No. Others want to get in and I do not think I will get any more injury time. I apologise.
It is too easy for those in the intelligence and police services to get used to such power. It is too tempting to use it against people who are causing trouble by making complaints or leaks. There have been examples of that, and that is what this Bill is about.
My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has brought forward a Bill that makes the biggest advance that I can remember for a generation, introducing the principle of judicial involvement and judicial oversight, for which I have the greatest possible respect. It is a quite dramatic change. We have also strengthened the powers of the Intelligence and Security Committee, and I hope my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), the former Attorney General, will make the fullest use of them. That Committee is always faced
with the problem that it cannot debate in public most of what is ever done or heard in private. We have to rely on having the right people to hold to account those concerned.
We need to get the Bill right. Most of the points are not the big, wide, partisan points that I was talking about a moment ago. They are in the detail—the devil is in the detail—and there are some quite important points that we should still question. It is true that there is a vast amount of activity under the general title of economic wellbeing. I have known some very odd things to happen under that heading. National security can easily be conflated with the policy of the Government of the day. I do not know quite how we get the definition right, but it is no good just dismissing that point.
Most of my points are Committee points and several have been raised already. I did not know that Igor Judge had given his opinion to the Select Committee that the Wednesbury test of reasonableness was not appropriate. He is an old opponent of mine in the courts, and an old friend of mine for most of his life. I am an out-of-date and extinct lawyer and he is a very distinguished and very recent lawyer. Presumably, if the judge thinks the Home Secretary is not following the legal principles, he can overrule an application.
Questions of judgment and proportionality are the most important of all and worry me most. The one Committee point that I shall raise, and the one I feel most strongly about, was raised by the shadow Home Secretary. I am worried by part 3. The whole debate is conducted on the basis that we should all lie fearful in our beds and that the Bill is designed to deal with terrorism, jihadists, child abusers and human traffickers. Actually, vast numbers of people are getting powers. Part 3 gives all kinds of curious public bodies—every local authority, county and district, where one official can get the approval of one magistrate—access to huge amounts of information. Too much is already available. I doubt the wisdom of that. I think we will find other points that should be corrected during the progress of the Bill through this House.
3.43 pm