Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 7:15 pm on 12 July 2000.

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Photo of Lord Howell of Guildford Lord Howell of Guildford Shadow Minister (Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs) 7:15, 12 July 2000

My Lords, I simply ask: how can the Government quantify these costs when they cannot define the scope of the Bill, as we have already heard in debate this evening and, I am sure, also in Committee? It is not clear to what extent the provisions are to be applied and how they will work, given the fact that a great many service providers and operations are located, at least partially, overseas. One thinks of the simple operation of transferring information and messages from local files to remote sites through the appropriate transfer protocol. In many cases that is done through remote sites which are deliberately not sited in the UK either because the technology has originated in America or because of low cost high quality provision elsewhere. India, for example, already provides remote site storage for a vast range of information and collects e-mails and website transfers through the necessary protocols on a colossal scale. Where will it come into the equation? What part of its operation will be addressed by this Bill? What costs will it have to pay?

Unless we can begin to answer these questions the debate about costs is in the area of fantasy. I do not see how this House, let alone the general public or industry, can be asked to plunge ahead with legislative provisions which are so stratospherically vague and unrelated to any definition of scope which could seriously give us a basis on which to compute the cost of this operation.