EU Council and Woolwich

I do not think it is helpful to refer to taking action on communications data as a snoopers charter. We use communications data now—our police and Security Service use it now to combat rape, to trace children who have been abducted, to combat murder. In 95% of serious crimes, the police are using not the content of a phone call, but the data about the phone call—when it was made and who it was between. That is vitally important and we must have a mature and grown-up debate in this House about what we do as telephony moves on to the internet. If we do not have that debate, we are not keeping our country safe.