Investigatory Powers (Amendment)Bill [Lords]

Debate between John Hayes and Tom Tugendhat

Report stage
Monday 25th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Tom Tugendhat]

rose—

[Sir John Hayes]

The Minister is going to satisfy me immediately, it seems.

[Tom Tugendhat]

I will satisfy my right hon. Friend immediately and, I hope, save him time in his speech. Local authority trading standards teams are responsible for a range of legislation where enforcement requires investigation and may need to draw on communications data. The idea is that the powers in this Bill will be in keeping with those powers, not for them to be expansive, so my right hon. Friend is right: it is for serious crimes, as has already been set out.

[Sir John Hayes]

That is excellent—it helps, because the schedule associated with that part of the Bill does not make that explicit. I hope that the Minister, having given that binding assurance to the House, will reinforce it in the explanatory notes associated with the Act and in the code attached to it.

[Tom Tugendhat]

indicated assent.

[Sir John Hayes]

I am seeing the Minister nodding. He might want to say a word or two more when he sums up.

[Sir John Hayes]

The Minister may want to intervene on me again to do exactly what the right hon. Gentleman has suggested.

[Tom Tugendhat]

On the grounds that it will save me time when I wrap up at the end of the debate, I will make it clear now. His Majesty’s Treasury is responsible for civil enforcement of financial sanctions regulations, and some information that is essential to carrying out its civil enforcement functions is now communications data, such as the timestamp on online banking transactions. His Majesty’s Treasury cannot currently use its information powers to compel that information to be provided by a telecoms operator, so to go back to the statement I made earlier, local authority trading standards teams are responsible for a range for legislation where enforcement requires investigation and may need to draw on communications data.

[Sir John Hayes]

That is very helpful and, I think, goes a fair way towards what I want to achieve. The Minister has therefore made clear that the power will not be permissive. If he uses those very words—forgive me for putting them into his mouth, Madam Deputy Speaker—that would also help. These are going to be rarely used, particular powers associated with regulatory or legal functions of local authorities, not permissively available to those local authorities at their whim. That is clear as crystal, is it not?

[Tom Tugendhat]

If my right hon. Friend will forgive me, I will use the words I am using. Those powers will be used as infrequently as we all hope they will be, but they will be used in keeping with the law as described. If the frequency increases, it will be because of the need to act; I am very cautious about saying that these crimes will disappear, and therefore the frequency will change. I am not willing to predict that criminality now.

[Sir John Hayes]

I entirely understand. I used the example myself of trading standards: in Lincolnshire, we have an issue with the sale of illegal cigarettes that has become not a trivial matter, but one of organised crime. It is not restricted to my county or locality: it is a national problem, and it is of course an example of where a local authority, working closely with the police, might well need to use those powers. By the way, those local authorities will be working with other agencies too: because money laundering is involved, His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs might be involved, and so on and so forth. That is a good example of where those powers might be useful in catching very serious criminals indeed, but the word I wanted the Minister to use is that these powers are not permissive. He will understand what I mean by that, and I cannot see why that would present any problem at all, given the reasonable, sensible man he is.

[Tom Tugendhat]

I apologise to my right hon. Friend. These powers are not permissive in the sense that they are expansive: they are permissive only in the sense applied to them by this law, with the restriction of the powers that local authorities already have. They are not to be used in any way other than as set out very clearly in the Bill.

[Sir John Hayes]

I think that is helpful. The Minister will remember that when we debated the original Bill that became the Investigatory Powers Act, one or two newspapers used the term “the snoopers’ charter”, and images were used of local authorities using those powers to investigate people’s rubbish to make sure they were recycling properly, for example. I do not want to add unnecessary levity to our consideration tonight, because we are dealing with very serious matters indeed, but the Minister will understand how that kind of misunderstanding—indeed, misinformation—could do far more harm than good.

[Tom Tugendhat]

Again, just to clarify for my right hon. Friend, this Bill offers no greater expansion than his own Bill did in 2016. In the same way he ensured that Bill was no snoopers’ charter, I assure him that this one is not either.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir John Hayes]

Yes, exactly. The right hon. Gentleman has put it very clearly, and the sense of what the Minister has said has reassured me that it is not the Government’s intention to extend those powers beyond the very strict legal limits associated with the kind of organised crime that he and I have both cited. For me, that is considerable progress. The right hon. Gentleman spoke earlier about half a win; I think that is three quarters of a win, at least. For that reason, I feel that I can move on to my next request of the Minister.

