| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Ian Taylor (Esher and Walton): When my right hon. Friend is carefully drafting amendments, will she consider one other point which I did not hear the Home Secretary specifically address? If the fear of penalties on businesses is such that they are concerned that they might
start to lose their private key, it is likely that they will place such private keys in key escrow. If the key escrow system returns, it is possible that it will grow into one of trusted third parties and, therefore, the Home Office will be reintroducing by the back door what was abandoned in the Electronic Communications Bill. In his winding-up speech, will the Minister further assure the House that that is not the intention?
Miss Widdecombe: 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.
Mr. Allan Rogers (Rhondda):
Will the right hon. Lady refresh my memory by telling me under which Government the commissioners were established? I believe that one set was established in 1989 and the other in 1994--under a Conservative Government.
Miss Widdecombe:
The point is whether we should be adding to the number, whether adding to them will make for any greater effectiveness or whether we should be finding another way of doing things.
The question also arises, therefore, of whether there are simply too many commissioners. We shall investigate in Committee whether it would be better to have one unified commission with a proper staff of investigators to provide real and effective scrutiny. I am pleased to see the hon. Gentleman nodding. There we go; his conversion was very quick.
It is easy to forget that the information technology industry is one of the United Kingdom's great success stories. Many of the technologies that criminals use were developed for very good reasons. The encryption and other secure communications techniques were developed not to assist criminals in hiding their activities, but to provide a secure commercial environment in which proper confidentiality could be maintained. There are the highest public policy reasons for ensuring that that technology is not compromised by the Bill.
We live in a global marketplace and we should not forget that many of those working in the communications industry do not have to operate from the UK if they do not wish to do so. It is important that security services and regulators should not attempt to do more than is necessary in the interests of proper crime detection and prevention. This is the last area in which gold plating would be good idea. That brings us back to the balancing act that the Government must perform in relation to the Bill. The legislation must do what we all agree it needs to do, but it must not disadvantage the innocent or those caught in the crossfire.
Increased regulation under the current Government is already a cause of concern; it would have been made far worse by the Electronic Communications Bill, but for the efforts of the Opposition. As the House knows, the proposals contained in part III of the Bill were, in a different form, included in the original draft of the Electronic Communications Bill and were dropped only after the strongest representations from Opposition Members and from the industry. At this point, I pay tribute to the work of the Foundation for Information Policy Research. It is important that the Home Office recognises the important principle of not over-regulating or providing disincentives.
Mr. Mike Gapes (Ilford, South):
The interception of communications has come a long way since my dad left school in 1935 and started work as a messenger boy at the Post Office. I hope that I do not get him in trouble by telling the following story. One of his jobs was to collect letters and take them by bicycle to a special building, where they were opened; later, he would collect them for delivery on his round. Interception of communications requires far more sophisticated techniques these days.
The Bill is necessary and overdue, but I, like hon. Members on both sides, am concerned that it may well become out of date very quickly. That is one of the problems of the technological changes that confront us. It does not mean that we should not legislate, but we must recognise that we may have to revisit this subject in two, three, five or 10 years' time, depending on how fast and how far these matters advance.
The use of interception of communications in combating drug trafficking has been mentioned, and my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary referred to heroin seizures. I wish to flag up one issue that should be taken into consideration: the way in which the criminal gangs involved in drugs smuggling are changing. A disturbing article, which appeared originally in the American magazine, Mother Jones, and was reprinted in The Editor section of The Guardian on 3 March, highlights the fact that
As incidents in many countries have shown, such groups operate through sophisticated money-laundering techniques and international communications, and use the most advanced technologies. Our organised anti-criminal activities must be equally sophisticated in order to intercept their communications, find out what they are doing and stop them bringing death and destruction to so many people in this country and throughout the world.
Mr. White:
Is my hon. Friend aware of the current debate in United States, where it is alleged that the CIA provided the keys and encryption to those groups and thereby prevented the Drug Enforcement Agency from taking action against them?
Mr. Gapes:
I was not aware of that allegation. It is extremely serious and I hope that the relevant authorities will look into it.
Another aspect of the Bill concerns effective measures to combat terrorism. Some of us in the Chamber served on the Standing Committee that recently considered the Terrorism Bill. I shall not rerun the arguments, but I notice that the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) is present, and I expect that we may return to those issues.
Several international terrorist organisations clearly use sophisticated methods in their operations, with accountants, lawyers, newspapers and front organisations. They operate globally. They plan their crimes in one country, finance them in another, carry them out in a third country, and the perpetrators often live or seek refuge in a fourth country. We therefore need effective international measures to combat such organisations. I hope that the Bill
will go some way towards supporting the vital work already undertaken by the intelligence and security organisations, the police through Europol and other bodies.
Law enforcement officials in Europe have suspected for years that ties existed between Kosovar rebels and Balkan drug smugglers. But since Washington enthroned the Kosovo Liberation Army in that Yugoslav province, KLA-associated drug traffickers have cemented their influence and used their new status to increase heroin trafficking and forge links with nationalist rebel groups and drug cartels.
According to the article, German police say that Kosovar Albanians import 80 per cent. of Europe's heroin. We must take that seriously. An organised group is bringing heroin, which originates in Afghanistan, through various conduits from Asia into Europe and spreading it around the world. The article also points out the links between that group and the Colombian drug cartels.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |