Andy Burnham
Prime Minister · MP for Makerfield · Labour (Co-op) · United Kingdom
“The right hon. Lady mentions leadership. Let me tell her and the whole House where Britain is showing leadership. There have been Conservative politicians at this Dispatch Box—Labour politicians, too—for decades who have talked about the importance of the two-state solution between Israel and Palestine.”
“I cannot comment today on quasi-judicial decisions, but we will take a pragmatic approach to oil and gas, as I have said before at the Dispatch Box. Let us get to the heart of this question, as the right hon. Lady invites me to do. What is the right way to fund defence and, yes, bring the welfare budget down?”
“I do not think the right hon. Lady is on strong ground when it comes to defence spending. It was 2.5% of GDP when the last Labour Government left office. It was 2.3% of GDP when the Government she was in left office. It is now set to be 2.7% in the next year.”
“This Chancellor, of all Chancellors, will be willing to provide that funding to our armed forces and back our defence investment plan. This Government’s commitment to the defence of this country is absolute. We have taken the strongest possible stance in supporting President Zelensky and Ukraine.”
“I think there are many people watching Prime Minister’s questions across the south of England who would now like Mr Speaker to be demoted in the way that my hon. Friend suggests. [Interruption.] This is very thin ice for a Leigh Leopards supporter to be on.”
“I remember well my visit to Stourbridge; it will not leave me, actually, because of the devastation, and the loss of everything in a moment for so many families. My hon. Friend’s support for them was really visible on the day, and the community is clearly very strong; that was evident.”
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“The ban on the use of police cells for people in mental health crisis is a crucial step forward, but it needs to be matched with a commissioning strategy in the NHS that ensures alternative places of safety for people who will no longer be held in police cells. On the measures that we have helped to improve, I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham for the work that she has done to strengthen the measures in the Bill on child sexual exploitation, and particularly on the licensing regime for private hire vehicles. There are further improvements to come on child abduction warning notices. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington, the shadow Policing Minister, pushed the issue of police bail in Committee, based on the case of Siddhartha Dhar, the individual who waltzed out of the country while on bail.”
“I also thank all members of the Bill Committee and the Chairmen, the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth). The Bill makes some real improvements, but we still have some concerns. The issues broadly fall into four categories: measures we support; measures we have helped to improve; measures we oppose; and the missed opportunities in the Bill. I will go briefly through each. On the measures we support, the super-complaints system is a genuine step forward, and we congratulate the Home Secretary on bringing it to the House. We also support the strengthening of the IPCC and of the regulation of the police in general.”
“The fairest thing that we can say about this Bill is that it is a decidedly mixed bag. On the one hand it makes improvements to police accountability, but on the other it undermines the independence of the fire service and the police service by allowing volunteers to replace front-line staff. None the less, the Bill leaves this House in a better state than it came to us in. I pay tribute to my shadow ministerial team, my hon. Friends the Members for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey), for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) and for West Ham (Lyn Brown), all of whom have played an important part in improving the Bill. I thank the Home Secretary and her ministerial team for the constructive way in which they have continued to debate these matters with us.”
“However, we think that the general principle, enshrined in PACE, of allowing journalists to challenge in open court any attempt to access material that could reveal sources is a good one. It would allow those public interest arguments to be heard and tested in court. We hope that the Government will today commit to working with us and the NUJ to find a wording that in the end does the job.”
“It takes points that would otherwise have been in codes underpinning the Bill and puts them on the face of the Bill. Labour will accept these amendments, but we will do so while being clear that they do not go far enough. Indeed, they cover only the award of warrants, not general access to communications data. We therefore support the amendments tabled by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) on behalf of the Joint Committee on Human Rights—amendments 143 to 145—which seek to extend the same level of protection to journalists as is currently the case under PACE. We accept that this is a difficult area to get right, particularly when the definition of who is and who is not a journalist is changing in the digital world. We accept the difficulty facing Ministers.”
“The National Union of Journalists makes the point that there is no real difference between physical notebooks and communications data held electronically; both could reveal the identity of a source. Labour shares those concerns; they were ably raised by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) in Committee, and they were also raised on Second Reading. The Government have gone some way towards addressing our concerns, tabling amendments 51 and 52, which we welcome. The amendments will ensure that judicial commissioners, when considering a warrant, must give weight to the overriding public interest in a warrant being granted for the use of investigatory powers against journalists and that they must ensure that that is in keeping with wider and more general privacy points. That is a significant move.”