We spoke earlier about IPCO, and its role and association with Government. As the Minister will know and as the right hon. Member for North Durham referred to, this legislation provides for a report to be made available to the ISC on an annual basis. There has been some concern that that report might be rather different from the one that is made available to Ministers and others, and my anxiety is that it should not be different. All that it should exclude is current operational matters; nothing else should be excluded from what my Committee considers, and clearly, it needs to be the same as what IPCO gets. We cannot have three or four different reports.

[Tom Tugendhat]

I can give my right hon. Friend that assurance.

[Sir John Hayes]

That is a 100% win. It is not half a win or three quarters of a win; it is just a win. So we are making huge progress tonight, partly due to the diligence of the members of the ISC and other Members of this House, including the official Opposition, but largely due to the reasonableness of the Minister. He is a listening figure, and he is growing in stature and reputation as a result. I am delighted that the Minister has agreed to the fourth of my requirements.

Investigatory Powers (Amendment) Bill [ Lords ] (Second sitting)

Debate between John Hayes and Tom Tugendhat

Committee stage & Report stage
Thursday 7th March 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Tom Tugendhat]

As always, my right hon. Friend asks a pertinent question. I hope he will forgive me for saying that I very much hope that the letter I asked to be sent arrived in his inbox this morning. He may not have seen it, which I completely understand, as there are many pressing issues on his time. I have also attached it into the packet for the Bill and indeed copied it to the ISC secretariat, which has done such an important job in ensuring that we are all as one on this. I hope very much that that will answer my right hon. Friend’s questions. If it does not, he knows where I am—I would be delighted to clarify it further. As my right hon. Friend has very kindly asked, I shall give that list now, for the record: HM Revenue and Customs, the Financial Conduct Authority, the Department for Work and Pensions, the Treasury, the National Crime Agency, the Department for Business and Trade, and the Competition and Markets Authority.

My right hon. Friend reminds me of that famous scene in “Yes, Prime Minister”—thank God defence is held at central authority, or we would not have to worry about the Russians; we would have a civil war in two weeks. His point about local authorities having intelligence powers is valid. They do not have the same intelligence powers as MI5—let us be absolutely clear about that. That is not what we are offering.

[Sir John Hayes]

It does the Minister great credit that he has made that list available during the course of our consideration. That is very important. What I had feared might happen was that we might not get it while we were in Committee. In fact, I have not actually seen it, but I am grateful to him for making it available, at least, during our consideration.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Tugendhat]

I will happily ask. The right hon. Gentleman is asking for internal management structures, though.

[Sir John Hayes]

I am grateful to the Minister for offering me a second bite of the cherry. Perhaps I can offer a Hegelian synthesis between him and the right hon. Member for North Durham. We talked earlier about operational purposes, but we have to be careful about that: in the case of the agents of the police, one cannot publish purposes in fine detail, because that would be unhelpful. However, in broad terms, perhaps the way forward on this is to illustrate the kind of purposes that the bodies the Minister described might employ, within the legal constraints that he just set out. Perhaps that is the way forward; it would certainly satisfy me, and I cannot think that would not help to satisfy the right hon. Member for North Durham, who is a reasonable man—not my right hon. Friend, but a right hon. Gentleman and a personal friend, which is better than being a right hon. Friend.

[Tom Tugendhat]

As always, I welcome my right hon. Friend’s contribution. That is covered in many areas in the letter I wrote to him.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Tugendhat]

I am delighted to clarify that the letter was emailed to my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings. He is a traditionalist in many ways, but I believe he has entered the electronic age.

[Sir John Hayes]

I had it printed out on parchment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir John Hayes]

Exactly. That point was made when we debated the original Act, and I think that I committed at the time to those kinds of things being detailed in the annual report. To clarify a point that was made earlier, David Anderson was clear at the time, and has been since, that we cannot detail the operational purposes of the agencies if doing so would compromise them. The techniques and approaches that they necessarily use in the performance of their duties could be compromised if we were to talk in detailed terms about the character of their operational activities. However, we can speak in broader terms about the kinds of circumstances in which powers might be used—and all the more so for the other public bodies, in a sense, because even if a serious criminal investigation is taking place, those investigations are not typically as secret as they might necessarily be in respect of the security and intelligence community.

Perhaps those two grounds—greater sight of the processes in those bodies and clarity about the circumstances in which the powers can be used; in other words, exceptionally and for very serious matters—would be helpful ways of dealing with some of the points raised by my colleague on the ISC, the right hon. Member for North Durham.

