Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill
Pete Wishart Excerpts(11 years, 3 months ago)
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Caroline Lucas
I will say only a few words, but I want to explain why I will not support amendment 4.
My opposition to TPIMs and their predecessors, control orders, is on the record. The latest proposals do nothing to address my long-held concerns. The measures before us will take us back in time to when the Secretary of State could require an individual to live in a residence and locality in the UK that he or she considered appropriate. That was a feature of the previous Administration that was abandoned by the current Home Secretary for good reasons. She has now taken a step backwards. Given that these measures will make it possible for individuals to be removed from their families and communities and placed, effectively, in isolation, I do not share the pleasure that is apparent on the Opposition Front Bench, nor the view of the Opposition that it is acceptable to allow people to be relocated without any limit on the distance.
The courts have ruled on a number of occasions that internal exile, in conjunction with the imposition of other restrictions, constitutes a violation of article 5 of the European convention on human rights. That stands whether someone is relocated 50 miles, 150 miles or 250 miles away from their home. In one case, Mr Justice Mitting ruled that, on the basis of evidence provided by the wife of the individual who was subject to a control order, the threat that the detainee posed would be reduced if he were able to remain with his family. That brings us to the crux of the matter. There is not a scrap of evidence that such a brutal and punitive regime plays a role in countering terrorism. In fact, it may well be counter-productive.
When a suspect is subjected to a TPIM, it tips them off, making it much more difficult to gather evidence of terrorism-related activity. TPIMs exacerbate the potential for increased alienation and radicalisation, because they can be made against those who pose no direct threat to the British public. Moreover, as Liberty and others have reported, and as the shadow Minister just said, TPIMs have never led to a terrorism-related prosecution. If the purpose of such proposals is to counter terrorism and make us more secure, TPIMs have little to recommend them and neither did control orders before them. I believe that we should move forward, rather than take a step backwards, as the amendment would have us do.
Clause 13 removes the defence of a reasonable excuse for those who breach a TPIM and leave the UK. The measures in the Bill undermine some of the basic tenets of our justice system. Clause 13 will allow for somebody to be imprisoned for up to 10 years for breaching a TPIM, even though a TPIM can be imposed without any need for them to be arrested, charged or convicted for a terrorism offence. In other words, it will allow somebody to be criminalised and locked up for 10 years for breaching a civil sanction. That move will turn our justice system on its head. It is at odds with everything we ought to hold dear. I hope that Members will not stand by and let such a draconian measure pass.
One former Law Lord, referring to the control order regime, said:
“They are, and always have been, a blot on our jurisprudence.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 3 March 2010; Vol. 717, c. 1528.]
That criticism stands, with or without the changes that have been outlined today. I am disappointed that the Home Secretary is advocating more of what Justice calls
“an ineffective and draconian diversion from prosecution of criminal behaviour.”
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
These are terrible amendments. They are so sadly and typically new Labour. The control order regime was the centrepiece of what is commonly described as the new Labour anti-civil libertarian state. It had all the usual new Labour features: suspicion, restrictions without trial and sweeping powers for the Secretary of State to make up her mind about convictions. New Labour was always on the wrong side of the crucial balance between making our nation safe through security-related legislation and upholding civil liberties. The control order regime was part of the central agenda that new Labour constructed, which included the suggestion that suspects should be locked up for 90 days without trial, ID cards and national databases. Under new Labour, we became probably the most restrictive, anti-civil libertarian state anywhere in the European Union.
As Members have said, there have been no prosecutions of people on control orders or TPIMs. That suggests that they are either really good or really rubbish. I supported the Conservatives when they moved against control orders. They did the right thing in abolishing control orders. We did not like TPIMs because they had features that were sadly reminiscent of new Labour’s control order regime, but the Conservatives seemed to be rowing back from the anti-civil libertarian state that had been constructed by new Labour and we supported them on that basis.
Mr Khalid Mahmood (Birmingham, Perry Barr) (Lab)
Does the hon. Gentleman have an alternative proposal to put to the Committee?
Pete Wishart
The hon. Gentleman hits the nail on the head. These measures are counter-productive in trying to make our country safe. All they do is tip people off that there is a particular issue with an individual. If there is a terrorist community, the first thing that they will take note of is the fact that somebody has been the subject of a TPIM or a control order. It alerts them to the fact that something is going on. I am all for making our country safe, but have there been any prosecutions? No.
The saddest and most bizarre feature of control orders and TPIMs is that they are all about suspicion. There is never enough evidence to test these matters in court, to take them to trial, to have a judge and jury decide whether something is going on. It is all about suspicion. That is the critical feature of TPIMs, as it was of the control order regime. How can anybody try to secure their innocence when they are subject to such measures? They have no opportunity to do so at all. They just have to accept the situation.
Unfortunately, the relocation measures will bring TPIMs right back to where we were with control orders. That was the defining difference between TPIMs and control orders. It is therefore particularly depressing that relocation is a feature of the new TPIM regime in the Bill. I hope that the Minister will resist Labour’s call to extend the powers further by making relocation even more restrictive and having another list of qualifications in the TPIM regime. I know that he will resist that and ensure that Labour, in its new Labour guise, will not have its way.
Diana Johnson
I am listening carefully to the hon. Gentleman. He should have listened to what I said, which was that these are probing amendments to allow us fully to understand the Government’s thinking. They are intended not to extend the powers in the Bill, but to seek clarification. I hope that he will take that on board.
Pete Wishart
I am a bit more satisfied, but on the face of it, the amendments do call for further restrictions. If they are just probing amendments, that is fair enough and we will hear the Minister’s response. Regardless of whether the amendments are probing or active, I hope that he is not convinced to back anything that Labour is suggesting, because that would make matters worse.
It seems to me that the Labour leopard has not changed its new Labour, anti-civil libertarian spots. Labour still wants further restrictions. It still wants the Government to go further, despite the critical balancing act that we always have to consider between the necessary steps to keep our nation safe and the civil liberties that we cherish and value in a democracy. New Labour got the balance drastically, appallingly wrong. Unfortunately, the Conservatives are moving on to that territory once again. I hope that the amendments are resisted. I understand that they are just probing amendments, and that is fine, but I hope that the Minister will not be probed into accepting what is being suggested by the Labour party.
Ian Swales
I am enjoying the hon. Gentleman’s speech. Does he remember that the previous Government introduced a raft of new offences under terrorism legislation, and therefore the gap that TPIMs or control orders are there to fill should be, and indeed has proved to be, negligible? Are they needed at all?
Pete Wishart
I think I took part in practically all the debates in this House on these issues—indeed, the hon. Gentleman and I would have sat on the same Benches when arguing against what new Labour was trying to create with these measures. He is right: are such measures necessary? One individual in the country is subject to a TPIM, yet we are discussing the issue in Parliament and ensuring that what will probably be expensive resources are allocated to ensure that this new restrictive measure goes through. Is it worth while?
