On Tuesday 7th June, the House of Commons debated - and then voted strongly in favour of - the concluding stages in the Commons of the “Investigatory Powers Bill”. I have been working on this important bill for some time, most recently as Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Home Secretary, my position in the Home Office.
The Investigatory Powers Bill is a vital and timely modernisation of the police powers that keep us safe.
It contains new safety measures which will modernise this country’s surveillance and crime prevention systems, equipping our law enforcement and security services for the modern era.
It means that the police will have up-to-date powers to detect criminals who are using apps and social media to communicate.
In the last year or so, it has been reported that six significant terror attacks on British soil were thwarted by the security services. The existing legislation is outdated with more and more communication is taking place via digital platforms.
Terrorists, hostile foreign governments, paedophiles, organised criminal gangs and cyber hackers obviously do not restrict themselves to landlines and mobile phones for their criminality or to plan and carry out attacks. The Investigatory Powers Bill will help our police and security services by bringing their powers in line with modern forms of communication, whilst also maintaining individual privacy and ensuring robust protections are in place to prevent misuse.
I am proud to have been able to contribute to this important bill, which I have worked on for many months as part of a team, and I believe it will keep us safer from those who mean us harm.
It is worth noting that this Bill has had unprecedented scrutiny applied to it – no less than three independent reviews, one by the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, David Anderson QC: an expert panel convened by the Royal United Services Institute; and the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament. It was then scrutinised by three parliamentary Committees, and a further report from the Joint Committee on Human Rights! It is one of the most heavily checked and scrutinised pieces of legislation for many years, and it has now been sent to the House of Lords with the support of both the Conservative Party and the Labour Party in Parliament, and it passed with a majority of nearly 400 MPs.
The printed Bill, when piled up, reaches nearly 1 foot high of paper!