[Tom Tugendhat]

As usual, right hon. and hon. Members have raised some excellent points. Let me be clear: it is not true to say that there is no judicial oversight. To say that there is no judicial oversight would be correct if the IPC were not in place. I know what the right hon. Member for North Durham is going to say, but that is a form of judicial oversight.

As to the way in which the authorisations work, I hope that I have been clear—I will repeat it to ensure that I am—that an investigating officer would have to make an application to use the powers. That would have to go to a senior officer in their service who is not in their chain of command: someone who is not overseeing the operation or in their management chain—a separate element. Any abuse of that system could mean that that individual, or those individuals, are in violation of section 11. I know that the right hon. Member for North Durham takes his responsibilities on the ISC exceptionally seriously and is fully aware that sometimes there can be a pressing need for operational action at pace. That is what this is also designed to help. It is important that officers have the ability to act under a regulatory framework that means that abuses are, at worst, extremely limited due to various constraints.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Tugendhat]

Let me just finish the point; I know the hon. Member will come back to me.

Condition D is no more intrusive, and it does require the serious crime threshold, which does add an extra layer before it can be used. I hear the hon. Member’s point; the condition still requires proportionality and necessity, so it could not be simply anybody who is using Facebook, because clearly that is not proportionate. It still requires that targeting; it still requires those Venn diagrams, if he likes, to close over a target; and, even then, it requires the serious crime threshold.

[Sir John Hayes]

The key thing to understand here is that the agencies have always had the ability to intercept communications data. Communications data is one’s letters. Communications data is one’s phone calls. We speak about communications data now, mindful of the way that people communicate now, and we think of the internet and telephones, but the process of intercepting communications has been a core part of the work of the agencies since the agencies began, so we need to put this in context.

The difference here is the nature of how people communicate. It is right to say that—I rise to be helpful to the Minister—the character of encryption, in particular, is making it harder, even in the kind of serious cases that have been described, for those who are missioned to keep us safe to do so by accessing the information they need. So it is right that the law needs to be updated. The critical thing for me, therefore, is this matter of the threshold, which was debated when we debated the original Act.

As far as I understand, this Bill does not change the threshold; it reinforces the threshold. If that is the case and, as has been said, exceptionality is a measure of significance and not complexity—some cases will be complicated, but it is about significance—then the only outstanding difference, as the Minister has said, is oversight. I think the reporting in the annual report matters—the right hon. Member for North Durham made that point—and that would be a small concession to make, if I can describe it as such. I take the point about alacrity, too. What we cannot do is slow down the process by making it bureaucratic.

I think there is an easy way out of this. Being very clear about thresholds, as the Minister very helpfully has been today, is perhaps the way out of it. To clarify that in writing might be helpful.

[Tom Tugendhat]

I will give way to the right hon. Member for North Durham.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Tugendhat]

I suspect we are not going to come to an agreement on this, so I will probably leave it after this point. The IPCO oversight means that IPCO can look at a request at any point. The maximum period it can go without looking at it is 12 months, but it can look at any point. We have said that requests for communications data must be approved by the Investigatory Powers Commissioner’s Office

“except where they are urgent or are for the purpose of national security”.

That interaction, which the right hon. Gentleman rightly supports, is already there, so I do not accept it is lacking.

On the question of proportionality, the amount of information that one may need to investigate a paedophile network, for example, may mean being slightly vaguer about the specific time, whereas following a known individual may require different forms of flexibility and proportionality. I am afraid I am going to be very cautious about setting out what each one means, because these principles will have to adapt and be applied as appropriate.

[Sir John Hayes]

We are going to have to close this down and move on because we have other things to do. Perhaps the way through is, as was suggested a few moments ago, that this be reviewed over time. If in the annual report we have a really thorough examination of how the measure has been applied and in what circumstances—in broad terms, of course, because we do not need the details of the crimes—that would give us the assurance we need. Our Committee has made that point emphatically. That would be a terribly good way out of this and it would not be a huge step. If the Minister agrees to that, I would certainly be satisfied.

[Tom Tugendhat]

It is not for me to tell the ISC what it should look into, but I would be surprised if it did not want to look into this in great depth.

[Sir John Hayes]

I think the Minister might have misunderstood. Forgive me; I did not mean that. I meant that this could be reviewed in the IPCO annual report. That would obviously be considered by the ISC in the way he describes. I think we need a summary of how this will work in practice and a commitment that we do that now. He sort of talked about a retrospective review. Rather than debate this further now, that would be a very good way forward.

