Mr.
George Howarth: I had intended to catch your eye before
the hon. Gentleman challenged us to do so, Mr. Gale. I want
to make a few remarks, and I should say at the outset that I am a
member of the Intelligence and Security Committee. What I have to say
on that score will be fairly restricted, but it gives me a particular
vantage point from which to consider data
sharing. I
do not want to be unkind to the hon. Gentleman, because I know that he
means well, but there is a world out there and activities taking place
of which he almost failed to take any account. Various general
secretaries of the Security Service have given estimates of how many
plots there are at any given time. I do not intend to go into figures,
but a conservative estimate is that there are more than 100 terrorist
plots at any one time in the UK. That means that there are many
networks of people plotting to carry out some appalling incident that
would result in the loss of many lives. There cannot be any
disagreement between any of us that that is going on. Some of those
plots might overlap but many people are
involved. The
technologies that those people use move on rapidly, and they become
aware of changes very quickly. They have the resources to access those
technologies and the skills to make use of them. The state and its
agencies cannot broadcast what they are doing and cannot in every case
defend publicly what they are doing; it is the nature of the activity
that prevents them from doing so. They do not have the power to share
data mined from a lot of different places. Are we saying that the civil
liberty issues are greater than the
threat? Jeremy
Wright (Rugby and Kenilworth) (Con): I understand the
right hon. Gentleman’s argument, but we believe that the power
is far too broad. His argument is about the interests of national
security, but “national security” or the interests
thereof are not mentioned in the clause. Will he explain why such broad
powers are necessary to fulfil the objectives that he has
described?
Mr.
Howarth: I thought that I was doing that. The clause is so
drafted—the hon. Member for Cambridge said that it was broadly
drafted—because technologies change so rapidly, as do the
methods used by the groups involved in such activities. If we were to
be so precise in drafting the clause, it might remove the possibility
of data sharing in the future by means that we cannot even imagine. We
must rely on achieving a balance between the two
principles.
David
Howarth: I want to return to the right hon.
Gentleman’s central point, which is that there is a big threat
so such measures should be allowed. No one is denying that there is a
threat, but the problem is that such measures are taken time and again,
whatever is before the House. We are always asked to compare the size
of the threat with a particular loss of freedom or a particular loss of
rights. We should stop doing that and look instead at the whole picture
to see what we have lost in total and ask whether, given the threat, it
is proportionate. The threat is there, but we must bear in mind the
whole picture. We have drifted time and again into accepting the
argument and, at some point, we need to call a halt and look back to
see where we have come from.
Mr.
Howarth: I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point,
which follows his earlier observations, but he is being myopic. It is
as though there is a static situation and that, consequently, we can
fix a position at a given time in legislation, which will inevitably
cover all eventualities in the future. The position is not like
that. I
do not claim to be the world’s greatest expert in such matters,
but I know that agencies have to run very fast to keep up with how
technologies are being used. If the world was as the hon. Gentleman
would like it to be, his argument would hold up. Unfortunately, it is
not and, for that reason, we need to have fairly broad powers, and I
shall explain how such powers should be supervised in a
moment.
Jeremy
Wright: I understand the right hon. Gentleman’s
point about the fast-moving and changing situation, and nothing that I
am putting to him suggests that we should be specific or prescriptive
about the mechanism that should be
used. Information
sharing is necessary. I accept that, under proposed new section
50A(4)(c), the safeguard states
that “the
provision made by the order strikes a fair balance between the public
interest and the interests of any person affected by
it”, but
proposed new paragraph (a) states
that “the
sharing of information enabled by the order is necessary to secure a
relevant policy
objective”. That
is defined not terribly reassuringly in the explanatory notes
as “For
an appropriate minister it is a policy objective of that
Minister.” In
other words, under proposed new subsection (4)(a), any policy as
defined by a Minister will do. If the right hon. Gentleman is
right—I am sure that he is—and we need the powers for
certain restrictive national security-related purposes, why on earth do
we not say so in the
Bill?
Mr.
Howarth: I did not draft the Bill. The hon.
Gentleman’s question might be better directed at the Minister.
