My Lords, this has been an excellent debate. The points which have been raised have in effect focused on six main areas: the threat, the power, the amendments themselves, the draft Bill, the technology and the procedure. With the leave of the House, I will use those as the outline for my remarks.
I shall first say something about the nature of the threat because context is all in the legislation we are bringing forward. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, expressed his concerns about the nature of the threat. It is important to remind ourselves that since April 2010, more than 750 people have been arrested for terrorism-related offences. More than 210 have been charged and over 140 have been successfully prosecuted. In Committee, the former Director of Public Prosecutions, Lord Macdonald of River Glaven, outlined some of the content of those cases and the intended acts of terrorism which those who were prosecuted had intended to carry out. We were horrified at the list he presented. Let us be clear: we are seeking to address a very real threat.
Other noble Lords, including my noble friend Lord Paddick, have made reference to the use of technology. Perhaps I may put this into context for the benefit of the noble Baroness, Lady Smith. Certain caricatures are not helpful here. Clearly she dealt with one, but let me deal with another one, which is that this legislation has somehow been left on the shelf to gather dust. That is not the case because of the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act 2014—legislation that came directly out of the draft communications data Bill. That legislation was taken through this House on a fast-track basis last July. The IP and the technology elements contained in this Bill are also drawn from the communications data Bill. Moreover, since the start of this Government, the Counter Terrorism Internet Referral Unit has secured the removal of 65,000 items from the internet that were encouraging or glorifying acts of terrorism. More than 46,000 of those items have been removed since December last year. At present, content relating to ISIL, Syria and Iraq represents around 70% of the unit’s caseload. I do not want the House to be under any misapprehension as to the seriousness of the threat or that the police and the security services are making daily efforts using the powers they have to keep us safe, and we should express our gratitude to them.
It is worth making another important point here. To say that taking forward measures of this nature to attack terrorism might somehow be seen as alienating the Muslim community—which was the example that was given—could not be further from the truth. Bombs and bullets do not discriminate between religions and faiths, as we saw in Paris where the personal protection officer for one of the journalists who was also murdered
was a Muslim. We need to remember that as we move forward, and we also need to remember that we might not just be looking at terrorism by jihadists. Mohammed Saleem, an 82 year-old Muslim from Birmingham, was stabbed to death by a far right extremist who then went on to try to bomb mosques in Walsall, Wolverhampton and Tipton. These threats cross cultures and religions. We have talked about republican terrorist threats in Northern Ireland, but those are different. What we are talking about here are the specific acts of people who seek to subvert the democratic process and curb people’s freedom and liberty by undertaking violence in order to advance their cause.
Those are the points I wanted to make in relation to the threat, because it is real. Is there a gap? Yes, we believe that there is a gap, and that has been repeated on many occasions. The security services believe that these additional powers are absolutely necessary as a matter of urgency in order for them to work on closing the gap. We must recognise that the nature of the threat is mutating, if I may use that term, on almost a daily basis, such are the advances in the technologies and in the capricious use of them by those who seek to do us harm.
Perhaps I may turn now to the draft Bill which was under consideration. My noble friend Lord Carlile dwelt heavily upon this. We did have a debate in Committee and during that debate I did say that I would look again at what we could actually share with the House at that point. I have to say that we tried—again, I do not want to be caricatured by the notion that the Government took away a request that was made by a highly respected source, the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, and then somehow forgot about it. We worked on that very seriously. When we looked at it carefully, there was a view that the amendments which had been shared with the noble Lords, Lord Blencathra and Lord Armstrong, were draft clauses and in many cases had been superseded by legislation which was contained in the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act and in this Bill. It was therefore felt that it would be unsafe to do anything at that stage. Moreover, those particular clauses were under the active consultation and review of the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, as well as that of the police and the security services. For a whole host of reasons, it was felt that they would not be advisable. We did try to secure the review for noble Lords, but we were not able to do so at that time.
I turn now to the amendments which are before us. The amendments are significant, and I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord King, who has been tenacious in the way he has advanced his cause and pressed us on this issue over the past week. When a phone went off and the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, commented that it could be the Home Secretary for my noble friend, that might in fact have been the first hour that has gone by over the past week when there has not been a telephone conversation—not that the content of them could ever be disclosed, under any circumstances, under present legislation. There has been regular contact.
My right honourable friend the Prime Minister has said very clearly that he regards this as a priority and as a pressing need. The Home Secretary has said it is a
priority and a pressing need. The important thing to say is that we do regard it as a priority, but not the amendments before us at this stage. This is a principal part of what we say to the sponsors of these particular amendments. It is perhaps made more difficult because of the legislative stage we are at with the Bill. We would be faced with sending the 14 pages and 18 or 19 clauses down to the other end, not for them to consider at Second Reading or to discuss and run through in Committee, but for them to vote on in a fairly truncated parliamentary procedure. That might be something which would cause concern. I am simply placing pieces of a jigsaw here to try to explain to my noble friend why, reluctantly, the Government feel that they are not able to support these amendments in their present form.
Then, of course, there is the procedure that we move on to from here, which has been settled. Section 7 of the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act says:
“The Secretary of State must appoint the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation to review the operation and regulation of investigatory powers … The independent reviewer must, in particular, consider … current and future threats to the United Kingdom … the capabilities needed to combat those threats … safeguards to protect privacy … the challenges of changing technologies … issues relating to transparency and oversight … the effectiveness of existing legislation (including its proportionality) and the case for new or amending legislation”.
That commitment was made in legislation and has to be delivered by 1 May. Further consideration is under way by the Royal United Services Institute, in addition to further consideration undertaken at the present time by the Intelligence and Security Committee, of which my noble friend is a distinguished former chairman. That work will be extremely important in informing us all in Parliament what the scope and content of that Bill should be.
Finally, I want to come to the point about timing. This is probably the strongest argument which my noble friend Lord King has put forward. The threat is real, and the need is now. We cannot see this as something which can be kicked into the long grass; it has to be a priority for the new Government. I believe that there is just reason to claim that that might be the case and that it may not be subject to the kind of experiences that I acknowledge he may have had with previous legislative arrangements. The Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act is sunsetted to the end of December 2016. If we work back from that, as we have done, we realise that we need legislation to replace that well in advance of that date, as there certainly cannot be any gap in the coverage of that very important power. If it needs to be in place before that, it necessarily needs to be introduced very early on in the next Session, to allow it to follow its appropriate course through Parliament.