I do not like TPIMs—the Minister knows that—and I disliked control orders even more. Are they necessary? I suspect not. Do they do anything to make our nation safe? No, they do not. Should we be doing other things to make our country safe? Yes, we should, but unfortunately no amendment has been tabled that will deal with those issues. I hope that the Minister is not in the mood to accept Labour’s suggestions—
Pete Wishart
I see by his response that he is not. I hope the amendments are rejected and that in future we do something that will make our country safe without having to resort to measures such as TPIMs.
Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)
I wish to take slight issue with the hon. Members for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) and for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas). The hon. Gentleman’s speech seemed to play to a particular event that will take place over the next few months in Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom, and it was more about distancing the Scottish National party from the position taken by Labour. That is fair enough; he is entitled to do that but he seemed to be putting rather more heat than light into the debate. To be slightly more serious—as I am sure he intended to be—the problem with the approach taken by him and the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion is that they describe a black and white world where either we have the evidence, in which case we go through the court system, prosecute someone and if that is successful they receive an appropriate sentence, or else there is not enough evidence to bring forward a court case so someone is not controlled at all. The difficulty is that the world is not black and white in that way.
Suppose one of our intelligence agencies has information from a liaison partner—the United States, for example—about somebody’s connections, or plans that they may be involved in with a third party elsewhere in the world to commit an act of terrorism in this country. There is a problem with taking such a case through the courts because the information it is based on is governed by the control principle—namely that that information is the property of the other agency, which in this case is in the United States. To allow that information to appear in a court case as evidence would undermine the relationship between the UK and that liaison partner.
James Brokenshire
In large measure, it has been the changing nature of the threat picture. My right hon. and learned Friend will know from his time in government that in the past two years we have seen a very altered threat picture and, as he will no doubt recognise, a rise in the threat level earlier this year. The Government need to consider, in a responsible fashion, that changed threat picture and the advice we received from the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation. The proposals in the Bill are formed with that insight clearly in mind and David Anderson’s specific recommendation on this point. It has been against all those factors that we have judged that the right thing to do is to introduce the measures in this way, subject to the safeguards I have spoken about in respect of the change in the burden of proof and the specific limitation on relocation being limited to 200 miles from the location of the individual. I will come on to speak on that in a more direct fashion, recognising the point the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North rightly raised in her amendment.
Pete Wishart
I am sure the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), with his years of distinguished service to the House, deserves a better answer than that pathetic response from the Minister. The question the Minister has to answer is: why? What evidence does he have to suggest that relocation is now necessary? Why relocation? Why now?
James Brokenshire
If the hon. Gentleman is not able to recognise the change in the nature of the threat and the evolving picture taking place in recent months, I am sorry he is blind to it. The Government have a responsibility to respond to it in a fair way. We have to take into consideration the advice we receive from the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, and listen to the Security Service and the police, who we have consulted, to ensure we have the right package of measures, challenging ourselves and others, to do all we can in a proportionate and necessary way to ensure that those agencies have the appropriate powers to guard against the changed risk picture, as well as ensuring an appropriate balance between privacy and security. I agree with the hon. Gentleman and my right hon. and learned Friend on the issue of absconds. A point that David Anderson made directly was that the only way in which one could be absolutely certain that someone was unable to abscond was by putting them in a prison cell, which is why my preference always is to seek a prosecution, when the evidence is there. The challenge is that it is not always available.
Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill
Pete Wishart Excerpts(11 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mrs May
That is not the intention of the duty; its intention is to ensure that the university or institution has in place a policy on matters relating to extremism. For example, they might have a general policy that they apply in relation to extremist speakers coming to their institution. The purpose of the power to make a direction in the Bill is to ensure that they are doing something like that, taking their statutory duty seriously. It is for those institutions that are failing to comply with the statutory duty that that particular power has been put into the Bill.
Alongside that statutory requirement in relation to Prevent, the Bill will also provide a statutory basis for the existing programmes for those at risk of being drawn into terrorism, known as Channel in England and Wales. That will enshrine existing good practice and help to ensure consistency across all local areas.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
As the Home Secretary knows, the Prevent strategy falls within the competence of Scottish Ministers under the devolved settlement. Scottish Ministers have their own priorities and agenda when it comes to delivering those measures in Scotland. I know that there have been discussions with Home Office Ministers about excluding Scotland from that power, so that we can have the opportunity to consult our public bodies properly. Is she open to that type of approach, so that Scotland could be included in the measures later, when we have had an opportunity to work out what it would actually mean for our public bodies and their responsibilities?
Mrs May
I point out to the hon. Gentleman that counter-terrorism is obviously a reserved matter. He might like to know that his point relates to the very next paragraph I was about to read. It is the Government’s hope and intention that these provisions should also apply to Scotland. We are consulting Ministers in the devolved Administrations about the practical implications of our proposals, and obviously those discussions will continue with the Scottish Government.
Part 6 includes amendments to two provisions in the Terrorism Act 2000. First, it will put it beyond doubt that UK insurance firms cannot reimburse payments made to terrorists in response to ransom demands. To put that in context, the UN estimates that ransom payments raised up to £28 million for ISIL over the past 12 months alone. We need to avoid any uncertainty on that issue.
Secondly, the Bill will clarify our counter-terrorism port and border controls in relation to where goods may be examined and the examination of goods comprising items of post. That is an important part of our counter-terrorism port and border controls and the disruption of those engaged in terrorism. We must ensure that the law is clear and that the police can fulfil their duties.
The powers in the Bill are essential, but they should be used only where it is necessary and proportionate to do so. Their use will be stringently safeguarded, including through suitable legal thresholds and judicial oversight of certain measures. Part 7 of the Bill will also allow for the creation of a privacy and civil liberties board to support the important work of David Anderson QC, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation.
Finally, the Bill includes a provision to ensure that challenges to refusals of applications for British overseas territories citizenship can be heard before the Special Immigration Appeals Commission, so that sensitive material can be protected. This simply addresses an anomaly in existing legislation.
I have stressed the urgency and importance of this legislation. This is not a knee-jerk reaction but a considered, targeted approach that ensures that our law enforcement and intelligence agencies have the powers they need to respond to the heightened threat to our national security. Substantial work, in consultation with the police and MI5, has gone into drafting the clauses. Where the measures impact on those in the private sector or civil society, we have consulted the relevant bodies.
I am grateful to the shadow Home Secretary for engaging in constructive discussions on the timetable for the Bill.
Yvette Cooper
It is absolutely right to look at both violent and non-violent extremism. If the Home Secretary has listened to what my right hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles has said on the issue over many years, she will know that the previous Government’s work was about looking at both violent and non-violent extremism and at the process of radicalisation from beginning to end. The whole point of providing counter-narratives is to tackle non-violent as well as violent extremism.
It is unfortunate that the Home Secretary chose to narrow the programme in the way she did and handed over community-led Prevent programmes to the Department for Communities and Local Government, which simply did not pursue them. The police have done very good work, but narrowing Prevent to just a police-led programme means that it has simply not been effective, and there have also been considerable gaps in the programme.
