Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill — Committee (2nd Day)

Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 4:30 pm on 26 January 2015.

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Photo of Lord King of Bridgwater Lord King of Bridgwater Conservative 4:30, 26 January 2015

My Lords, in moving Amendment 79 standing in my name and that of the noble Lords, Lord Blair, Lord West, and Lord Carlile, I shall speak to all the amendments in the group through to Amendment 99.

This is an exceptional series of amendments that has been tabled in your Lordships’ House today, and I recognise that for some it seems an unacceptable use of parliamentary time. I make no apologies at all for doing this, as we face a very serious situation indeed in our country at present. Our legislation is not up to date to meet it, and it is the duty of Parliament to ensure that it is at this critical time. It is common ground across the House that the threat is now very significant. We are in the front line and we need to address that.

I start with a bit of history. Noble Lords who have taken an interest in this subject will be familiar with my amendments because they have been lying around for the past two and a half years. They are part of the Communications Data Bill that the Government published in draft two and a half years ago. In keeping with best parliamentary procedure, they invited the Joint Committee of both Houses to examine and report on the Bill, under the distinguished leadership of my noble friend Lord Blencathra, who I am delighted to see in his place today. If I say that that Joint Committee reported two years ago, and in terms of dealings in Parliament, nothing has happened since, it might be thought that the problem has gone away but, of course, the opposite is the case.

I am delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Evans of Weardale, is in his place. In his maiden speech, the noble Lord, a distinguished former director-general of MI5, said that after an extremely difficult period, by 2013 he thought the worst was over. He now admits that he was wrong. The threat in many ways is obvious. Before Paris and Belgium, the Government raised the threat level to severe. Intelligence showed what might be coming. We could easily have been Paris or Belgium. Thankfully, so far we have not been exposed in the same way, except for the tragedy of Fusilier Rigby, but it is a very brave man indeed who says that at the present time we would not be.

I believe that it was Andrew Parker, current director-general of MI5, who said that there are probably about 2,000 people in this country who are either supportive of or actively involved in promoting terrorist activities. I have lived a little bit of my life in the field where terrorism was a major challenge to this country but I never had to deal with suicide bombers. Some of the developments that now exist are of a scale and a difficulty—and a fanaticism, in the jihadist threat—that is of a different dimension to that which we previously faced.

It is easy to think that perhaps we are going through a rather bad phase, but I do not think anybody would seriously believe that about the current problems, particularly in the Middle East. The events just this last weekend in Yemen show yet another country that seems to be in chaos and confusion. I saw with interest—I had forgotten—that we are now in our fifth year with Syria in a state of chaos. If anybody in your Lordships’ House is brave enough to say when any of those countries presently in chaos will return to some measure of normality and peace and calm, I simply do not believe them. The evidence is that, with all the current distress and difficulties, it is going to get worse.

How do we face this challenge? How do we face the explosion of new technology that means we are up against terrorists who are extremely adept at using any new means of communication that is, perhaps, beyond our reach or, certainly at the present time, beyond our legislation? It is interesting that, at the moment, we are facing this challenge on the basis of legislation that is 15 years old. It is worth remembering that this is the 25th anniversary of the internet. We have to take on board the explosion in new developments since then and the possibilities for communication under new technologies.

I want to deal with one point straightaway. As soon as we start talking about access to communications data, people think—I am certain some very distinguished noble Lords think—somebody is going to listen to telephone calls. However, it is nothing to do with the content. It is to do with who, where and when certain contacts and certain patterns of contact are established. It is on that basis that the intelligence plays such a vital role. It includes the use of things that not all your Lordships—that certainly includes me—are masters of. I am not a tweeter. We have Facebook and Twitter. Somebody tried to explain WhatsApp to me; somebody else tried to explain Snapchat. I do not know about them, but it is absolutely clear that the terrorists and jihadists do. The understanding is that part of the reason for ISIL’s amazing advance across Syria and into Iraq was that their communications were so good and the way they kept together was entirely due to one or other of the last two systems that I mentioned, which they handled with great intelligence.

The problem that we now face is not boots on the ground. That never was the answer to this sort of situation. It is the problem of getting good intelligence. I have tabled what was available to me and my noble friends who have joined me in this enterprise. It is the original draft Bill that was carefully examined by my noble friend Lord Blencathra, and the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong, who I am delighted to see in his place. He was another distinguished member of the Joint Committee that examined that Bill, as was the noble Lord, Lord Jones. They proposed a number of important amendments. The Joint Committee submitted its report to Parliament two years ago. I understand that those criticisms were then considered carefully by the Home Office and were largely, if not totally, accepted. I also understand that amendments have now been suggested that go a very long way to meeting the important observations of that Select Committee. But they have not been available.

