Draft Investigatory Powers (Codes of Practice, Review of Notices and Technical Advisory Board) Regulations 2025
(3 days, 19 hours ago)
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The Minister for Security (Dan Jarvis)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Investigatory Powers (Codes of Practice, Review of Notices and Technical Advisory Board) Regulations 2025.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McVey. Before I address the content of this statutory instrument, I will briefly provide some background. The Investigatory Powers Act 2016, known as the IPA, provides a framework for the use and oversight of investigatory powers by the intelligence services, law enforcement and other public authorities. It helps to safeguard people’s privacy by setting out stringent controls over the way that these powers are authorised and overseen.
The IPA was intentionally drafted in a technology-neutral manner to ensure that public authorities could continue to acquire operationally relevant data as technology evolved. Although that approach has largely withstood, a combination of new communications technologies and the changing threat landscape continues to challenge the effective operation of the IPA. To ensure the legislative regime remained fit for purpose, the Investigatory Powers (Amendment) Act 2024 was introduced by the previous Government and received Royal Assent in April last year. The 2024 Act made a series of targeted changes to the IPA to enable our law enforcement and intelligence agencies to tackle a range of evolving threats in the face of new technologies and increasingly sophisticated terrorist and criminal groups.
I do not intend to cover the changes made by the 2024 Act in detail, as they have already been debated extensively by both Houses. However, I will outline the purpose of the statutory instrument we are debating. It will bring into force three new and five revised codes of practice that provide operational guidance for public authorities to have regard to when exercising their functions under the IPA. As well as including minor updates to ensure consistency, the codes of practice have been revised to reflect the various changes made by the 2024 Act. The statutory instrument and the codes of practice have been informed by a 12-week public consultation, which closed in January this year.
The new codes of practice on bulk personal datasets with a low or no reasonable expectation of privacy and on third-party bulk personal datasets relate to new regimes introduced by the 2024 Act. The new code on the notices regime consolidates guidance from various existing codes into one place. This instrument also contains several provisions relating to the IPA’s notices regime, including the following: defining “relevant change” for the purpose of the new notification notices; introducing timelines for the review of technical capability, data retention, and national security notices; and amending existing regulations in relation to membership of the technical advisory board.
The 2024 Act was designed to uphold national security and to ensure that prevention and detection of the most serious crimes continued to be underpinned by an effective investigatory powers framework. These regulations are an important and necessary step in the implementation of that Act. I therefore commend them to the Committee.
Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)
I am pleased to be able to contribute briefly to this important Committee. As the Minister suggested when he nodded to me during his brief contribution, the original legislation received Royal Assent when I was the Security Minister, and I was proud to take it through the House with cross-party support. I took a profound interest in it at that time and have continued to do so since it became law. I worked with the last Security Minister in the previous Government, the right hon. Member for Tonbridge (Tom Tugendhat), on the 2024 Act, partly in my capacity as a member of the Intelligence and Security Committee.
I have a couple of questions for the Minister. First, that Act, to which this statutory instrument gives life, as it were, changed the process whereby warrants are issued, inasmuch as it enabled the Prime Minister to appoint five Secretaries of State, the assumption being that they would include the warranting Secretaries of State—the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, the Foreign Secretary, the Home Secretary and, I presume, the Deputy Prime Minister, as well as the Prime Minister himself. Will the Minister say a word about that? It is not that I have an objection to it—it is important that these things are dealt with practically—but it would be good to hear the Minister’s views on that, as it is before us today with these codes.
Secondly, on the codes that relate to part 7A of the IPA, on bulk personal data, it would be helpful to have a further word about datasets with a low expectation of privacy. That is what the changes to the codes deal with, and it is what the amendments to the original Act addressed. As detailed in the explanatory notes, the public consultation to which the Minister referred was disproportionately focused on exactly that matter. A further word from him about that might be helpful.
Finally, how this is understood more widely is critical. There is still a lot of misunderstanding about the original Act, the 2024 Act and, I guess, these codes, too. This is not about collecting everyone’s data and making it widely available. As the Minister and other Committee members will understand, there are strict restrictions on how it can be accessed. The double lock—in some cases, it is now a triple lock—that we put in place in the IPA holds firm and ensures that this material is available only as needed, and the bar to access it is very high. I am sure that the Minister and the shadow Minister will want to reassure people about that. As they know, the way that this is perceived publicly matters a great deal to the security services, the National Crime Agency and others who might take advantage of these powers.
Katie Lam (Weald of Kent) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms McVey. At a time when more of our lives are spent online, the job of keeping our country safe brings law enforcement increasingly into the digital space. Many of the most serious crimes, including terrorist attacks, are now planned, prepared and facilitated online. In order to intercept those crimes before they happen, police officers and intelligence agents need to take action, often at short notice. That can lead them to co-operate with and require co-operation from tech companies, often based thousands of miles away, which have their own data privacy policies and operate across hundreds of different legal environments. Often, those companies are extremely reluctant to provide the kind of data that is needed, but access to that information can be the difference between an attack happening or being stopped in the nick of time.
It is absolutely right that we give law enforcement and our intelligence agencies the powers that they need to navigate these situations. That is why the previous Government passed the IPA, which was introduced by my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings, and the 2024 Act. The measures before us today will give effect to some of the enhanced powers passed by the previous Government in 2024, and we gladly support them.