On the Secretary of State’s power of direction, there will be questions not only about how she intends to use it, but about what safeguards will ensure that she does use that power inappropriately.
The next challenge is how to deal with those who have become radicalised and pose a serious threat. Wherever possible, those people should clearly be prosecuted and passed through our courts. We know that there are difficult cases in which that is not possible, but people still pose a serious terror threat. It will come as no surprise to the Home Secretary or the House that we welcome the return of the relocation powers. She told the House in 2011 that the removal of the relocation power was a deliberate and desirable part of TPIMs. She said:
“Forcible relocation will be ended”,
and individuals
“will have greater freedom to associate.”—[Official Report, 26 January 2011; Vol. 522, c. 308.]
The Home Secretary defended her decision on relocation after Ibrahim Magag absconded in a black cab on Boxing day in 2012 once his relocation order had been revoked. She said at the time:
“I am confident in the TPIM package that was available”.—[Official Report, 8 January 2013; Vol. 566, c. 165.]
She also defended her decision in 2013, when Mohammed Ahmed Mohamed fled in a burqa after his relocation order was revoked.
No powers are perfect, but it is significant that no terror suspect has absconded under a relocation order. The Home Secretary has said in the House that she made those changes because control orders were under threat in the courts and TPIMs were not. In fact, both the former and current independent reviewer of terrorism legislation have made it clear that relocation orders were never under threat in the courts. It was a policy decision that was taken by the Home Secretary and the coalition.
The truth is that TPIMs have not worked. Despite the increased terror threat, only one is in place at the moment and it relates to someone who has left prison. TPIMs simply do not contain enough powers to be useful for the agencies or the police, or to be worth the extra effort involved. The independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, David Anderson, concluded in his review:
“A power to relocate subjects away from their home areas would be of real practical assistance…in distancing subjects from their associates and reducing the risk of abscond. It would also facilitate monitoring, save money and could help restore faith in a TPIM regime that has withered on the vine.”
It is not because of the increased terror threat that the regime has withered on the vine; it is because the TPIM regime simply was not effective without the relocation orders that it needed.
Pete Wishart
I have not heard from either Front Bencher the two words “civil liberties”. Is it the right hon. Lady’s view that the measures we are discussing today will tilt the balance between civil liberties and security too far towards security and compromise some very important civil liberties?
Yvette Cooper
In fact, I talked about the importance of protecting both liberty and security when I opened my remarks. We need both in a democracy and it is the responsibility of Government to protect both. On TPIMs, I think that the Government were wrong to remove the relocation powers. They are important and effective, and it has been recommended that they should be restored by the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, whose judgment has proved to be balanced and sensible on a series of issues. There are other areas where additional safeguards are needed, and I will come to them shortly.
Keith Vaz
The hon. Gentleman has worked very hard on this issue for some years. I believe that the status quo does not work, and I have every sympathy with his proposal, which would enable the different programmes to be delivered together.
I mentioned earlier that the Home Secretary had addressed the Bangladeshi community yesterday. She was extremely well received by the 2,000 people who were present; she made a strong effort to relate directly to that important community. Obviously her message yesterday was different from her message today, because a different kind of event was involved, but the point is that we need to get into the DNA of communities.
The Home Secretary’s constituency contains a south Asian community—indeed, like my own constituency, it contains various communities—but we have in this Chamber Members such as my hon. Friends the Members for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr Mahmood) and for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi), both of whom are very much a part of their communities. Anyone who walks down the Lozells road with my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr will see that the entire community relates to him. We are lucky to have not just him and my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South East, but other Members with different origins, on both sides of the House. They will tell us what the voice of the community says, which is that being told what to do never works, whether by police officers or—if I say so myself—by men in grey or black suits. What is necessary is peer group pressure and community engagement, and those must come from communities themselves.
How many times do we discover from the BBC news that parents have no idea that their children have gone to Syria to fight? One parent from Brighton said that he did not know where his son had gone until he was phoned and told that the son had died. That is why peer group pressure is so vital. How do we miss this point every time? We cannot tell communities what to do; we need to engage with them, and they need to move that process forward.
Pete Wishart
The right hon. Gentleman is, of course, absolutely right about the need for us to engage with communities, but is it not our responsibility to try to understand some of what motivates people to go and do these appalling, dreadful things—the illegal wars, the conflicts in the middle east, and the injustices that they observe in Palestine? Is there a way in which we could try to understand, and perhaps take on, some of the issues that motivate people to become involved in extremist activity?
Keith Vaz
The hon. Gentleman is right. We need to understand much more, and we can only do so at local level: in the mosque, through community activities, in schools—as the Home Secretary said—in colleges, and in prisons. People who have not been radicalised go into those institutions and come out radicalised, and then there is a failure to monitor them. The solutions are all there—in reports written by Committees over a number of years, in contributions made in all the time Members have been in this House, and in speeches of Home Secretaries, as strong as the one we heard today, when she said what she wanted to put right as far as terrorism and radicalisation are concerned—but they are not acted upon, and they have to be acted upon, otherwise we will be back here in a year’s time doing the same thing again, and we do not want that.
Dr Lewis
That only goes to show that the right hon. Lady and I do not co-ordinate our efforts as seamlessly as perhaps we ought, because I should have known that. Anyway, the important thing about the article is that it looks at the consequences and conclusions of our recently published Intelligence and Security Committee report on the terrible events in Woolwich. The main question in Charles Moore’s mind about the killers is: what is it that made them so bloodthirsty and so bold in the first place? Why did they want to do such a terrible thing? He comes to the conclusion:
“Islamist extremism combines something very new—the power of internet technology—with something very old—the power of belief.”
He says that the report establishes that
“Lee Rigby’s murderers were ‘self-starting’”,
but that
“they were not lunatics or even ‘lone wolves’. They took large doses of the drug called ideology…It was supplied by pushers who might live in their neighbourhood, but might equally well live in Yemen or Aleppo.”
Charles Moore refers to the calls that have been made to start a counter-narrative, but he notes that MI5, for all its good work, does not have—some would say that it should not have this; it is not necessarily its responsibility to have it—an ideological unit. He says:
“It is rather as if we were trying to combat Communism without knowing the theories of Marxist-Leninism.”
He concludes:
“Time after time, it is non-violent subversion that has prepared the ground for serious trouble”,
and he warns against the danger of running around
“trying to catch the bad fruit, instead of taking an axe to the tree.”
This is a problem that we face at a scale that is not yet insupportable, but which could get very much worse.
Somebody once said that the problem with the world is that the ignorant are cocksure and the wise are full of doubt. The problem we have is that some people with a racist, radical, totalitarian, extremist, murderous ideology have found a way, in the name of their interpretation of their God and their Prophet, to do what extremists have always wanted to do, which is to enjoy untrammelled power over everyone else.
