My Lords, the House faces three choices. The first would be not to accept these amendments and not replace them with anything else—in other words, do nothing. I think that the “do nothing” option is the worst that we could possibly follow. In the current situation it is not possible to argue that we do not face growing danger as a result of declining capability against the background of a growing threat. It seems to me that we have a duty to respond to that. I think it a pity that the Government have not brought forward their own amendments on this, but they have not done so yet. I believe that doing something is what this House ought to do. I commend those who have brought forward these amendments.
The other two options are: follow these amendments and vote them into law—it would then be important to accompany them with a sunset clause—or wait for the Government to bring forward something else. That choice depends on the Government’s intentions. It would be preferable for us to be able to vote on something more refined and which incorporated more of the work done by the Joint Committee. I have not been privy to any of the legislation as redrafted. The draft data communications legislation has remained with its poor reputation as a result of the Government not having indicated what they might do to refine the powers therein.
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I hope that we will not do nothing. So the options that we face lie between the Government indicating what their intentions are, whether those powers would
meet some of the objections—there are some objections to the raw powers in the draft amendments—and whether legislation and the refined powers the Government might bring forward would adequately cover the points at issue. I am not particularly concerned about whether we include organised crime at this stage. This is a counterterrorism Bill. The issue that we are tackling is national security. We should stick to our last and focus on national security. We should ensure that the powers, in so far as they will do the job, are directed at that and do not try to stray wider.
I agree with those who say that, even when we have legislated more powers into existence, we will probably have to come back to this in data communications legislation—and even when we have done that, we will not cover all the possibilities that could arise. It is beyond this country’s capabilities to cover all the contingencies by law. We require international co-operation. There will still be things that we will not be able to cover, even with that. We can go a good deal further to increase our citizens’ security by passing into law some legislation that we badly need. I was not a fan of the data communications legislation when it came out; I thought it far too sweeping. So it is very important that it responds to those who are concerned about the erosion of civil liberties.
It is perfectly possible for the House, with the Government’s help, to pass a piece of legislation that is apposite, which takes us further forward than we are now and which gives us some powers that we do not currently have. I hope it will. I am sure that we will then return to this issue in the data communications legislation—there will be matters there that we cannot cover in this legislation. It is not simply a matter of removing from the future data communications Bill all the legislation applicable to terrorism and national security, but we could take an important part of those powers and incorporate them into legislation in the Bill. I hope the Government will help us to do that.