My Lords, I rise to speak to the amendments in my name in this group. First, I shall make some brief and broadly supportive comments regarding the amendments proposed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, and the noble Lords, Lord West and Lord Coaker.
As we have heard, all these amendments are designed to tighten up or clarify the triple lock and the changes introduced in the Bill. As your Lordships know, the triple lock relates to circumstances where UKIC and law enforcement may obtain and read the communications of MPs, et cetera; we will talk about the “et cetera” in a minute. Currently, the usual double lock is supplemented by an unqualified requirement that the Secretary of State may not issue the warrant without the Prime Minister’s approval.
As we heard from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, the report from the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, explores the circumstances in 2020 when the Prime Minister was hospitalised and the triple lock was therefore rendered unavailable. The noble Lord recommends the use of a deputy for the purposes of the triple lock when the Prime Minister in unable to approve a warrant in the required timescale, particularly through incapacity, conflict of interest or an inability to communicate securely. As we heard from the noble and learned Lord, “unable” has been substituted with “unavailable” in the Bill. I really am not sure why—perhaps the Minister can explain why—but that is a different context. In his normal, forensic way, the noble and learned Lord explained the difference between those words; that is why I was happy to sign Amendment 51A, which reverts back to the originally recommended “unable”.
The amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord West, are more probing but interesting. We will be interested to hear how the Minister responds to them; I look forward to that.
Amendment 47 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, seeks to limit the number of Secretaries of State who can be designated in that deputy role. This seems a reasonable suggestion. Others may want to change the list, but a senior group of Ministers should be listed; surely having three or four of them on that list should be sufficient to deal with the issue.
The noble Lord, Lord Coaker, spoke to Amendment 55A. There are elements of reporting there that are reflected in my Amendment 55, which I will come to shortly.
I will now speak to Amendments 50, 54 and 55 in my name. Amendments 50 and 54
“would require that members of a relevant legislation who are targets of interception are notified after the fact, as long as it does not compromise any ongoing investigation”.
Amendment 55 seeks to ensure that the Investigatory Powers Commissioner reports annually on the operation of surveillance warrants and safeguards in relation to parliamentarians. This should include records in the annual report of the number of warrants authorised each year to permit surveillance of the Members of relevant domestic legislatures. This would ensure transparency, at least over the rate at which the power is being used.
Before talking a little more about this, it is worth recapping the history of political wiretap legislation. I am sure there are others who know it better than I, but it was helpful for me to understand the context. As we have heard, the IPA permits the interception or hacking of parliamentarians or the Members of other domestic legislative bodies via this triple-lock system, whereby the Secretary of State can issue a warrant with the approval of the Prime Minister, as per Sections 26(2) and 111(3). Until October 2015, it was widely understood that the communications of MPs were protected from interception by the so-called Wilson doctrine. This protection extended to Members of the House of Lords in 1966, and was repeated in unequivocal terms by successive Prime Ministers. Tony Blair clarified in 1997 that the policy
“applies in relation to telephone interception and to the use of electronic surveillance by any of the three security and intelligence agencies”.—[Official Report, Commons, 4/12/1997; col. 321W.]
Despite this clear and unambiguous statement that MPs and Peers would not be placed under electronic surveillance, an October 2015 decision by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal held that the doctrine had been unilaterally rescinded by the Executive. We pick up from there, so it is an interesting evolving power and we are part of that evolution in this Bill.
This evolution has also coincided with the meteoric rise in electronic communication that now offers the possibility of vastly more information being unearthed than was the case with a simple wiretap back in the Wilson days. First, there are clearly times when this sort of interception is necessary, and that is why the triple lock is such an important safeguard. But I have a couple of modest suggestions contained in these amendments. I must say now that I am in a state of deep trepidation, as not only has the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, given me notice that she is on my case but she has actually moved five Benches closer than she was on Monday, so my boots are shaking.
These amendments would introduce a post-notification procedure to inform parliamentarians where they have been affected by targeted surveillance powers, but only if it does not compromise any ongoing investigation. Clearly, they would have to be deemed innocent or beyond suspicion for that notification to happen. I agree that it would be unfortunate, to say the least, if, for example, the announcement of any investigation revealed confidential sources that led to the initial investigation. I had hoped that my wording implied that, but I will be very happy to work with the noble Baroness on improving the wording on Report if she deems it necessary.
We got to the fourth group of amendments to the Bill without my raising the European Convention on Human Rights. Now is the time. Happily, I am sure that the Minister has been reading up on this for other reasons, and he will no doubt be familiar with this important bastion of freedom. I refer in particular, in this case, to Article 8: the right to respect for private and family life, home and correspondence. I feel sure that most surveillance interventions would meet the terms of Article 8, which are summarised as:
“There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others”.
As I say, it is unlikely that the activities we have been describing will break that.
In the unlikely event that they do and there is a misstep, in order to bring a case under the Article 8 right it is necessary for a person to know that their privacy was breached in the first place, hence Amendments 50 and 54. I refer the Minister to two Article 8 rights cases heard by the European Court of Human Rights: Klass v Germany in 1978, which was reiterated in Weber and Saravia v Germany in 2006.
Amendment 55 is a bit simpler. It would ensure that the Investigatory Powers Commissioner’s annual report provides information about the operation of safeguards in relation to surveillance of Members of Parliament et cetera, as is already required for journalists. It would mandate that
“information in particular about warrants … considered or approved”
that are targeted at MPs et cetera is included, further to the requirement to provide information on general targeted interception and hacking warrants. I believe that is not a controversial ask, and I hope the Minister agrees.
I would like to use these amendments to do some probing as well as changing words, by confirming the “et cetera” part of MPs et cetera. My understanding, which I am sure is correct, is that as things stand that includes Lords and elected Members of the devolved authorities. But our democratic system is changing and evolving as we go. We now have very powerful elected mayors with very large electorates—much larger than any MP’s. I wonder whether there is an argument that they too should be included within the triple-lock umbrella going forward. I have one additional question in this vein. Once out of office, do all these individuals no longer attract triple-lock protection? Are ex-First Ministers, ex-MPs and ex-Prime Ministers all no longer subject to the triple-lock safeguards?
This sort of legislation breeds suspicion. The two measures I propose here are sincere attempts to help tackle some of these suspicions and create sufficient transparency to allay the fears that there is widespread and extensive activity of this type—assuming, of course, that this activity is indeed a rare occurrence.