One cannot mobilise a society or a community to counter that successfully if one confines oneself simply to dealing with individuals whom one has already recognised as at risk of radicalisation, because they will already be on the conveyor belt to an extremist outcome and, very probably, to a violent extremist outcome. What one has to do is not to be shy about the virtues of democratic politics, institutions and ideas, or about denouncing the follies and iniquities of systems based on an ideology that stands in total opposition to everything that moderate and liberal-minded people believe.
Pete Wishart
The hon. Gentleman is making such a powerful speech that I am loth to interrupt him. I am sure that he would appreciate, respect and understand the fact that we, too, have a responsibility for creating some of the conditions that have allowed this dreadful, awful and appalling ideology to take root, through decisions such as those about military adventures in the middle east, injustice in Palestine and illegal wars. In his rounded assessment, surely he should also look at our responsibility for allowing this to happen.
Dr Lewis
When I heard the hon. Gentleman, in his articulate fashion, make that point in an earlier intervention, I felt, frankly, that it was a counsel of despair. If he is saying—[Interruption.] Let me give him my answer. If he is saying that the only way to stop terrorism is to bring peace to the middle east, then, frankly, we are never going to stop terrorism. [Interruption.] I will let him intervene again in a moment if he so wishes. I want to put to him the more serious point that we have a Muslim community of between 2 million and 3 million citizens, but I am very pleased to say that out of that very large number, only a very tiny number resort to such methods. If the real cause was western folly in interfering in the middle east, that would still not justify what the tiny minority of Muslims are doing. I will give way to him again.
Pete Wishart
In no sense was my intervention an attempt to justify what is happening. It was about accepting and assuming our responsibility following the decisions that we have made. There is absolutely no doubt whatsoever that military adventures in the middle east have increased radicalisation, with some people finding such an ideology as a response to their ultimate and desperate frustration. Surely the hon. Gentleman must recognise that.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
Here we go again, with yet another counter-terror Bill to tackle yet another threat posed by extremism—yet another essential set of measures to keep our nation safe, and to be rushed through at breakneck speed—accompanied, predictably, by yet another escalation of the threat that we are supposed to be experiencing. We are invited to believe that we are surrounded by terror plotters and backers, jihadist bombers, extremists, and just good old-fashioned nutters. No one is safe; threats are everywhere. That is why we need this legislation as quickly as possible, just as we have needed all the other Bills as quickly as possible. There have been seven counter-terrorism and security Bills since 9/11, all of which have been rushed through Parliament, all of which have been absolutely necessary, and all of which have been fast-tracked.
I suspect that this will not be the last counter-terrorism and security Bill. In fact, I do not suspect that it will be the last of the calendar year. I suspect that there will be at least one more, perhaps two, and that they too will have to be rushed through Parliament to meet the escalating threat with which we must deal. As we have heard so many times in so many speeches, we live in an era in which there will always be an existing, growing threat for us to address. So what do we do? We do the same things.
Every counter-terrorism Bill that we have considered in the House could probably be characterised by a few key features that seem to crop up again and again. We must gather, retain and collect vast amounts of personal data from internet service providers. In this instance, internet protocols must be collected just in case we find something that could be used in the future. That cause is very dear to the Home Secretary’s heart, because she still hankers after a snoopers’ charter. She would probably have her way in the event of a majority Conservative Government next year, because I fully expect it to be included in any Conservative manifesto. We must continue to subject suspects to internal exile, for that is exactly what we are doing. I applauded the Conservatives when they reversed new Labour’s control orders—I thought that TPIMs were an improvement—but we are back to what is effectively internal exile. We are working towards depriving people of statehood. We are preventing people from travelling, and we are considering home arrest without trial. It is all the usual stuff.
Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
My hon. Friend may recall that, during the last Parliament, 90 days of detention without trial seemed to be the litmus test of the Blair Government’s machismo. That fell by the wayside, but, in view of what my hon. Friend has been saying about those seven Bills and the groundhog day aspect of this debate, does he envisage a return to the “90 days” proposal?
Pete Wishart
I know that my hon. Friend has been paying real attention to some of the conversations that we have been having. That is exactly how Labour behaved. What a Government! They established and effectively monitored an anti-civil libertarian state. My hon. Friend is spot on when he reminds us of the proposal for 90-day detention. The one reason for which I applauded the incoming Conservative Government was that the first thing they did was bring about the bonfire of the ID cards and the national database. Is it not depressing that they have fallen into their old manners and customs? They are almost right back to where the Labour Government were in supporting the creation and maintenance of an anti-civil libertarian state.
We always get this wrong. At the heart of all these counter-terrorism Bills is a critical balancing act. On one hand there is our need for security—the need to make our citizens safe—and on the other hand are the civil liberties that we all enjoy as a result of being part of a democracy.
Jeremy Corbyn
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that one problem is that there is a mentality and a default position that anything to do with national security and terrorism has to be dealt with by secretive special courts and a secretive special process, all designed to protect the security services from any kind of accountability? Does he agree that we should actually rely much more on the basis of the criminal law, so that where people commit criminal acts, they should be tried for that crime?
Pete Wishart
The hon. Gentleman reminds me of the last feature I wanted to include in the list of what we always see in these counter-terror Bills, which is the very thing he mentions; it is all about suspicion, and the powers of the Home Secretary and how she will be allowed to exercise them, never testing things in courts, because the evidence is not substantive enough. It is all to do with this idea that somehow we have got to make people safe in this country by proposing all sorts of control mechanisms on suspects. If the Government were serious about this—if they believed and had the courage of their convictions—they should take it to court and test it in the public court, and give people an opportunity to defend themselves. If someone is subject to one of these new TPIMs, they have no means to try to fight their defence; they have no access to having that tested in court. The Government talk about how extremism develops, about radicalisation and about the furthering of ideologies, but when they are doing things like this, it is no surprise that people might take a jaundiced view about some of the things that happen.
I enjoyed the contribution of the hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis). It was good and there was very little I could disagree with. Some of the things that are necessary to tackle extremism are the sorts of things he presented, and many of the things mentioned by the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears) are also absolutely necessary, but we have got to look at ourselves. We have got to look at the decisions we made. We have got to understand the things we have said, passed and done that may have inflamed the situation. If we cannot do that, we are not acting responsibly. We have got to make sure we account for our actions and see what they led to.
I was in the House when we had the debate on the Iraq war, as were other Members, and we said what would happen as a consequence of the Iraq war—an illegal war that inflamed opinion and passions not just in communities here, but communities around the world. We said that there would be a consequence and a reaction. That has come true. That has happened. The reason why we are now having to mop up with this type of legislation and these types of measures is because of some of the critical decisions we took, and some of the appalling and bad decisions we made and are still accounting for.
Hazel Blears
Does the hon. Gentleman not recognise that, in equal measure, the decision not to intervene in the events in Syria may also have inflamed the feelings of some of the people who saw the terrible events played out on their screens showing what was happening to vulnerable families in those circumstances?