[Tom Tugendhat]

I am entirely supportive of the idea that IPCO should update the ISC and the Secretary of State about how it is working and provide information so that a proper view can be taken. I think that is entirely appropriate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Tugendhat]

Government amendments 3 and 4 require that any Secretary of State to be designated by the Prime Minister as an alternative approver must have the necessary operational awareness of the warrantry process to undertake the role. This change will replace the current drafting inserted in the House of Lords relating to “routine duties”, which is over-restrictive and will undermine the resilience of the triple-lock process that the clauses seek to safeguard.

Requiring relevant operational awareness will ensure the necessary flexibility and resilience while maintaining a proportionate scope for delegation. It will allow scope to include those who may be new to their role and do not yet carry out such duties routinely, or who no longer carry them out routinely due to machinery-of-government changes but have valuable pre-existing knowledge that makes them a suitable alternative approver.

[Sir John Hayes]

I am grateful to the Minister for the fact that his amendment goes some way to dealing with the issues that I and others raised in relation to the change from existing practice. At the moment, the Prime Minister provides the element of what has been described as the triple lock. The Government proposal is that other Secretaries of State should perform the role when the Prime Minister is unable to for a number of reasons. My anxiety, reflected by the Intelligence and Security Committee, is that those Secretaries of State who act for the Prime Minister in such circumstances should be people with operational experience. Typically, that would mean people with warranting powers—people accustomed to the business of issuing warrants, with all that that suggests.

The Government amendment speaks of operational awareness. I think “operational experience” is a better turn of phrase, although I accept the Government’s point that if there was a new Secretary of State—a new Home Secretary would be a good example—they would not necessarily have experience. By definition, they would be new in the job, whether that was the Home Secretary or Foreign Secretary and so on. It might be possible to speak of experience and responsibilities, so it could be either responsibilities or experience. Of course, the Government rightly say that a former Home Secretary, Foreign Secretary or Northern Ireland Secretary who was then doing a different job in Government could be one of the people designated, so I take that point.

The issue here is ensuring that the people who perform the role are competent to do so, and I know that is something on which we agree. It is really a matter of the semantics, but semantics are not always insignificant. I am aware of bolshevism and liberalism, but I would not want anything to do with either of them. I am aware of the separatist case on the United Kingdom, but awareness is as far as I want to go with that—I say that without contention or, indeed, acrimony of any kind. I am not sure that “awareness” is quite the right word, and I simply offer that semantic but not insignificant point to the Minister for his consideration.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir John Hayes]

Given what the Minister said about a change in Government—I do not expect one, but I suppose it is a remote possibility—perhaps the words “operational responsibility or experience” would cover the point made and be slightly tighter than “awareness”. Also, there is the matter of notifying the PM. The Committee made the good suggestion that the PM should be notified as soon as practicable, which may be something with which the Minister agrees. If the Prime Minister were indisposed because of illness or whatever, they would be notified as soon as is practicable that a warrant had been issued.

[Tom Tugendhat]

On the second point, I am sure that, like me, my right hon. Friend finds it absolutely inconceivable that that PM would not be notified. I am not convinced that that must be in primary legislation. I find it genuinely inconceivable that the Prime Minister would not be notified at the earliest opportunity. Obviously, if they could be notified immediately, the provision would not be required.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir John Hayes]

I want to help the Minister, because I do not necessarily agree with the right hon. Member for North Durham; occasionally, he and I do disagree, despite the impression that we have created in this Committee. Notification could be covered in a piece of statutory guidance that supports the Bill. It could state that the Prime Minister should be notified as soon as reasonable practicable, exactly in the terms just described. How’s that?

[Tom Tugendhat]

As is so often the case, I absolutely agree with my right hon. Friend.

Investigatory Powers (Amendment) Bill [ Lords ] (First sitting)

Debate between John Hayes and Tom Tugendhat

Committee stage & Report stage
Thursday 7th March 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Tom Tugendhat]

Clause 3—

[Sir John Hayes]

We are making sufficient progress, which perhaps permits me to say a word about why, as we have now dealt with those publicly contentious matters around bulk powers, we can move to the next part of the Bill with greater confidence. The Minister has been crystal clear that he—like me, the right hon. Member for North Durham and other members of this Committee—understands fully the important role of oversight and checks and balances. Those checks and balances are multidimensional because of the role of both those elected to this House and the judiciary. I know he will want to expand on that a little as we come to the next part of the Bill.

