Draft Investigatory Powers Bill

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Wednesday 4th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

The noble Lord is absolutely right. This is why it is important to work with communication service providers: this has to be a partnership between the industry, the law enforcement agencies and the Government to make sure that we get this right and that there is a way of doing it which is secure. He is right about the threat being real. I have heard some of the reports from meetings which the Home Secretary has had with families who have been victims of the online sexual exploitation of children. They feel exactly the same way as my noble friend Lord Tebbit feels in terms of the actions which could be taken to ensure that their children and their loved ones do not have to suffer the exploitation which they have suffered at the hands of these heinous criminals.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, this has been described as a tidying-up Bill, and the reason for it is that the security services and the police have overstepped the mark and misused their past powers. The noble Lord, Lord Blair, talked about trust. What guarantees can the Government give that the security services and the police will not overstep these powers as well?

[Lord Bates]

That is one of the reasons why we have put in place a much stronger, clearer and well-resourced investigatory powers commissioner. That will also give an opportunity for cases to be brought to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal. There will be more transparency and openness there for people to take advantage of if they feel that we have got the decision wrong.

Police: Funding Formula

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Tuesday 20th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

I think that community intelligence is very important. It is part of a wider initiative that goes beyond the responsibility of just the police and includes the wider community, as the Department for Communities and Local Government referred to, in how we work together to combat this threat that we face. As I said before, the counterterrorism element of the budget will be protected and has actually been increased to meet the threat, and we keep it constantly under review.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I am sure the Minister knows that part of the counterterrorism funding is for the Prevent programme, which has in fact turned into a toxic brand that is alienating a lot of communities. Just at the point when the police, because of savage cuts to their budget, need community support, they are actually losing the good will of the public. Will the Minister explain how that works?

[Lord Bates]

I do not accept the premise which the noble Baroness puts forward. In the counterterrorism legislation that will be brought forward and in the Prevent strategy that we outlined, we very clearly articulate that, as a society, we cannot simply just parcel this off to one element of society to tackle; this needs to be the responsibility of all communities, and particularly public authorities, which must play a role in identifying and challenging those extremist views wherever they appear.

Surveillance Legislation

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Thursday 16th July 2015 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, following David Anderson QC’s report on surveillance legislation, whether they intend that Ministers should retain the power to authorise surveillance.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Bates) (Con)]

My Lords, as I said in the House on 8 July during the debate on the recent reports into investigatory powers, the Government have made no decisions on the proposals within the reports. We intend to bring forward legislative proposals in the autumn that will be subject to pre-legislative scrutiny.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I thank the Minister for his reply. It is important to think that the public understand how and why such decisions are made. However, it is an offence to disclose that a warrant for authorisation of surveillance has been issued, and it is government policy not to talk about security matters, so how can the public understand exactly what the Minister has done and why he has done it? Is some sort of transparency a factor in his thinking?

[Lord Bates]

David Anderson’s report, on which we had a very helpful debate last week, talks about trust, and there needs to be a balance of trust. The issues that are being investigated by our security services and law enforcement agencies are of the most grave and serious nature, so full disclosure is not possible. However, there is an Interception of Communications Commissioner who reviews the decisions taken by the Home Secretary. Should an individual feel that they have wrongly had their communications intercepted, they have the ability to take that up with the investigation tribunal to look into the decision further.

Investigatory Powers

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Wednesday 8th July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, there have been a number of reports into the use of investigatory powers by public agencies in the UK. Indeed, I published my own report, which looked at the Metropolitan Police’s use of undercover police, at the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and at police databases. I found that the police had overreached and misused their powers, aided by illiberal legislation that is not fit for purpose and, of course, a mayor who was happy to turn a blind eye rather than champion civil liberties. Today I will limit my comments to David Anderson’s report. Like many noble Lords, I welcome several of its recommendations.

I am pleased that David Anderson found that RIPA is not fit for purpose and should be replaced. This is something that the Green Party called for at the last election and we had in our manifesto. RIPA has failed. It fails to regulate the actions of undercover police officers, to support the confidentiality of journalistic sources and to protect legal privilege, and it certainly does not provide a proper and open right of redress via the Investigatory Powers Tribunal.

I am also pleased that Mr Anderson recommends that the new legal framework that replaces RIPA should comply with international human rights standards. I find this particularly relevant when the Government are indicating that they would consider withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights. I would welcome clarification from the Government of the implications of this new legal framework if we were to leave the ECHR.