Pete Wishart
What I accept is that there was a failure to recognise some of the international dynamics that influence communities in this country. The solution always seems to be that we have to intervene—that we have got to try to make the world better—and sometimes we are unaware of the unintended consequences that come from that. All I am saying to this House is that at some point we have got to acknowledge what we have done in terms of framing the conditions and setting the environment in which these things happen. By failing to do that, and by failing to acknowledge that type of issue, we will be hampered in our approach to these matters, and the very good things in Prevent and all the anti-radicalisation programmes will fall and fail, because we will have missed out a crucial part of the holistic view we need to take of these things.
Mr MacNeil
Syria has been mentioned. Last year the idea was to intervene in Syria on one side, but this year the idea was to intervene on the other side. As we encourage professionals in all walks of life in this country to critically self-assess, my hon. Friend is right to say that we should be moving towards a point where Government, MPs and Parliament critically self-assess what the consequences of our actions have been over decades past.
Pete Wishart
Again, my hon. Friend is spot-on. We should be proofing anything we suggest and put through, and assessing the impact and effect it might have and any unintended consequences on communities we represent. If we were to do that, we would start to make progress.
What does the Bill do? It is specifically designed to tackle the threat posed by the so-called Islamic State, which, according to the Home Secretary, has given energy and a renewed sense of purpose to subversive Islamist organisations and radical leaders in Britain. No kidding, Madam Deputy Speaker. What does this rush Bill propose that is different from all the others? It has got all the usual features, of course, because they are the bedrock—
Deferred Divisions
Pete Wishart Excerpts(11 years, 3 months ago)
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Pete Wishart
I thought that I was going to get one of my traditional and routine tickings-off from you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am glad that it was just an interruption for the 7 o’clock motion.
Pete Wishart
I am grateful for the early Christmas cheer.
To return to the Bill, what new measures does it contain? I suppose that its unique selling point is the introduction of temporary exclusion orders. They are a relatively new feature, and I do not think that there has been much discussion of them. They are designed to ban British citizens who are suspected of travelling abroad to fight for terror groups from re-entering the UK, and they involve the cancellation of travel documents and the inclusion of such individuals on watch lists and no-fly lists. The Bill allows the cancellation of passports at the border for up to 30 days. The police and border forces will be able to seize the passports and tickets of British citizens if they suspect that those individuals intend to engage in terrorism-related activities at their destination.
That all moves us quite conveniently and neatly towards the idea of statelessness, which we have looked at in relation to other matters that we have debated in the House, and which seems to be the drift and the trend. I would be grateful if the Minister would tell me where we have got with the 30 days issue. I listened carefully to the Home Secretary’s speech, in which she said clearly that the Government are in control of allowing people back in. Well, we have heard about some of the difficulties with that. What happens if there is a breakdown of bilateral relationships with other nations that are not prepared to play along with the UK’s game? Surely, an effective state of statelessness will emerge.
The Bill includes the stronger enforcement of TPIMs, including an ability for the authorities to force suspects to move to another part of the country, which amounts to internal exile. There is no great difference between that and the main feature of Labour’s control orders. The Bill also contains curious stuff about colleges and universities, and the expectation that our higher education institutions will prevent individuals from being drawn into terrorism. The measures include banning extremist speakers from campus grounds. How that is to be achieved without massive impacts on academic freedom and freedom of speech in higher education institutions is beyond me. I am looking forward to guidance about how those freedoms will be maintained and guaranteed. Our universities and colleges have already started to raise concerns. I listened carefully to the right hon. and learned Member for North East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell) who said that only yesterday there was concern about how the proposal would be represented in colleges and universities. We have to be careful about how we pursue such a measure.
Perhaps most controversially, the Bill contains measures to require internet service providers to retain data on internet protocol addresses to enable authorities to identify individual users. That brings us neatly to the ongoing concern about, and the trend towards, the Home Secretary’s much-coveted snoopers charter. We are all in the business of doing all that we can to keep the people of our nation safe and secure, but that does not always mean that we must necessarily agree with everything that the Home Secretary says from the Dispatch Box. Some of us might even have a different way of doing things and different suggestions about how to get the balance right between assuring our safety and security and making sure that there is no compromise on our civil liberties. That is why in Scotland, where we have specific responsibilities on that agenda, we take a different view about how it can be better progressed. In Scotland, we want to ensure that our police and our other public bodies have the tools they need not only to tackle and prevent terrorism but to maintain a community where civil liberties are respected and where measures that are introduced are proportionate and have full community support. We have our own separate and distinct legal system in Scotland, and we have a range of devolved responsibilities. We have responsibilities for delivering large parts of the agenda in the Bill, particularly on the Prevent side. Once again, we have seen an almost total lack of consultation between this Government and the Scottish Government, who have specific responsibilities for delivering large swathes of the Bill because of devolved competences.
Mr MacNeil
Does my hon. Friend think—this is emerging in his speech—that in the seven Bills he has mentioned, and in the responses of both the Labour and Conservative Governments over the years, the reaction has been, “Must do something, although we are not sure what”? That seems to be the driving policy. There is not much thought in their policy, but the policy is, “Must do something.” It is probably headlines driving the policy.
Pete Wishart
That “must do something” feeling has probably increased as we approach an election year. The Conservative Government have gone a bit more cautiously and trodden a little more gently and carefully into this area than the previous Labour Government. The Labour Government went all guns blazing straight into the Labour anti-civil libertarian state they so carefully constructed and made sure they managed so effectively. The Conservatives have played this game a little differently, but we are now into an election year. So what is a good move to get people overexcited about political issues? What is the approach to take? It is, “Get a terror Bill, to make sure you are seen to be hard on this. That will differentiate us, and challenge the Labour party and all our political opponents to say we are doing this wrong.” That is not a game we have a particular interest in playing.
So we have this idea and this conversation we are having between the Government and Scottish Ministers, but the Scottish Government did not even get sight of some of the measures in this Bill on First Reading. I know that the Minister has been in touch with our new Justice Secretary, so he will know the unhappiness there is in Scotland about some aspects of all this. The Scottish Government have said that because we have responsibility for the public bodies mentioned in so many bits of this Bill, we want proper consultation. We are not interested in this fast-tracking and getting it through as quickly as possible because it is an election year—we want to do this right. Where we have devolved responsibilities for delivering this agenda, we want to make sure that the public bodies accountable to our Parliament will be properly consulted, so that we can shape up and make sure we have a proper agenda. We have therefore asked the Minister to take Scotland out of the Prevent side of these measures. The schedules relating to Scottish public bodies have already been dropped in part of this. I suggest, and I hope the Minister may be open to this approach, that he seeks to ensure that we at least have the opportunity to engage with our public bodies and consult them properly, and to make the right decisions that suit our agenda and our responsibilities. That would be good. Sometimes we tend to look at things such as the Prevent strategy in a proper, holistic way, considering how public bodies could also promote cohesion, well-being and democracy. That is the way we differ on looking at these things, and we hope the Government follow our approach.