Investigatory Powers (Amendment) Bill [Lords]

Debate between John Hayes and Tom Tugendhat

2nd reading
Monday 19th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Security (Tom Tugendhat)]

I thank hon. and right hon. Members from across the House for their contributions not just today, but throughout the many different stages of the Bill. I pay huge tribute to the Members of the other place who have contributed enormously, in particular Lord Anderson, who has been an exceptional asset to the passage of the Bill and the condition it is in, and Lord West who, as a member of the Intelligence and Security Committee, not only shepherded some extremely important amendments into the Bill, but was kind enough to say that it was the first time in 14 years that he had ever had an amendment accepted by the Government. I am delighted to say that it was to this Bill. It was because we are so committed to working with all parts of both Houses and with the ISC that we got so much through in the other place. [Interruption.] That said, many comments will no doubt be raised in this House. I can assure hon. Members, especially the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones), that I will approach all suggestions in the way that I have done to date. Where we may not agree—it may not be that he is right, or that I am right—it will be for good reason and I will set out my reasons in the appropriate way.

The Bill is about one fundamental thing: the security of the British people. We rightly heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Sir Charles Walker) about the nature of freedom, but the truth is that freedom without security is impossible. It is a chimera. The Bill is about ensuring that the British people have the security to enable that freedom. That is an absolutely vital responsibility not just of this Government, but of this House and the other place. I am grateful for the work that the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) and the shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) have put in to ensure the co-operative, bipartisan and open approach to the Bill, as is merited by the work of our fantastic intelligence services to provide security for our whole country.

As the British public would expect, we keep our approach to national security under constant review. Where we identify the need for change or improvement, we will not hesitate to act. That is why we have brought forward the Bill, which acts on the findings of the Home Secretary’s report and Lord Anderson’s independent review into the Investigatory Powers Act 2016. Hon. and right hon. Members will not need me to rehearse the arguments, but we have seen an extraordinary, rapid evolution in the nature of the threats since the 2016 Act: Russia’s threat to the whole of Europe and not just to Ukraine; the violence that Iran is trying to bring not just in the middle east but even on to our own shores; and the way technology has enabled hostile states not only to steal our technology but to introduce intelligence-gathering platforms into our country through the guise of car sales.

We have seen a change in the way technology works and a change in the nature of the threats, and we must keep up to date with those changes. That is why this work is so important. It is essential that the United Kingdom’s investigatory powers framework remains fit for purpose to help our intelligence agencies detect and stop some of the most serious threats posed to the UK and its citizens, including threats from terrorism, state threats, and child sexual abuse and exploitation.

Because these are exceptional powers, Members have rightly pointed out that they require appropriate, robust and, in this case, world-leading safeguards, and that is what we have sought to set out. The changes in the Bill are relatively narrow in scope, but unless we make them now, the ability of our agencies to tackle evolving threats will be increasingly constrained in the face of global instability, technological advances and state hostility, so now is the time to act.

Let me now deal with some of the points that have been raised. The hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) raised a rather interesting point about the changes to “lawful authority” in clause 12 in respect of published data. The purpose of new subsection (3A) is for material that has already been published not to require additional authority for its disclosure by a telecommunications operator to a relevant public authority. The definition of “publish” and reference to “a section of the public” would not include private messages unless they had been made public in some other way—just as our sitting room could not be considered a public place unless we opened it up to the public. It would be our choice, and nothing to do with the nature of the building.

The hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry), who has made important contributions through her chairmanship of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, raised questions about the transparency safeguards in the 2016 Act. Those extremely robust safeguards are centred on considerations relating to intrusion into privacy, and that will remain the case in the Bill. They include a requirement for investigatory powers to be used in a “necessary and proportionate” way, with independent oversight by the Investigatory Powers Commissioner and redress through the Investigatory Powers Tribunal.

My right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) contributed in his usual robust fashion to the debate—and, I should add, to the session that I was fortunate enough to have with the Intelligence and Security Committee, in which he was enormously helpful in assisting me with some changes to the Bill. He spoke about the five individuals who could be designated by the Prime Minister, and asked why we had not referred specifically to “those with warranting powers”. It is possible that a Minister with warranting powers who had that experience would then be moved to another Department, or indeed that the machinery of government change would alter the nature of the oversight. While we felt that it was right to limit the number to as few as possible, we also felt that it was right to have a relevant selection, which is why we left the number at five—after some very good consultation with the ISC, for which I am extremely grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) .

