Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill — House of Lords, 2015-02-02
Topic: Law and Crime
Ian Warwick Blair (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I was brought up to believe that politics was the art of the possible. As a supporter of this amendment, it seems to me that we have reached a position whereby politics is the art of the preposterous. I exempt from that charge those noble Lords who object to this amendment on principle; they will mainly be Liberal Democrats and Cross-Benchers, but there will be other objections on principle. They and I disagree, but I suggest that both positions are perfectly respectable. It is not the same position as what I understand to have been happening in the case of the Conservative and Labour Front Benches Let us consider what we are all agreed on. I am not going to rehearse the arguments in detail. We are all agreed that jihadist terrorism is a real and present danger and that it is an increasing danger, indicated by a threat level of severe. We are all agreed that we have a degrading technological ability to monitor and intercept communications data, vital to the disruption of terrorist attacks. There is a gap, as the noble Lord, Lord King, has said What do I mean by preposterous? The provisions of this amendment, previously the stalled communications data Bill, go back in principle to the concerns of a Labour-controlled Home Office in 2007-08 about the degradation of our technological capability. So this had a Labour birth. The provisions were then adopted by a Conservative-led but not entirely controlled Home Office. In either 2010 or 2011, I was personally briefed in the most positive of terms about the communications data Bill by one of the Conservative noble Lords, who carried the Home Office ministerial brief in your Lordships’ House. I will not name him because he is not in his place. So it had a Labour birth and was a Conservative-supported Bill before the Paris attacks. Then, as we have heard, the current Conservative Home Secretary lamented the lack of progress on the Bill in a Statement to the House of Commons. And then in your Lordships’ House we discovered, in Committee, the existence of the Bill in the Home Office The noble Lord, Lord King, has made it clear to the House that we would table the amendment only once, and if it was sent to the other place we would not indulge in ping-pong. We just want the Commons to have the opportunity to consider this matter again. Despite this, the Conservative and Labour Parties are prepared to do precisely nothing at this stage about this gap. I do not understand fully the nature of the usual channels, but the next Government will be principally led by either the Labour Party or the Conservative Party —so they do not need to worry any more about letting each other down over a fast-track procedure. One of them will be responsible for doing that, and the other one would be agreed anyway. So why do we not put it forward In closing, I remind this House that elections and changes of Government are of great interest to jihadi terrorists. In 2004, they killed more than 190 people and injured a further 2,000 in bombs on trains in Madrid. They changed the course of the Spanish general election as a result. In 2007, they planted major car bombs in the Haymarket and bombed Glasgow airport to mark the day when Gordon Brown became Prime Minister. Had the London bombs exploded, hundreds of young people would have died in a night club. We face an election now and, who knows, we may have another one shortly afterwards; we may have a multi-party coalition assembling with a whole range of views on the subject of this amendment. I am acutely disappointed by the decisions of both Front Benches to refuse to accept this amendment or, better still, propose a better one, on a matter of such national interest. I urge both Front Benches tonight publicly to commit to bringing forward legislation about communication data monitoring as an urgent priority for the next Government and, particularly, I assume, their L Committee Lastly, I hope with all my heart that today’s decision does not result in some utterly preventable disaster somewhere on the streets or in the skies above Britain. I was not present to hear what the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, said about the Brighton bombing, but what one has to remember about it was that afterwards a spokesman for the provisional IRA said, "we only have to be lucky once. You will have to be lucky always" The Minister said that this is about real threats to real lives, and it really is.