Let me say something about my commitment and my reason for taking this on. David Haines, the British man so brutally executed by ISIS forces in Iraq, was a constituent of mine. His family were in Perth, and I was at the memorial service that was held. His killing was an appalling act and it brought this right home to my community. The way the people of Perth responded to what they had observed—the brutal, appalling murder—was nothing short of magnificent. They made sure that David Haines was properly commemorated and that his memory will endure in Perth, and it was fantastic. So I know how these issues are brought home to specific communities and I have seen the wonderful way communities unite to make sure they gather around that family, making sure they are supported, and try to understand. But the most impressive thing for me was that I saw a real attempt to understand what was going on within this—more so than probably the Government have done. People wanted to understand why this happened in our community and what special conditions led to this happening in a small, sleepy little city such as Perth.
Every single one of us in this House has a job of work to do to keep our communities safe and to keep brave people such as David Haines safe. David Haines went out there to help the world become a better place and to ensure that communities without help and assistance could be helped and assisted. All of us have a responsibility in this regard, so I will take no lectures from anybody in this House about being soft on terrorism or about our Government taking no interest in this matter. We all have an interest in this matter. We might not all agree on everything. I vehemently disagreed with the approach of the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles when she was in the Labour Government. I was keen on what the Conservative-led Government were doing at first, but I am less keen now. But let us all work together. We need to look at this whole thing holistically. We should take responsibility for the things that we do wrong and challenge the horrible extremism and ideology that exist in our communities, but let us do it together, do it sensibly and do it constructively.
EU Justice and Home Affairs Measures
Pete Wishart Excerpts(11 years, 4 months ago)
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Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
Well, Madam Deputy Speaker, that certainly was some night last week, wasn’t it? It was the great European arrest warrant debate that never was, and the night we apparently passed something as important as the European arrest warrant by proxy. In my 14 years as a Member of Parliament, there are certain things I thought I would say in the House of Commons, but I thought that asking Mr Speaker that “the Question, That the Question be not now put, be now put” was something belonging to a Monty Python sketch, not to a Hansard report of the House of Commons. I wondered how all that would appear to my constituents, but they loved it. They thought that it was surreal comedy at its finest, to the extent that one of them asked, “Is it like that every night, Pete? If it is, I would never have voted to leave this place.” Here we are: we are all back in our seats—like déjà vu—all over again, only this time we have an actual vote on the European arrest warrant to accompany the debate.
The Tory obsession with European exit has taken us to the very point of withdrawing from a process that ensures the effective transfer of foreign criminals to face justice. Listening to some Conservative Members—I have a great deal of fondness and respect for some of them—it seems to me that anything prefixed with the word “European” is viewed with maximum suspicion, and that anything involving European co-operation and EU nations working together is to be resisted at all costs. Let us be clear that that is what this is all about. This has absolutely nothing to do with the most effective and convenient way of ensuring that criminals are brought to justice, but everything to do with keeping Europe out of any role in the institutional affairs of the United Kingdom.
Nick de Bois
May I ask the hon. Gentleman to look through the other end of the telescope? Is not his thirst and love for the EU encouraging him to put the expediency of a process over justice for innocents?
Pete Wishart
I want to come on to that point, and I will mention a particular case about the use of the European arrest warrant that concerns me.
What are the Government doing about this growing Euroscepticism? They are in and out of the home affairs chapter as though they were doing the hokey cokey at the UKIP Christmas party—first we are in, then we are out, then we shake it all about like a “kipper” in a Kent by-election. This may or may not be a really good day for the Government to have a debate about the European arrest warrant. We have the Rochester and Strood by-election soon, and, as it looks like the Tories will be overwhelmingly defeated, the rebellion this evening will be minimised. However, this debate will also suggest to Farage, the rest of UKIP and the Euro-exiters that the Government are still in thrall to the European Union.
The Government are doing the right thing tonight in not opposing the motion, and I support them, but I encourage them to take on the “kippers” a bit more than they do, rather than pandering to them. See what pandering to UKIP has done: the Government’s opinion rating has gone down faster than a UKIP comment at an equalities convention. Now this monstrous race to the bottom on EU exit has been joined by the Labour party. It is getting stuck in, too, but all it needs to do is have a look at what has happened to the Conservative party. Do not pander to UKIP; take it on. It is the only way to do it. Our stock is rising in Scotland because we are prepared to take on the anti-European agenda and this nonsense about immigration. Is it not time that the Conservative Government and the Labour party started to take on UKIP rather than pandering to its members?
Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
Can the hon. Gentleman explain why he, as someone who wants Scottish independence and to be completely independent of the United Kingdom Government, wants to put himself completely under the government of the European Union?
Pete Wishart
That is a ridiculous point. We want what all other member states of the European Union have, which is equal membership of the European Union. We want the same as Denmark, Ireland, Austria and Finland. It is very simple.
The UK is now heading towards the European exit door like a stumbling drunk, cursing incomprehensibly. A bemused Europe watches, not knowing whether to sing “Please Don’t Go” or breathe a sigh of relief because it will soon be relieved of the surly, semi-detached, self-obsessed member. This is a UK with one foot already out of Europe and it looks like it will take my nation with it.
Pete Wishart
I cannot give way to the right hon. and learned Gentleman, as I have no more time in which to do so.
We were supposed to be a family of nations—that is what we were told in the independence referendum—and to be equal partners within the United Kingdom, yet big brother England will drag my nation out of Europe against its will. We are like a small brother, to be scolded and told what is good for us.
Pete Wishart
I have no more time to take interventions.
That is the reality for Scotland in Europe. We value our place in Europe and see support for Europe way beyond what is happening in the rest of the United Kingdom. The European arrest warrant is critical for Scotland and we value it. We do not have the ridiculous and absurd examples that are given of insignificant and inappropriate cases. The European arrest warrant has worked for us in 600 cases involving Scotland and fellow member states of the European Union. We have our own distinct legal jurisdiction. We have our own Procurator Fiscal Service and our own Faculty of Advocates, as well as our own Law Society of Scotland. They all support the European arrest warrant. Is it not appalling that the Government could not even be bothered to lift the phone to tell the Scottish Government that they would be withdrawing from the home affairs chapter of the European Union? There were hardly any conversations with Scottish Ministers or even Scottish officials about the renegotiation for opting back into some of these measures—
Pete Wishart
I cannot give way to the right hon. and learned Gentleman. I have already said to him that I have no more time.
This is what we see again and again: disrespect for all the Assemblies across the United Kingdom. There is no consultation and no discussion; we are just expected to fall in line.
Pete Wishart
I am not going to give way to the right hon. and learned Gentleman. I do not know how I can, as I have no more time—[Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. The hon. Gentleman is not going to give way.
Pete Wishart
I cannot give way as I have no more time.
