My Lords, I oppose the amendment. I was unable to speak yesterday. I do not propose to make a Second Reading speech, but I wish to make a case for the Bill to remain as it is. I first draw attention to my declaration of interest in the register as a member of the independent surveillance panel, put together by the Royal United Services Institute for the Deputy Prime Minister’s work, which will go on for the next year and beyond the next election.
Frankly, we need time to do the job: 18 months is not long enough. I am not even going to use the excuse of a potential change of Government after the general election. The fact is that it is important that the sunset clause is there and it is important that it cannot be extended: it will go. However, time is needed to do the job properly. It is not as though nothing is going to happen for two and a half years. It will take two and a half years to pull together the reviews of RIPA and the other reviews that are taking place to bring legislation to Parliament very early in 2016, because this will
finish at the end of 2016. The idea that it has been left to the last minute is nonsense. We need that time to do the job, and to explain and consult.
Public trust has to be secured. I am convinced that the fair-minded public, when they are treated as mature adults, will support an accountable system for interceptions and surveillance, rather than take what is said by unaccountable NGOs and newspaper editors. Contrary to what was said earlier on, the public have no idea what exists in the system in terms of these arrangements. We have to look at the use of modern technology.
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Take RIPA: I will use one example from yesterday’s debate. I was not in for all the speeches but I heard two or three. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, has now gone, because he made a cheap point about the egg inspectorate using RIPA. You can cheapen the debate, but in the past few years people have gone to prison for multimillion pound frauds of restamping eggs, which undermines our economy and cheats the public. The egg inspectorate had to know about this. It is only six people. It should not be dismissed: it is part of the economic well-being of the country. Millions of eggs—billions, actually, because eggs are counted in billions, rather than millions—were being brought in from France unstamped. They were processed in a factory in Bromsgrove and there was a tip-off. They went to prison for a multimillion pound fraud against our economy. The idea that the egg inspectorate should not be able to use RIPA is preposterous, but you can make a cheap joke about it if you do not give any background to it.
The point I want to make to the Minister is that the use of language is absolutely crucial. I understand that the drafting of legislation is governed by parliamentary draftsmen. However, that is not always effective in addressing those who want to oppose, such as those who accuse the Bill of being “Orwellian” or of “snooping”. They are very effective and emotive words that might take 10 minutes to rebut in an interview, which is not really possible. However, nobody uses those words against the retailers in this country, who snoop and use information from the purchasing patterns of millions of citizens in this country. It is used only against people who are basically trying to protect our country.
The Government need to wake up to the use of language. I will give one more example before I ask the Minister to take something away. This is similar to the GM debate, where “Frankenstein food” and “contamination” are emotive words. They are not scientifically sound or scientifically based, but they make the headlines. Again, it would take those who wish to put the case minutes to do it, so they cannot.
I must thank the Minister, because the last time I gave him a suggestion like this I had a reply two days later from the Permanent Secretary at the Home Office saying, “Thanks very much, we’ll do that”. I hope that today will be no different. The Government should seek advice during the reviews, although not necessarily on how the legislation is worded, as parliamentary counsel need to do that and get the thing right. They should use experts in forensic linguistics, and in language and law, which are specialist studies in some of our
universities. That is crucial. It is not necessarily forensic in that sense, but the examination of language, what it means and how it relates to what people outside think it means, is important.
We have to win over the public. It is not a PR operation but a scientific one. It needs something like what I came across during my time at the Food Standards Agency: the right-brain, left-brain test. That was how we, as regulators, found that we were using the language of regulators to talk to the entrepreneurs we regulated. They did not understand what we were saying and always opposed us. We were not taking on board their needs in our language. These issues are crucial to the way we sell to the public the need to have powers and to check on who is using them, so that, in some ways, people are comfortable in going about their lives not being spied on, but in the knowledge that, if they are spied on in secret, it is being done by a system they have approved of, that they know is accountable to the public, and that those who are doing it are being checked up on.
If that can be put across in a way that the fair-minded public will accept, we will have cracked it because we will not be being ruled by the headlines of those who seek to undermine us, make cheap cracks or seek to undermine our protection. We need to get it right because it is much better if the public is with us. I am not necessarily attacking the press or the NGOs, but they have an open goal. They get away with too much because they are not accountable. The public will know about it only when something goes wrong. This legislation is to stop something going wrong; that is the issue.
The Government should take the period of the reviews to look at the way in which the public, who are our masters, have explained to them what is happening in their interests, but without necessarily having everything disclosed to them. It has to be done in a better way than it has been to date. We should not change the time period. Being practical, we need the two and a half years: it will take 18 months to do the work and 12 months for the legislation to go through both Houses of Parliament.