I welcome the recommendations for judicial approval for the interception of communications rather than the current arrangement involving the Secretary of State. In practice, Ministers are not held to account for warrants because it is an offence to disclose that a warrant has been granted and because of the Government’s policy of “neither confirm nor deny” on security matters. Were questions to be asked here or in the other place about the specifics of an intelligence operation they would not be answered. When questions of security are asked, the common response is “operational issues” and the stonewalling of NCND. This lack of accountability is partly why I welcome the move to judicial approval.

I also think that the idea of replacing the three existing oversight commissioners with a single independent surveillance and intelligence commissioner is to be welcomed. I believe it would provide greater safeguards around the use of metadata, as well as the increased safeguards needed for lawyers, journalists and others who handle privileged information.

By contrast, some aspects of the report do not go far enough and cause me concern. For example, I am pleased that Mr Anderson recognised that the role and jurisdiction of the IPT should be expanded. However, I do not think his report goes far enough. I do not believe that the IPT should hold proceedings behind closed doors. Instead, cases should be brought in open court, subject to closed material procedure or public interest immunity framework. This would provide greater transparency and allow for secrecy where necessary.

I question the bulk collection of external communications—those sent from and into the UK. While Mr Anderson says it should continue, subject to “additional safeguards”, I would like to see a far more robust case put forward from the police and security services which makes clear why blanket non-targeted surveillance is more effective than targeted operation-led powers. I found the information provided in the six agency case studies in the report to be limited. I remain to be convinced that the results achieved could not have been achieved using targeted surveillance.

I am pleased that Mr Anderson states that no operational case has been made for requiring service providers to retain records of users’ interactions with the internet—so-called web logs—as proposed by the draft communications data Bill, better known as the snoopers’ charter. I am pleased that he has questioned the lawfulness, intrusiveness and cost of the proposals. His report also points out that no other EU or Commonwealth country requires the blanket retention of web logs; in fact, Australia has recently prohibited this in law. I hope the Government and Home Secretary will pause for reflection on why we alone need such a power.

This report also touches on the use of undercover state agents, or covert human intelligence sources. I accept that this was not the focus of David Anderson’s report but it is an area where I have huge concerns. The House is probably aware of the cases of several women who were deceived into long-term intimate sexual relationships with undercover police officers. Their testimony to the Home Affairs Select Committee laid bare the life-changing consequences these women suffered. I am concerned that, as it stands, RIPA still authorises sexual relationships by state agents. I find this quite alarming. If Parliament thinks that state agents should have this power, which I do not, or that there should be limitations to it, that must be part of the debate we are having. If RIPA is to be replaced then its replacement must clarify the law in this area.

I also draw the House’s attention to a particular aspect of RIPA which I find inconsistent and in need of reform. Different forms of intrusive surveillance are authorised at different levels. For example, interception of communication requires authorisation from the Secretary of State. On the other hand, the authorisation of direct surveillance, including the activities of an undercover police officer, requires only the authorisation of another police officer. It is worth pointing out at this stage that most of the investigatory powers used to obtain communications data are so used by the police and not the security services. I believe that the highly intrusive nature of an intimate relationship with a state agent, presenting as someone else, is capable of being far more intrusive than the interception of communications. I should therefore like to see judicial authorisation for undercover state agents.

In conclusion, I hope that this report leads to a proper debate on these issues, but in order to have a rational and proper debate we must stop describing the threat we face as unprecedented. It is, as Mr Anderson explains, a “surprisingly common” mistake. As someone who has had a file held on a police database of domestic extremists, I am concerned by systems of surveillance which are not clearly defined, targeted and publicly held to account. The past few years have seen revelations that GCHQ spied on Amnesty International, that undercover police have been sent to spy on those campaigning for police accountability, and that RIPA has been used to violate lawyer-client privilege. It really is time that we had a proper debate. There should be clear rules and processes around obtaining data. It should not be easy for the state to obtain communications; that is the cost of privacy in a free society. It is our role to challenge the police and security services to provide a proper case, supported by evidence, for any additional powers that they need or request to do their job. Those who challenge the police and security services do not do so because we are unaware of the threat that we face. We do so to protect the very values that terrorism seeks to undermine.

