Police Chiefs Council, ballistics experts and counter-terrorism police about the power of these weapons. The evidence we heard was that these rifles are dangerous because of their range and because there is little—perhaps nothing—that the police have in the way of body armour or even protected vehicles that could go up against some of these weapons.

I emphasise that we are not in favour of prohibition for the sake of it. If those same expert witnesses think that an alternative solution to alleviate risk can be found, we will listen. We fully appreciate the impact that this would have on the recreation of a small number of citizens, but it is a small number; we are talking about 18 certificates in Scotland altogether.

The point is that the Home Secretary said he would further consider the proposed prohibition months ago on Second Reading, way back before the summer, yet no amendments were forthcoming before the previously scheduled final stages of the Bill. There has been no adequate explanation of what has changed in the past couple of weeks, and as matters stand, the Bill will leave this place with the prohibition removed but no alternative measures in its place.

The Home Secretary is now going against and ignoring the evidence we received from the NCA, the National Police Chiefs Council, ballistics experts and counter-terrorism police, as well as what I have been told by Police Scotland. I have tried, without success so far, to find out whether any of those witnesses has changed their view. In the absence of any adequate explanation, this reeks of internal party politics trumping important issues of public safety. It is not the right way to make legislation, and it is not the right way to treat the public.

[Mr Baker]

The purpose of my amendments 23 and 24 is to avoid banning lever-release rifles. They are probing amendments; I just wish to explore the Government’s position, and I do not intend to press them to a Division.

I would like to start by thanking Little Chalfont Rifle and Pistol Club and my constituents who are members of it for helping me better to understand lever-release rifles by allowing me to fire several of them. Lever-release rifles are built and designed in the UK. They have a mechanism by which the rifle unloads itself with propellant gas but stops short of reloading. In a sense, they are self-cocking, but not self-loading. A lever is pressed to release the working parts and load the next round. My amendments would allow lever-release rifles but ban so-called MARS—manually activated release system—rifles, which allow the working parts to come forward using a second trigger press.

The lever-release mechanism was produced within current firearms law to be suitably used and owned on a section 1 firearms licence. These rifles are a valuable resource for disabled and elderly shooters in particular, who can struggle with conventional operating actions, and are no more dangerous than any other legally owned firearm of a similar calibre. The mechanism is not a bump stock, which has no place in target shooting; there seems to be unity about that.

The National Rifle Association has provided evidence that lever-release systems do not significantly increase the rate of fire capability of rifles. Lever-release rifles have a comparable rate of fire to bolt-action rifles—that is, one to two rounds per second, against one or less with a bolt-action rifle. Those rates of fire are based on un-aimed shots. In reality, the rate of fire for aimed shots, including the time taken to come back to aim and replace magazines, will yield an aimed shot about every two to four seconds in the hands of an expert marksman, regardless of the system used. I can certainly testify to that, having tried them. They have considerable recoil, and the idea of having a high rate of fire with aimed shots is really for the birds.

The lever-release system can allow an able-bodied shooter to maintain their firing position, assisting accuracy in a sport that is defined by accurate shooting. According to British Shooting, disabled people currently make up 25% of recreational shooters—a number that it is committed to increasing further. The NRA has informed us that 42.5% of its members are aged 60 or older. Lever-release rifles can allow less able people to continue to participate in the sport.

It seems unnecessary to ban lever-release rifles. My amendments would ban so-called MARS firearms, where the trigger is pulled a second time. I would like the Minister to set out exactly why shooters with lever-release rifles should have those weapons taken from them. A cornerstone of democracy is minority rights. I do not think that these weapons represent a significant additional risk for having a lever-release mechanism, and though I am only probing the Government’s position, I would like the Minister to set out in detail why owners will be stripped of those firearms.

Finally, in the original impact assessment, published alongside the consultation document, the Government estimated the total cost of compensation for the owners of these firearms to be between £1 million and £1.1 million in the first year of the policy. Responses to the consultation suggest that this was a considerable underestimate, and I very much hope that the Minister will be able to give us a new and more accurate estimate of the cost of the compensation.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Steve Baker and Stuart C McDonald

Thursday 14th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union (Mr Steve Baker)]

We have been engaging with businesses up and down the country to build a strong understanding of the challenges and opportunities that Brexit brings, particularly in relation to immigration, and that will help us to design a new immigration system that ensures that employers have access to the skills they need. I am happy to tell my hon. Friend that I discussed her proposal with the Minister for Immigration very recently. The Government are alive to my hon. Friend’s arguments, and we will continue to consider them as we deliberate.

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

T5. Other than the Sewel convention, what is there to stop the Government repeating their unilateral rewriting of the constitution and devolution power grab in other Brexit-related legislation?