[Sir John Hayes]

My right hon. Friend has been immensely generous both in giving way and in his earlier comments about my role. Will he briefly deal with the issue of the other bodies with the regulatory function who can compel the release of communications data? As he will remember, the point I made was that the existing law obliges them to take further procedural steps before they do so. Why is that no longer deemed appropriate?

[Tom Tugendhat]

As my right hon. Friend will know, several powers in the earlier Bill—the one that he took through the House—were indeed overseen in various different ways. The Bill does not seek to undermine any of that oversight; what it seeks to do is clarify, in certain areas, where it is necessary. My right hon. Friend has highlighted individual agencies or bodies, and I should be happy to write to him to ensure he is aware of exactly where that is being covered.

The right hon. Member for North Durham spoke about prior judicial authorisation for ICRs. The purpose of the Bill is to try to streamline operations for the intelligence services in areas where the risk is of, as we are calling it, low or no expectation of privacy. He will have seen in the Bill what the expectation means, including areas where information has already been readily made public. I accept his commentary and I would be happy to enter into further conversations with him, but the reason we are not currently going down that route is simply that the existing law, the IPA 2016, allows the collection of bulk data with prior authorisation. This is intended to speed the process up. If we put in the measures he is referring to, we would effectively remain in the same place that we are now. That would make it harder for the volume of data that is now coming to be considered by the intelligence agencies. That is why we have made the provision for a subsequent approval rather than a prior approval. He is right to say that it involves a maximum of a year, although I think it unlikely that it would go to that maximum. That will be in cases where this is low or no expectation of privacy—after it has already been agreed by a judge to be in the correct category. I think the right hon. Gentleman might be looking at this through the other end of the telescope.

National Security Bill

Debate between John Hayes and Tom Tugendhat

Report stage
Wednesday 16th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Tom Tugendhat]

What I am so pleased about with this Bill is that it introduces so many ideas that the right hon. Gentleman and I have discussed in private over many years when I was in a similar position to him—scrutinising a Government. The Bill introduces some of those ideas that, yes, he is right to say, seem to have been introduced quickly, but the reality, as he knows very well, is that they have been discussed slowly. Many aspects of the Bill not only date six or seven years into the past, but update aspects that date a lot further back. Sadly, some of our national security legislation is better placed to hunt those who would send secret notes on pigeons back to Germany than to hunt those sending secret messages through the internet. This is updating quite a lot of laws that date all the way back to the first world war. I am very glad that we are doing it, and I am very glad that the right hon. Gentleman’s scrutiny in the Bill Committee has been so rigorous and so onerous.

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is right that this is an important step. In particular, he is right about the foreign influence registration scheme, which has long been called for, including by the Intelligence and Security Committee, of which I am a member. He will also know that, because we have yet to discuss that in any detail, there may be confusion about the primary and secondary tiers—in other words, those things that are designated as being of more profound importance than these other things. Would it be helpful if he were to write to the ISC, setting out how he thinks they would work in practice, given that we understand that the secondary tier will be introduced by secondary legislation?

[Tom Tugendhat]

My right hon. Friend is right. I would be very happy to write to him. I can summarise it now by saying that the primary tier is that connected to political activity. Anybody from any foreign country who wishes to influence this House, this Parliament, any Members here, or indeed any political outcome, would be looking at the primary tier. That is the basic level, and it involves a registration on a website so that we can all know who has taken payment for what—which piper has been paid and by whom.

The enhanced registration is different and requires registration for a wider range of activities, but those depend on the specific foreign power and, indeed, the entity or operation within it. That is a different matter, and that will be down to the Secretary of State looking at what is reasonably necessary in order to protect the safety and interests of the United Kingdom—that is the enhanced tier, as we are calling it. That is the summary, but I will be happy to write to the ISC.

Draft Terrorism Act 2000 (Alterations to the Search Powers Code England and Wales and Scotland) Order 2022

Debate between John Hayes and Tom Tugendhat

Wednesday 19th October 2022 General Committees

[Tom Tugendhat]

I am grateful for the cross-party support for these important measures.

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

Given the cross-party support that the Minister was just celebrating, would it be useful for the Home Secretary to write to chief constables to remind them of the importance of the new powers, and to ensure that they are up to date on how they might be applied? It could be helpful, in the circumstances, to reflect the general consensus.

[Tom Tugendhat]

I will definitely take that back to the Home Secretary; I am sure that she will be delighted to do that. I am sure chief constables will be aware that the measures have cross-party support, and therefore the support of the whole country.

Question put and agreed to.