London Airport: New Runway

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Thursday 2nd July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

I assure the noble Lord that the Prime Minister and the whole Government are fully committed to pushing Brussels to get greater control over a raft of issues concerning national sovereignty.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords—

[Lord Rosser (Lab)]

In 2009, as we know, the Prime Minister said that he would not support a third runway and did so with a certain degree of finality, since he said “no ifs, no buts”. Can the Minister confirm that that still represents the Prime Minister’s and thus the Government’s policy on a third runway at Heathrow? If it does not, could he draw our attention to any statement by the Prime Minister retracting his very clear policy statement that he would not support a third runway at Heathrow?

Police and Crime Commissioners

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

Well, they do set the policing plan. But this is one of the things that the Home Secretary has made very clear. When she came in, there was a plethora of targets and quotas that had to be addressed. She said, “Listen, as far as the police are concerned, they have one target and that is to cut crime”. I think that all good police and crime commissioners should follow that example.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, the Minister mentioned that these police and crime commissioners are accountable. In fact, the reports coming in from the police and crime panels, which are charged with holding the police and crime commissioners to account, suggest that they are underresourced. Will the Government consider funding those panels rather better than they are at the moment?

[Lord Bates]

The funding of the panels and the offices of the police and crime commissioners is a matter for the police and crime commissioners, which they must do and for which they must be accountable in their plan to the electorate.

Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Monday 26th January 2015 Lords Chamber

We need to take that report very seriously. Parliament appointed a committee of both Houses to look at the draft Bill. It did a painstaking and thorough job and said that the Bill would not wash. It is far too broad and dangerous to privacy and civil liberties. Yet the amendments today simply cut and paste. I realise that part of the exercise is to try to provoke the Minister into saying something that noble Lords might consider helpful—or not quite so helpful—but we are faced simply with a cut and paste of the 2012 Bill, with its huge breadth, lax definitions and terminology rooted in a pre-internet age. We should not accept the amendments. Whatever case there might be for a redrafted communications data Bill—my noble friend Lord Blencathra called it a snoopers’ charter, so I feel able to call it a snoopers’ charter, whatever some noble Lords might say—that case has not been made today. We have the old version and it is highly inopportune to accept it.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I rise to oppose the amendments for many of the reasons outlined here today. First, they are unnecessary. We have heard a lot about gaps, targeted and not blanket surveillance and bringing things up to date. This is, of course, absolute nonsense. As the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, said, the Met and presumably the other agencies already have the powers they need—powers that, I suggest, go far beyond what they need. We heard a lot today about Paris and Lee Rigby, but in fact all my information says that the shortcomings of the pre-investigation in Paris and in the Lee Rigby tragic murder were due not to a lack of surveillance but to a lack of good police work. That is what was fundamentally missing. It was not about not having enough recordings or surveillance. It was about a lack of information and a lack of talking to marginalised community groups. The cross-party committee which reported in November on the handling of the Lee Rigby killers exposed major internal failings in the way that agencies pursue leads. It found that both men had been known to the agencies for years—one had even been considered a priority—but basic issues such as delays, poor communication and bad record-keeping caused the problems, not the surveillance of the suspects.

Although these amendments are obviously within the letter of the law, they seem to me to be fundamentally undemocratic in the way that they are being brutally pushed into our parliamentary process. This seems to me a way of short-circuiting real scrutiny. It is great that they were looked at before, but they still need looking at again; if they are—I hope the Minister is listening—they absolutely must be looked at by the Joint Committee on Human Rights. It should look at these amendments before there is any more discussion in either of these Houses.

For me, this snoopers’ charter reduces our rights, and surely that is exactly what the terrorists are after. Terrorists want to impact on our society and on every single person who does not believe the way that they do. That is what we are letting happen here. It is absolutely mad. The Mayor of London recently referred to “this civil liberties stuff” in the most dismissive way, as if that is negotiable—that civil liberties are not terribly important when we compare them with the threat of terrorism. That is exactly when we need our civil liberties. That is what we in the West should be known for.

There is also the cost. My experience of the Met over the past 15 years is that it cannot deal with the data that it already has. I have asked many questions about its databases and the information that it gets from them. The Met does not know how many databases it has—it cannot tell me how many to the nearest hundred. Also, it often cannot search its databases. For example, I had the dubious pleasure of being on its domestic extremist database, I think under the regime of the noble Lord, Lord Blair, and I hope that I am not on the database anymore—the Met has changed its definition of what a domestic extremist is—but who knows because I cannot get the information. However, the Met cannot search that database for serious criminal activity. Because the definition was changed to relate to serious criminals, if you ask, “Can you look through the database and find out how many serious criminals you have?”, you will be told, “Oh, we haven’t logged that, so we can’t do that”.