I want to address a point about one important case in Scotland. A Polish national, Grzegorz Gamla, was convicted last December of the murder of Maciej Ciania in Leith. He was arrested by the Polish authorities within five hours of a European arrest warrant being issued. We do not have any of the silly, insignificant and unsubstantial cases that others have cited, and I think that is because we have our own jurisdiction in Scotland and because of how we look at these matters. This is not the European arrest warrant’s fault, but it might be the fault of how the Ministry of Justice looks at such matters. Perhaps it should be looking at its own procedures to see whether they can be addressed properly.
In Scotland, we do not share the Euro-hostility that seems to pervade this House and the UKIPification of the UK in which Master Farage pulls all the strings and those on the Tory Front Bench dance along. The UKIPification of the UK is almost complete. The hon. Member for Clacton (Douglas Carswell) is in his place. He will be joined by his friend on Thursday. I do not know how many other Conservative Members will resign, but I suspect it will be quite a few.
My country is going to be dragged out of the European Union against its will because of the Euro-hostility in this place. We observe these things, but we want no part in them. We are being dragged out against our will. I just wish that the Conservatives would take on UKIP, stop pandering to it and stand up for their own values, rather than for the values of the hon. Member for Clacton and his party.
Business of the House (Today)
Pete Wishart Excerpts(11 years, 4 months ago)
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Sir Menzies Campbell (North East Fife) (LD)
From time to time during my career here, the procedures of the House have stood in the way of its intention. Often on these occasions, the matters have been resolved on the basis of, I suppose, allowing a more mature consideration, and with the Treasury Bench seeking the opportunity to take with it all the disparate opinions within the House, making it clear that nothing is being done that thwarts the will of the House to discuss a matter of such significance as the one under consideration today. Would it not therefore be appropriate for the Treasury Bench to take the opportunity of having more mature consideration and to withdraw this motion, proposing instead one that would meet the aspirations of those who either support or oppose—
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way?
Sir Menzies Campbell
I am not an expert on procedure, Mr Speaker, but I understand what is happening here.
Pete Wishart
I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman. He can have his way: all he needs to do is to encourage his fellow Liberal Members to vote against the business motion. If it is defeated, the Government will have to go away, think again and present something sensible so that we can all debate what we want to debate. He should get the Liberals to vote against the business motion.
Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)
In my 31 years in this Chamber I have never seen the nonsense we have got this afternoon ever happen under any Government. If it is without precedent, Mr Speaker, could we perhaps retire for half an hour or so, so the Government can put down a motion that is intelligible and that they could understand as well, so we can make a decision in a meaningful and proper way?
Pete Wishart
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. It is quite clear that the Government Whips and those on the Treasury Bench have concocted some sort of conclusion to this utter shambles. May we not hear, right now, from the Home Secretary, the Justice Secretary or the Chief Whip? Let us get this over and done with. For goodness’ sake, there are people watching this who will be appalled at what is going on in the House. Put an end to it now!
Mr Speaker
I understand what people are saying, but procedure does allow other colleagues to speak and I do not want to deprive them of that opportunity if they still wish to contribute.
Criminal Law
Pete Wishart Excerpts(11 years, 4 months ago)
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Mrs May
I have been very clear that the formal vote before the House is on the regulations. I have also been clear that the Government—I will come on to explain our timetable, which has some relevance to this matter—want to opt back in to measures that are in a package. If the House votes against transposing some of those measures into UK legislation, it is effectively voting against our package of measures. On that basis, we can speak about all the measures within the package of 35 measures.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
Why did the Home Secretary not just include the European arrest warrant in tonight’s motion?
Mrs May
I have explained that the statutory instrument transposes those measures that require legislation. I repeat—I am happy to speak about this again later—that we are not required to transpose the European arrest warrant into UK legislation because it is already in UK legislation, in the Extradition Act 2003.
We had an opportunity to exercise the opt-out, and we did so. We have brought back more than 100 powers from Brussels.
Mrs May
My hon. Friend makes a good point, and as an assiduous member of the Home Affairs Committee he has looked at the matter in some detail. He is absolutely right that the Committee was clear about the benefits of the European arrest warrant. We have indeed made changes to it, thanks to which the National Crime Agency refuses requests before they even get to our courts in the case of the most trivial offences, freeing up police and court time for more serious matters.
Pete Wishart
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. In your ruling, you made it clear that reference to the European arrest warrant was to be made only in passing. The Home Secretary has been speaking about the European arrest warrant for the past 10 minutes. Is that not in total contravention of what you ruled earlier?
Mr Speaker
I said in my statement that I intended to offer latitude, so that the matters of which the House wishes to treat may be properly aired. I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s intentions in seeking clarity from the Chair, but nothing I have heard so far has conflicted with that. I intended—and I intend—pragmatically to handle matters from where we are, which, as I think we all agree, is sub-optimal.
Mr Speaker
The hon. Gentleman can do so, but it is for the Chair—[Interruption.] No, no other debate is required, as has politely been suggested from a sedentary position. It is for the Chair to decide whether to accept what is effectively a closure motion, and the answer to the hon. Gentleman is that at this rather early stage in debating these particular matters—the previous question—I do not accept the closure motion. We are in the middle of a speech by the Home Secretary and there may be other contributions. A former senior Cabinet Minister wishes to contribute and possibly other Members, so I would take a view on that matter in due course, but not now.
Bill Wiggin
I am most grateful for your guidance, Mr Speaker. I have been at pains to avoid mentioning anything that might fall outside the motion—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
What I would say to the hon. Gentleman is that it is very difficult to interpret the precise will of the House on these matters without notice. I am alert to the argument for closure, which is what he is seeking, but several other Members have been standing—[Interruption.] Order. Therefore, I am quite open to the case for closure after a reasonable interval, but I would like to see whether, when the hon. Member for North Herefordshire (Bill Wiggin) has concluded his speech—before it becomes even more disorderly—there are other hon. Members still seeking to catch my eye. If there are, and if my assessment is that they are likely to want to make orderly speeches, I might wish to hear them. If the hon. Gentleman is hopeful that closure might be accepted before too long has passed—I leave the House to consider what constitutes “too long”—he may not be disappointed.
Refugees and Migrants (Search and Rescue Operation)
Pete Wishart Excerpts(11 years, 4 months ago)
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James Brokenshire
I do not underestimate the sheer evil of the traffickers. They exploit the vulnerable and put them to sea in boats that are not seaworthy and are not necessarily able to reach the shores of the European Union. That is why I was clear in my statement about ensuring that the changes are well communicated and well understood. That must be part of the approach. Rescuing people at sea is a member state competence, not an EU competence, so it will always be for individual member states to ensure that search and rescue operations are undertaken appropriately, in accordance with the normal laws of the sea.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
I do not think I have heard a more shameful statement from this Government. This is where we are: this poisonous debate about immigration—this monstrous race to the bottom between the Government and the UKIP as to who can be hardest on immigration—is leaving people to die in the Mediterranean. Is the Minister not absolutely ashamed of himself?