We should welcome and celebrate the strides being made by tech companies. These platforms are something to be embraced, not feared. We must also be cautious about measures that could infringe on individual privacy, which is a long-held and important principle in this country. I think we are all agreed that our age of constant connection must not become an age of constant surveillance. The need to keep the public safe must always be balanced against the importance of privacy and individual liberty. Powers must be accompanied by appropriate guardrails and parameters, as I believe they are. As such, does the Minister believe that the mechanisms for parliamentary oversight strike the right balance? How will the Government review the efficacy of these regulations so that we can remain at the forefront of a fast and ever-changing technological environment?
Dan Jarvis
Let me first thank the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings for his comments and questions. He said at the outset that he was proud of the role that he played in introducing this important piece of legislation, which dates back to 2016. He is absolutely right to be proud of his work on it, as it continues to deliver very real operational benefits on behalf of the country.
I have greatly enjoyed our exchanges on these matters over the years, both inside and outside the Chamber, not least because while they are incredibly important matters that underpin our national security, they are also quite detailed and complicated. They therefore require a significant amount of knowledge and understanding to comment on in the way that the right hon. Gentleman is able to because of his previous experience and his interest in them.
The right hon. Gentleman made an interesting point about the authority and responsibility vested in the Prime Minister, and I think he nodded towards a process of delegation. I know he will understand that I am incredibly limited in what I can say about that in this forum, although I would be happy to have a further conversation with him on Privy Council terms.
With your indulgence, Ms McVey, I will reflect briefly on some of the conversations and the thinking around the 2024 Act, as there were various discussions about what could and should be done, should the Prime Minister of the day either be temporarily unavailable—potentially through ill health or through travel—or be conflicted because of a personal matter. In truth, we never got into the detail of those slightly difficult but important debates on the Floor of the House. Perhaps that was a good thing, and perhaps it was the most appropriate way to proceed. However, I can give the right hon. Gentleman an absolute assurance that, as he would expect, this Government, this Prime Minister, this Security Minister and this Home Secretary take these matters incredibly seriously, and we will ensure that the relevant delegations are in place so that where difficult decisions need to be made, we can make them in the most timely and effective way.
The right hon. Gentleman made some helpful remarks about the importance of this legislation, and I completely agree with him. He will know from his time in government of the exceptional work that our intelligence services and law enforcement do on our behalf. We owe them a debt of gratitude, and it is on us—as Ministers, as shadow Ministers and as parliamentarians—to ensure that an appropriate legislative framework is in place so that whatever technological advances there are, we can continue to ensure that our law enforcement agencies and our security services do not just have parity with our opponents, but enjoy a competitive advantage. I am grateful to him for the work that he has done, and for the support and advice that he provides.
I think the right hon. Gentleman asked me about the part 7A code of practice. Just to confirm, the code sets out how the new regime provided for under part 7A of the IPA should be implemented, and it provides further detail about the use of bulk personal datasets. As I hope the right hon. Gentleman knows, I would be very happy to discuss any of these matters with him in more detail.
I am also grateful to the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Weald of Kent, for her comments and questions. I know that she speaks with real interest and authority on these matters from her own time working with Government, and I am grateful for the support from her and the shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp) on these matters.
The shadow Minister rightly and understandably raised an important question about the tech companies. As she knows, we take that relationship incredibly seriously. The Government’s preference is always to work closely with technology companies to ensure public safety, but we must also make sure that we have the powers in place for when collaboration is not sufficient; I think she knows what I am talking about. In addition, private companies should not be able to unilaterally remove the use of powers to investigate terrorists when they change how their technology works. She summarised very well and effectively, in a way that I hope we can all agree on, the balance that must be struck between freedom of speech and privacy, and ensuring that the Government always have the tools necessary to keep the public safe.
The shadow Minister made two other helpful and constructive points. The first was on parliamentary oversight, which she was right to raise. If I were seeking to be slightly mischievous—I am not—I would perhaps be tempted to reflect on the lack of prime ministerial leadership in recent years with regard to the Intelligence and Security Committee, which the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings serves on and knows well. The Prime Minister must send a clear signal about the ISC’s importance. It has crucial work to do on behalf of Parliament to scrutinise the work of our intelligence services. By its nature, that detailed work requires Committee members to study the activities of our security services carefully and discreetly. I can absolutely give the hon. Lady an assurance that the Government take that work very seriously, while respecting the independence of the Committee, which answers to Parliament, not the Government.
The shadow Minister’s final point on the process of review was very important. The investigatory powers regime operates in a rapidly changing world. The alarmingly quick rate of technological change means that, as a Government, we have to make sure that the legislative framework continues to adapt to the changing nature of the threat that we face. As part of that process, as she knows, it is incredibly important that we work closely with our allies, including our Five Eyes partners, but the Government have an absolute responsibility to ensure that the investigatory powers regime is fit for purpose. We keep a close eye to ensure that it is, and where we think that updates are required, we will introduce them. I hope very much that that will be a collaborative process, because it is important to me and, I hope, to Opposition Members that we do this in a non-partisan, collaborative way.
I am grateful for Opposition Members’ contributions, and I thank the Committee for its consideration of the regulations. I hope I have set out reasonably clearly that they are necessary to maintain the effectiveness of the UK’s investigatory powers framework, and I commend them to the Committee once more.
Question put and agreed to.