Not only are we expecting the Met staff to deal with more data when they cannot sort and file the data that they already have, but, I would argue, they have enough powers. The noble Lord, Lord Blair, talked about some very tragic incidents where more surveillance might actually solve a crime or find a lost child. In fact, the police already have these powers. They have them under RIPA and, in my view, they are already misusing them. Under RIPA they do not have to go to a judge to ask if they can put surveillance on somebody; they just have to go to a chief inspector in a nearby unit and ask, “Could you sign this for me? It’s surveillance on somebody or other”.

We should not be thinking about giving more powers to our spies and to the police. We should be very careful about this. We should think about taking back some of those powers and making sure that we persist in keeping our civil liberties and human rights and do not let the terrorists take them away from us.

[Lord Macdonald of River Glaven]

My Lords, I was surprised that at an early stage in his speech the noble Lord, Lord West, suggested—until he revised the figure—that communications data were employed in some 95% of criminal cases. My experience from the years when I was responsible for prosecuting serious crime and terrorism was that the figure was 100%. I cannot remember a serious criminal case, and I certainly cannot remember a terrorism case, in which communications data were not used. Of course, there is a difference between data which are employed to detect terrorism and data which are then used as part of a prosecution to convict terrorists. Certainly, so far as the latter is concerned, there was a vast amount in every case.

The noble Lord, Lord Evans, will remember some of those cases which occurred when he was director-general of the Security Service. The men who tried to commit mass murder on London’s Underground are serving long prison sentences. The men who wanted to detonate a bomb containing radioactive material in Oxford Street are serving long prison sentences. The men who wanted to put a bomb in Bluewater shopping centre at half-term when it would be particularly busy are serving long prison sentences. In the case of the men who wanted to put a bomb in a nightclub—the Ministry of Sound—two were recorded by members of the noble Lord’s service. The leader of the gang said to one of his colleagues, “No one will be able to criticise us for blowing up a nightclub; all those slags dancing around”. This is material which is of the utmost importance in criminal prosecutions.

It is also true, of course, that technology is changing and our capacity to monitor this sort of material must change with it. I accept that, but I do not believe that these amendments are the right vehicle for achieving that change. These amendments suffer from the deficiencies which the original Bill suffered from; in particular, they are insufficiently specific. I agree with everything that the noble Lord said in his compelling speech a few minutes ago. These amendments are deficient for the same reasons that the original Bill was deficient and I shall not support them. This is not, as my noble friend Lord Carlile said, a party political matter. It is a matter of analysing the material and determining whether it is fit for purpose. With respect, I do not agree with my noble friend Lady Neville-Jones that we must do something. We must do the right thing and I do not think that this is the right thing. In everything, we must maintain balance and proportionality. No one has argued in this debate that we should not have a mechanism whereby the security services can access material of this sort. The question is what sort of mechanism.

The security services in recent years, and perhaps in years long gone by, have been led by people who understand the tension between security and rights. When I was DPP and the noble Lord was the director-general of the Security Service, I enjoyed the discussions we had on this topic. Sometimes we disagreed about precisely where the line was drawn, but we agreed that there was a line. One of my fears about these amendments, as with the draft Communications Data Bill, is that they draw the line in the wrong place. One result of that would be an adverse impact on our great security institutions. There is no doubt that the security services in this country enjoy enormous public support, which is unfamiliar even in democracies such as France. It is clearly understood by people in this country that the security services are after “them and not us”. In other words, they are interested in targeting those individuals who are trying to do us wrong rather than the rest of us. The danger of breadth in legislation of this sort is that, if the idea gets about that the security services are interested in everybody’s communications, not just the material of those subject to investigation who are being targeted because it is believed that they are involved in crime, then the sense which the British people have of their security institutions will begin to alter in subtle ways, and not for the good. I would caution those who argue that legislation of this breadth is needed because it is future-proof. We must take great care with legislation that is enacted in the context of the sort of public confidence issues that the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, indicated.

People are interested in these issues. They express their interest in different ways, but there is a feeling abroad that the Government and the security services are becoming nosy. I do not believe that that is true, but if we enact legislation that appears to people to be unnaturally broad, we run the risk of feeding that monster. I shall oppose the amendment.