We face a crisis in security. There is a major threat and at the same time we have antiquated legislation that badly needs updating. We have done our best by drawing the attention of the House to this issue and by tabling amendments to include complete clauses of the previous Bill that were available to us. I hope that before Report the Government will either table amendments themselves or otherwise make the revised Bill available to Back-Benchers in this House to examine. Amendments could then be tabled so that this House has the opportunity to debate the matter. It will be the only opportunity that we will have in this Parliament and for this year, while the nation is at risk and the threat to our citizens is real. This is the only time in which we can tackle that.

I have carefully read the excellent report of my noble friend Lord Blencathra. It carries a number of criticisms which are covered in our amendments, some of which are quite significant. The most significant is what was called the snoopers’ charter. It covered far too wide a range of purposes. It not only covered national security and crime but made data available to local authorities to pursue things such as abuse of fly tipping, housing benefit and a whole range of other matters. It was also made available to the Inland Revenue to pursue tax offenders of one sort or another. Against this crisis and because of the quite exceptional nature of what we are proposing, my colleagues and I who tabled these amendments propose deleting all of those additional purposes in the Bill. We have included only national security and serious crime. I hope that everyone in your Lordships' House will agree that those are the critically important issues. Let us remember that what we are doing is not completely new and unprecedented. The principle has been established of data collection. We are bringing it up to date with the new challenges that the new technologies have brought.

I am not alone in having serious concerns. In another place, when the Home Secretary made her Statement two weeks ago following the events in Paris, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, former Foreign Secretary and current chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee said that new technologies were preventing the agencies from exercising the capability they used to have. Jack Straw, who was, unusually, responsible in his time for all the agencies because he was both Home Secretary and then Foreign Secretary said that it was,

“beyond argument that the legislation … has to be revised … so that we can resolve this issue as soon as possible”.

In his further remarks he asked for close co-operation to resolve this communications data issue,

“as soon as possible, and ensure that the intelligence and security agencies and the police have the capabilities today and tomorrow that they had in the past under legislation freely agreed by this House?”.—[ Official Report , Commons, 14/1/15; col. 875.]

I say “Hear, hear” to that.

I quote—also from this report—a very good response by the shadow Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, to the statement made by the Home Secretary two weeks ago. She said:

“Governments need to keep our people safe so that we can enjoy the very freedoms that our democracy depends on”.—[Hansard, Commons, 14/1/15; col. 871.]

She went on to say:

“We agree that the police and the agencies need to get the intelligence to keep us safe and that they need updated legislation”.—[Hansard, Commons, 14/1/15; col. 873.]

I very much agreed with the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, when she said that she had a strong preference for targeted investigation and data collection, rather than blanket surveillance.

I quote another supporter of this cause: the Home Secretary herself said:

“Let me be absolutely clear: every day that passes without the proposals in the draft Communications Data Bill, the capabilities of the people who keep us safe diminish; and as those capabilities diminish, more people find themselves in danger and—yes—crimes will go unpunished and innocent lives will be put at risk”.—[Hansard, Commons, 14/1/15; col. 871.]

Unfortunately, a bit of a hiccup in the coalition government situation has prevented this happening. It is the duty of Parliament to resolve that: first, your Lordships’ House and then the Commons, because this is not just a House of Lords matter. It has been suggested that with these amendments the House of Lords is usurping the position of the House of Commons. Any amendments that we carry will go to the House of Commons and they will have time—looking at the hours being spent there at the moment—to give it proper consideration. I hope that is not too unkind. In this situation Parliament should act.

There is undoubtedly, from all the advice that we get, a very real risk of a serious outrage in this country. If there was an attack here like the one in Paris, and it became apparent that if the powers of the agencies had been kept up to date it could have been prevented, huge criticism of Parliament would follow—and rightly so.

I hope that people realise that this is an all-party amendment. I do not regard this as a party-political issue, I regard it as an issue of national security. I hope very much that your Lordships’ House will recognise the responsibility of us all as Members of these Houses of Parliament and take urgently needed action while we have the opportunity—because of the Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill, for which these amendments are fully in scope—to carry this through. So I will listen carefully to the debate. In the light of the contribution by my noble friend Lord Blencathra, I very much hope that we can carry this forward along the lines that he proposed so well and that we take the necessary action. I beg to move