It is not always necessary to spell out in a Bill the purposes of a
specific power, provided that proper supervision can be relied on in
whatever context it is
used. 1.45
pm
Alun
Michael: I want to pick up my right hon. Friend’s
point about the speed of change. He is right that the idea of winding
back to see where we were 10 years ago and then looking at how we went
forward is belied by changing technology. Technology changes not only
on an annual basis, but on a monthly or even on a weekly basis. It is
important for police and intelligence services to understand and pick
up the nature of the trends, which may involve money laundering, fraud
or many other activities. I therefore agree with my right hon. Friend
that the picture is not that simple. The complexity challenges us, as
legislators, to introduce simple legislation, but deal with things
flexibly, although the issue is not so simple to deal
with.
Mr.
Howarth: If I were to be drawn too much on the technology
involved, my office would probably laugh out loud when they read the
Hansard report of our
proceedings. I am afraid that I am somewhat technologically challenged
when it comes to what my right hon. Friend has referred to, but his
general point is
correct. Finally,
I want to talk about the powers that would be vested in Ministers in
pursuit of a particular policy, to which the hon. Member for Rugby and
Kenilworth, who intervened on me a moment ago, referred. First, the
agencies that I am referring to are well supervised already. I know
that the Intelligence and Security Committee, of which I am a member,
does not meet universal approval in every quarter, but I can assure the
Committee that we try hard to provide proper
supervision.
Mr.
Garnier: I want to be clear, although it may be irrelevant
to the right hon. Gentleman’s point. Will he confirm that the
committee of which he is a distinguished member is not a Committee of
the House, but one appointed by the Prime Minister and accountable to
him but not to the House generally or, through us, to our
constituents.
Mr.
Howarth: The hon. and learned Gentleman knows full well
that that is the case, although I do not intend to get involved in that
argument. The ISC is not a committee accountable to the House; we
rarely meet in public, although there are plans afoot for that to
happen on some occasions. We report to the Prime Minister, and we do so
before our reports are made public. Quite often, for reasons that I am
sure people will understand, sections of those reports have to be
redacted, because we may refer to information that might not be
appropriate in the public
domain. Our
committee deals with an intercept commissioner, and the directors of
the agencies are subject to higher supervision. There is a whole series
of checks and balances to ensure that the agencies do not abuse their
privileged
position.
The
Chairman: Order. I indicated and meant that if the
Committee wanted a stand part debate now it could do so—we are
certainly getting wider than the amendments. When I said a stand part
debate, however, I meant on the clause and not on the entire
Bill.
David
Howarth: The point made by the right hon. Gentleman, as I
understand it, is that bodies such as the ISC can provide oversight
that is as good as giving people rights in court. The trouble with that
is illustrated by the Binyam Mohamed case, in which the ISC was
dependent on information from the Security Service and the Secret
Intelligence Service—or from the Prime Minister, technically. In
that case, the 42 missing documents were never given to the ISC, so its
original investigation was fundamentally flawed. The only time that the
existence of those documents came into public view, and the only way in
which the ISC could get them, was when there was a court case because
an individual had had their rights violated, which brought the whole
thing out into the
open.
Mr.
George Howarth: The hon. Gentleman’s information is
not quite correct. I am probably straying rather far from the clause
but I mention this for the sake of accuracy. We were asked to look at
the phenomenon of extraordinary rendition—had it occurred, who
was involved
and what was known by who? We did not look into that particular case; we
looked at it as one of a number of cases that were allegedly part of
that process, and at whether British agencies had any knowledge of what
was going on. I do not say that we necessarily got it right, nor do I
concede that we got it wrong. It was part of a broader investigation
and not based only on that one case.
I am trying to
conclude my point about what Ministers do and do not do. The hon.
Member for North-West Norfolk gave the impression that anything
Ministers do must, by definition, be for grubby reasons. I no longer
have to defend what Ministers do or do not do—I am pleased to
say—but my right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South and
Penarth and I, and others at different times, have had to make
decisions about particular cases. I have made that point previously. An
obvious case in point, which my right hon. Friend will remember, is
that of prisoner recall. The police might be concerned about the
activities of someone who is potentially subject to recall. Facts are
put before a Minister, who has to decide what is the right thing to
do.