Parliament Square: Occupy Protests

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Tuesday 28th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

Does the Minister agree that this is a terrible waste of time, energy and resources for the police force? Part of the problem is that you are asking them to police and enforce laws that are extremely repressive. It was a Labour Government who introduced the police reform Act, and you are now enforcing it. Is it time to ask your ministerial colleagues, perhaps, if they would repeal the worst aspects of that Act?

[Lord Bates]

The noble Baroness is a Member of your Lordships’ House; she is free as a parliamentarian to propose any laws that she wishes; but the reality is that in 2011 your Lordships decided by an overwhelming majority that they wanted this law and they wanted this space for public peaceful protest.

Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Wednesday 16th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords for allowing me to speak. I will be brief, not least in view of the erudite speeches that have gone before. I thank the Government for adding to my general knowledge because until a week ago I did not know what metadata were, and I cared even less; now I know, and I care very much.

We have debated various parts of the Bill extensively today. On the emergency aspect of this Bill, I find it hard to believe that all those big brains at the Home Office did not see this coming. I simply find it impossible to believe. Along with hundreds of thousands of people outside this House, I do not understand why this is an emergency.

Do these regulations come in before the Summer Recess or will they be delayed until after? That, of course, has an impact on whether this truly was an emergency.

On the issue of extraterritoriality, the powers seem to have been implied, but they were implicit rather than explicit. For me, this is an expansion of powers and therefore should have had a proper consultation. Ducking public consultation is really not part of the democratic process. We hear again and again that this is being done to protect us, but the security services and the police will always ask for greater powers and more weapons so that they can do their job properly. However, it is for politicians to decide whether that is appropriate and whether it is for the common good and for the public good; I would argue that it is not.

Some of the clauses from the other place were accepted, and I am very pleased about that. However, the one on bringing the sunset clause forward to 2014 was an opportunity missed because, quite honestly, if we are not having a proper debate now, having it as soon as possible and ignoring the political timetable would have been a good way forward.

As other noble Lords have said, it is very easy to encroach on civil liberties and it is for us to decide where the line is between national security and civil liberties. I feel again and again that it is easy to be pushed into things through fear rather than for sensible reasons of national security. I do not support the Second Reading of this Bill.

Water Cannons

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Wednesday 12th February 2014 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to license the use of water cannons on the United Kingdom mainland.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to have secured this debate and to noble Lords who are participating. My standing up to speak does not normally empty a room quite as fast, but I realise that this issue may not affect everybody.

This debate is about securing the licensing of water cannon for London, or perhaps for the whole of Britain—we do not know yet. I and many others have a lot of concerns about the use of water cannon. It is important to recognise that it is not just a London issue; it is of national importance. It could have an impact on many people UK-wide.

Boris Johnson, as the notional police and crime commissioner for London, is running an engagement with Londoners about water cannon, explaining why they are necessary, but his office has made clear that the response will not change the outcome. That is, the Met has asked for them, so the Met shall have them. In a recent letter, the Home Secretary appears to be under the impression that a proper consultation is going on with Londoners, but there most definitely is not. I would not want the Government or your Lordships to be misled on that.

I shall talk about three things—cost, use and potential targets—and I will pose three questions for which I should be grateful for an answer. In a sense, cost is not that much of an issue, because the Met budget, although reduced, is still £3.25 billion. I have been told that the Met hopes to buy second-hand from Germany at a cost of only about £30,000 each, so I guess that the total cost would be about £100,000, expecting the water cannons to last two to three years. New machines cost about £1 million each. However, then there is the cost of training, which must be ongoing over the years, plus storage in central London, plus maintenance. The Met recently had to be coerced into funding a £100,000 budget to continue the work of the Wildlife Crime Unit, which fights international organised crime networks that traffick endangered animals or parts of endangered animals.

Your Lordships may know that today, the UK is hosting a two-day international conference on the illegal wildlife trade, involving two future Kings of our country and world leaders from 50 nations invited by the Prime Minister, but the Met police has a team of five people going up against an illegal trade estimated to be worth £19 billion a year. If there is some spare cash in the Met budget, why is it prioritising a weapon that it will hardly ever use over a global economic crime with links to trafficking of drugs and people and even to terrorism, not to mention threatening some of the planet’s most iconic animals with extinction? I suspect that a lot of people would rather that it was spent there than on water cannon—or even on another priority altogether. I would be interested to know the Government’s view about the Met’s priorities.

