Orders of the Day — Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 4:14 pm on 6 March 2000.

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Photo of Ann Widdecombe Ann Widdecombe Conservative, Maidstone and The Weald 4:14, 6 March 2000

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, although in fairness—I do not want to do the Minister's job for him—[Interruption.] Well, I do eventually, yes; but perhaps not at this very moment. There is a distinction to be drawn between compelling a business to deposit a copy of its key, which was the original proposal, and businesses voluntarily deciding to keep copies of their key with a trusted third party. Many—certainly some—already do so for the safety of the key. Perhaps the Minister will nevertheless be able to give the assurance sought: there is no intention, either now or later, as far as he can see, of reintroducing the requirement that has been dropped.

The draft offence needs to be amended and targeted specifically at known offenders with a background of previous wrongdoing. Evidence of previous wrongdoing should be admissible to prove guilty intention. If the burden of proving guilty knowledge were on the prosecution, miscarriages of justice would be unlikely, but if evidence of previous wrongdoing were admissible to prove guilty knowledge, the guilty would be less likely to go free. If the offence were amended on those lines, we could set a tougher maximum sentence, which would actively discourage criminals from refusing to co-operate. It will be along those lines that we shall be proposing amendments to improve that aspect. Our view is that tough justice is better than rough justice. [Interruption.] The Home Secretary has proposed rough justice and very light penalties. If that is how he wants to be known, that is fair enough.

In many ways, the Bill is over-bureaucratic. Part IV, which deals with scrutiny, proposes that the Prime Minister should be able to appoint two new commissioners to review the performance of the Home Secretary in exercising his functions. That would involve a new interception of communications commissioner and a new covert investigations commissioner. We already have a Security Service Act commissioner, an intelligence Services Act commissioner, a chief surveillance commissioner and ordinary surveillance commissioners. None of those appears to have an independent investigatory team available to them. It seems that the Government believe that commissioning should be a growth industry. The question arises whether any of those important positions entail any real power, particularly as they lack a team of investigators to back up their role.