I am
convinced—and I am sure that this was equally true of Ministers
in previous Governments—that in such cases, enormous lengths are
gone to so as to ensure that we are being fair and acting in a way that
does not discriminate against somebody just because they are subject to
recall. My right hon. Friend and I—and other Ministers, I am
sure—have laboured for many hours over individual cases to be
sure to get it right.
The second
point, which I have also made in a previous debate, is that in my
experience, Ministers are always well aware that any decision of this
kind could ultimately be made the subject of a judicial review. Without
going into too much detail, hon. Members might recall a decision that
the then Home Secretary, who now goes under the grand title of Lord
High Chancellor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn
(Mr. Straw) had to make over the Pinochet case. The Home
Office built a cordon sanitaire around him because he was making what
was in effect a quasi-judicial decision as a Minister. Whether or not
people agree with the outcome, the process that he went through was
painstaking and exhaustive. I am sure that Ministers in previous
Governments will also have gone to such lengths when undertaking such a
process. It is not something that Labour Ministers do and others do
not. It is a responsibility that Ministers of all parties take
seriously.
That returns
to the point that the hon. Member for North-West Norfolk made about
trust. We sometimes need to accept that Ministers have to act in the
public interest to the best of their ability, and that they will go to
great pains to ensure the right decision. Without that trust and power
invested in somebody’s hands, we would not be able to protect
the country as we do at the moment.
I realise that
these are difficult issues and that sometimes civil liberties and the
need to protect the public seem to clash. That is an inevitable
consequence of the insecure world in which we now live. If we accept
that, we must also accept that in some circumstances, Ministers must be
trusted to do the right thing.
Mr.
Garnier: It is easy in debates such as this to patronise
from one angle and from another to appear to be underplaying or
undervaluing the concerns that people
who take a different view have on the issues that we are describing.
Having heard some of the contributions from Labour members, it is
possible for a reasonable person to comment, “Don’t worry
your pretty little heads. We’ve got everything under control and
we are doing the best that we can for you. We cannot tell you
everything that you need to know, but trust us because we are getting
it right. We are doing our best. Our motives are of the
purest.” And that may well be the
case. Equally,
if one looks at the context of the debate—in the room and more
widely—there is plenty of room for suspicion, cynicism and
ridicule. Ridicule is one of the most powerful weapons that the
Opposition have when dealing with a Government who are sure about
themselves and what they do. Whether one has the genius of Kafka or
Laurel and Hardy, both types of genius are apt to be applied when one
considers this type of legislation and clause 152.
There has been
press comment today about data sharing and Government powers to control
our lives and the information about us. That is placed in the context
of the ridiculous sight of the Secretary of State for Justice, to whom
the right hon. Gentleman referred, complaining that he has been the
victim or the subject of a Nigerian scam. An incompetent impostor in
Lagos tried to pretend that he was the Secretary of State for Justice
who had had his wallet stolen in a restaurant in Lagos and asked the
readers of the e-mail to please send $3,000 to help him get back
home. That
is funny for a number of reasons. It makes the Secretary of State look
ridiculous, and Conservative Members do not object to that. Whether he
is called the Lord High Chancellor or anything else, he has
occasionally allowed himself to look ridiculous. He is made to look
even more
ridiculous—
Jeremy
Wright: Will the hon. and learned Gentleman give
way?
Mr.
Garnier: May I continue to demonstrate how ridiculous the
Secretary of State is by pointing out that he is the man who, when he
was Home Secretary, as the right hon. Gentleman pointed out, set up a
taskforce, or some such body, to interdict or to prevent computer
hacking and the misuse of private information. I am not sure how far
that has taken us, but he is a Secretary of State who is part of a
Government responsible for the loss of millions of items of private
data stored on our behalf by them.
Jeremy
Wright: I wonder whether my hon. and learned Friend would
care to comment on the Lord Chancellor’s remark that at least it
was reassuring that people were not taken in by the scam. Another
possible explanation is that nobody wanted him back from
Lagos.
Mr.
Garnier: The ridicule piles upon the ridicule. My hon.
Friend says that nobody was taken in by the scam, but the Secretary of
State’s staff were taken in—not his ministerial staff,
because I think it went to his private e-mail account. By virtue of
their having replied to the request, it triggered a whole system
of—
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