As to the use of water cannon, what is their tactical potential and tactical limitations? Hugh Orde, who is president of the Association of Chief Police Officers and one of only two officers to have deployed water cannon says:

“Water cannon could act as an effective deterrent to stop protests gaining momentum … What it does, is buy you space, it keeps people apart, and people at distance”.

Is that really what London needs? In Northern Ireland, there was disputed territory of which two or more groups wanted possession to march in. That simply is not true of London. The sort of disorder that has happened in the past few years often involves small groups of people moving quickly, staying in touch by mobile phones and social media. Water cannon would be useless in that situation, as the police themselves have admitted. These machines are slow and not very manoeuvrable within our mostly narrow streets. They are heavy and take some stopping. They need wide roads or spaces to be effective.

There is a very big civil liberties concern. My fear is that innocent people will be affected, if not by being hosed down with water at a few degrees above freezing, perhaps by being deterred from protesting at all. Water cannon could stifle attendance at legitimate democratic protests, which the Met has a duty to protect.

Please do not believe anyone saying that they are not dangerous. In one famous example in 2010, pensioner Dietrich Wagner was permanently blinded by water cannon in Germany. He was part of a protest ride to prevent developers cutting down some trees. As well as suffering major bruising, Wagner’s eyelids were torn and on one side, part of his orbital bone, the bone which protects the eye, was fractured. He hopes to be here in London next week to speak out on the use of water cannon.

When would water cannon be used? Who would be the targets? We have been hearing that water cannon would be rarely seen and rarely used. When asked exactly when they would be used, the Met answers that they would not be used against peaceful protesters and they are obviously not for small-scale violent rioting in narrow places. They would be for people throwing petrol bombs, who obviously would not hide themselves in a large crowd of peaceful protesters, or the Met could pick them off, or something—a highly speculative scenario.

The Met have also claimed that water cannon could have saved the Reeves furniture store in Croydon, but that night there were fires in Clapham, Enfield and Peckham, plus rioting in a total of 22 boroughs. One set of three water cannon, broken up or deployed as a threesome, might have been deployed to one of the fires and may have got there in time to be useful, but would the Met have been able to use them to do very much else? That seems unlikely because of the travelling time alone, let alone co-ordinating with local police command and the fire brigade about the exact needs.

There is quite a lot of opposition to the use of water cannon, not all from the usual suspects. Of course, there is opposition from organisations such as Liberty but also from senior police officers. Five of the six largest forces in England and Wales said that they were against deploying water cannon on their streets and one police and crime commissioner dismissed them as being,

“as much use as a chocolate teapot”,

for quelling disorder. The noble Lord, Lord Blair, former Met commissioner, has written to me and has allowed me to read out the contents of his letter:

“Since I left office, I have deliberately not commented on matters which are for decision by my successors but in this case I am prepared to do so. Water cannon have proved useful in Northern Ireland to keep two identifiable and violent factions apart or to protect public buildings or particular community enclaves from sectarian attack. In my opinion, much more explanation needs to be given as to how they would be of use in public order situations including violent and non-violent participants or in deterring very mobile rioters carrying out widely dispersed attacks as in the 2011 riots. I am not suggesting a case cannot be made: but I do not believe it has been so far”.

The Government will probably say that this is an operational issue and they therefore have to listen to police advice. I realise that it is very hard for a party that is—or expects to be—in government to appear to look soft on law and order, and it is true that deploying these weapons will be an operational decision for the police forces owning them. Licensing them is most definitely a political decision, though, and doing a Pontius Pilate on this is really not good enough. So I ask the Government when they think these machines will be used.

There is something very ironic about the Met police justifying the purchase of these water cannon because of the 2011 riots, when it was Met actions that triggered the disorder. If the Met had not shot an unarmed man and had treated the Duggan family with more respect and professionalism, those riots may never have been sparked and the grumbling discontent of poverty and hardship may never have broken the surface in London and other parts of Britain. However, the Met did shoot an unarmed man, did not treat the Duggan family well and the rest is history, but water cannon would probably not have helped in any way.

We are told that the Met want water cannon by the summer, yet they admit that they have no intelligence about possible disturbances. Do the Government have such intelligence, or do they think the case has been made for the use of water cannon? My view is that the case has not been made, and the public must be convinced to be taken with the police, if we are still to have policing by consent. I urge Her Majesty’s Government to pause before licensing water cannon for anywhere on the British mainland.