James Brokenshire
The only shameful thing I have heard is the hon. Gentleman’s comments. The debate has been impassioned, but there has been an understanding of the challenges that individual Governments face in seeking to address a problem that has got worse. We argue that the steps that have been taken have not assisted in the way that was intended. We cannot turn our eyes away from a situation that is getting worse and not better. That is why we focus on steps to ensure that regional solutions are established and supported, and that we have an external border that is surveilled through Frontex. If boats are identified as in need of assistance, that is what will happen.
Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill (Business of the House)
Pete Wishart Excerpts(11 years, 8 months ago)
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Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
What we have been asked to do today—to railroad the Bill through Parliament—is, given the sheer importance of what we have been asked to consider, nothing short of outrageous. Let us not forget that we are bringing forward emergency legislation because the European Court of Justice ruled that what the UK Government were doing was unlawful. That alone should at least take two days of debate. The Home Secretary says that this is just business as usual. It is not. There are significant and substantial new powers being added to the Bill, whether that is international ISPs being brought into the frame or whether it is, as we have heard, the inclusion of other webmail services such as Gmail. This should all be properly considered by this House.
What do the public make of this? If we are not getting an opportunity to debate this properly, the public are not getting that opportunity. They expect us to be here to debate these things properly. I do not know about any other right hon. and hon. Member but I have been besieged by members of the public this morning, asking me to come to the debate to make the points that they feel are very contentious and which should be raised. We have something like three hours to debate Second Reading, four hours in total to debate the necessary amendments and one hour for Third Reading. It is an absolute and utter disgrace that we have been asked to do this today.
What about the stitch-up we have between all the main parties? It is not just a question of the minority parties not being consulted on this; our devolved Administrations have not even been given the courtesy of one conversation about this. The Scottish Parliament is responsible for policing, justice and even parts of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. Not one conversation about the Bill has taken place with Scottish Ministers. They have had no opportunity to look and consider the Bill. It is an absolute and utter disgrace. I hope that we never, ever do this again on something that is so important, significant and substantial to the people who elect us to the House.
Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill
Pete Wishart Excerpts(11 years, 8 months ago)
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Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
I have massive concerns about the Bill. I do not like the way in which it has been brought to the House. I do not like the way in which we have to rush through this process at breakneck speed, even though this is an issue that was flagged up to the Government some three months ago. I am suspicious about the reasons why we are doing all this now. I do not like the fact that it seems little more than a half-hearted attempt to get around a European Court of Justice ruling that declared the European directive invalid and thereafter practically everything that the Government are doing on data retention probably illegal.
I am suspicious about the way in which all the UK parties and party leaders have been brought into line around these unspecified threats. That is reminiscent of the dark days of the creation of the anti-libertarian state by new Labour; unspecified threats were the things we had to address then. I particularly do not like the fact that the Scottish Government, who have responsibility for the judiciary, policing and even delivering parts of RIPA in Scotland, were not consulted about the Bill. Most of all, I do not like the way in which the Government are trying to pretend that this is just business as usual when it clearly is an extension of what the Government can do in the collection and retention of an individual’s personal data.
I want to take that last concern first. I listened very carefully to all the party leaders last week when this was presented. The Prime Minister said that the Government were not introducing “new powers or capabilities”, but clauses 3 to 5 make significant amendments to the range of powers included in RIPA. The Bill extends the Government’s surveillance powers in two very important ways. Clause 4 clearly extends the territorial scope of RIPA, and the Government can now issue interception warrants for communications data to companies outside the UK. It also extends the definition of what “telecommunications services” means within RIPA to include webmail services such as Gmail. The hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab), who is no longer in his place, said that the most fundamental change is in that relationship between ISPs and the state.
The Government must now come clean with the British people. This is not business as usual. These are significant and substantial new powers. The Bill is more than the sum of its parts. It is a statement of intent. The Home Secretary said as much last week when she introduced it. Her real intention is, of course, to reintroduce her much-coveted snoopers charter in this Bill. The way in which the Bill brings on board the overseas ISPs is little more than a paving Bill for the reintroduction of that most unwanted anti-civil libertarian measure.
There has been a lot of talk about what is and what is not included in the Court judgement. The Government have had three months to address the Court’s findings. It is not the threat of terrorism or of criminal activity that has forced the Government’s hand in bringing this forward today. It is the threat of legal action by organisations such as the Open Rights Group and others that has prompted this emergency legislation. The Government should not mislead us about the urgency of the Bill. Given its significance and the issues it raises about our civil liberties, it should not be passed without proper parliamentary scrutiny. Truncating consideration of the Bill in this way is nothing short of appalling. It does a massive disservice to our constituents who have taken a real interest in this.
We all agree that the targeted retention of communications data can help the police to tackle serious crimes such as terrorism and child abuse. We all want to ensure that our communities are safe. But it has to be done proportionately and responsibly, and first and foremost, it should be legal.
What the European Court of Justice said was that we have a very low threshold for the retention of data, and it made it clear that the retention of data of every single person strikes the wrong balance between the need to tackle serious crime and our right to privacy and a private family life.
What most disappoints me is the total disrespect shown to Scottish Ministers. The first any Scottish Minister got to hear about this Bill was several hours after the statement was made in this House about its introduction, yet Scottish Ministers are responsible for policing and justice. It is Scottish Ministers who sign off any request for intercept on serious crime grounds. Part of RIPA required an Act of the Scottish Parliament and it puts in place the authority to conduct directed surveillance, undercover intelligence and intrusive intelligence. It is therefore staggering that this Government would proceed with this measure without exchanging even the slightest word with Scottish Ministers.
We believe that it will always be necessary to collect and retain the personal data of individuals in the pursuit of serious crime and we will take those responsibilities very seriously as an independent nation, but because this Government have got the balance so badly wrong, we will oppose the Bill today.
Communications Data and Interception
Pete Wishart Excerpts(11 years, 8 months ago)
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Mrs May
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his comments. I sometimes think that on some issues we cannot win in terms of the length of time available. The important point is that the Bill is not about extending powers or about new powers; it is confirmation of existing powers and of a legislative framework around them. The debate about extension of powers or any change of powers will come after the review and after the election.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
Given the real intention and agenda, is this not just the snoopers’ charter—the prequel? Although there have been all sorts of arrangements and discussions among those on all the Front Benches and even with Select Committee Chairs, there has been none with the Scottish Government, even though we are responsible for policing arrangements and for justice? I asked the Scottish Government this morning what detailed discussions the Home Secretary has had with them. There was none. Does she think that is good enough?
Mrs May
I am very sorry about the tone that the hon. Gentleman has taken. We are, of course, making the Scottish Government aware of this, and discussions will take place with the Scottish Government. We are facing a situation where we could see the loss of capabilities that lead to dangerous criminals, paedophiles and terrorists being apprehended and brought to justice. I should have thought that every Member of the House, in all parts of the House, wanted to ensure that we maintain those capabilities, and I am very sorry if the hon. Gentleman takes a different view.