“Many journalists and the National Union of Journalists have real concerns that clause 68 weakens the existing protections in law for journalistic sources operated under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. They point to an incident in 2014 when police secretly accessed the mobile phone records and call data from a national newspaper, bypassing the PACE protections. Rightly, there are now worries that that has set a new precedent. Furthermore, they feel that the Bill might be about to enshrine that new precedent in law. Under PACE, journalists are notified when the authorities want to access material and sources, so that they have the ability to challenge that in open court. The worry is that the Bill removes those protections.”
“This final group of amendments covers three of the seven substantial concerns that I set out in a letter to the Home Secretary after Second Reading: first, protection of journalistic material and sources; secondly, the definition of internet connection records, and the threshold for their use; and thirdly, the independent review of the operational case for bulk powers. Let me take each in turn. I will deal with journalistic material and the protection of sources briefly, as the matter was debated at length yesterday. Protecting the ability of whistleblowers in private or public sector organisations to speak to journalists without fear of identification is one of the important checks and balances on state and corporate power.”
“I am grateful for what the Minister has said. It must be possible to find a definition that excludes casual or voluntary bloggers from individuals who make their living from writing or who work for organisations regulated by the Independent Press Standards Organisation or other regulators.”
“If we work with the Government on that basis in good faith, I believe that we will be able to come to the right position.”
“I made a similar point yesterday, when I said that it would have been helpful had we made more progress on these issues, and perhaps I can push the Minister on this, because I know he is meeting the Law Society and the Bar Council later this week. The truth is that this raises quite complex issues. With all three professions, a slightly different set of issues arises, and we should not rush to legislate. We should move on the basis that we know what we are trying to achieve, which is to protect the ability of the public to go to an MP without fearing that there is any compromise on a private discussion. We want legal privilege—the privilege that belongs to the client—to be protected. We also want journalists to be able to protect their sources, as they want to do.”
“The right hon. Gentleman makes an important point, which I saw was accepted on the Government Front Bench. He has tabled a detailed amendment on this issue, and he is right to do so and to press the Government on this. All of us have to apply our minds to getting these definitions right for all three professions. There is still an open question, as we discussed yesterday, about Members of Parliament and the right level of scrutiny for any warrant against them, but there is equally more work to do on other fronts. We should not pass a Bill that weakens these professions—as I said yesterday, this is not about preserving the special status of the individuals who work in them, but about protecting the public and their ability to raise issues through those individuals.”
“I very much appreciate what the Minister has said. I think that any colleague in any part of the House who has read the NUJ’s briefing for today’s debate will struggle to disagree with anything in it. If we want this Bill to leave Parliament with a high degree of consensus across society, it is right that these professional bodies feel, in the end, that the Bill is something they can support. That is a prize worth working for. Given his comments, I get the feeling that the Minister agrees.”
“I am sure that as constituency MPs many of us have dealt with situations where an individual falls out with the police at a local level, and they perceive that they are being investigated for all kinds of things and that all aspects of their lives might be turned upside down. We have to put in place appropriate protections that would not allow personal information to be handed over freely in relation to more trivial offences.”
“I said at the start that I was looking for considerable comfort, and I think I have just received it from what the Minister has said. To be clear, I was saying that there should be a threshold of six months for the use of communications data, and a higher threshold on top of that for internet connection records. As the Minister just acknowledged, there is a qualitative difference between the two. If that is what we are agreeing, and if we are also agreeing that there should be no restriction on the use of internet connection records for the other serious purposes that I have outlined, the Opposition can probably move forward on that basis without pressing our amendments to a vote. This is the area in which the Bill has the ability to lose public trust if we do not get it right, because it could affect every single citizen in the land.”
“What I am saying is that we need a very clear definition of what level of crime permits the authorities to access those records. I believe that if we find that definition—I feel that the Minister has given a commitment that we will get it—it will enhance public trust in this legislation. In my view, it will knock out completely that lazy label of “snoopers charter”. That is why it is so important that the Government nail this point before the Bill concludes its passage.”
“I am grateful to the hon. Lady for making a point that will enable me to be absolutely clear about what I am saying. I am not arguing against the retention of the data, as I think I made clear at the beginning. I am not arguing against ICRs per se. I acknowledge that they could be a very important tool. In an age when communications have migrated online and people have fewer voice telephone calls, this information could be crucial in detecting serious crime. I am saying that while we should legislate to allow the data to be held, we must also legislate to put in place a very precise threshold, so that the circumstances in which those data can be accessed are explicitly clear. There is not a broad reasonableness or necessity test.”
“We have learned to admire the Minister greatly through this process, and we have learned that when he says something, it happens. I am reassured by the words that he has just put on the record. If it helps—perhaps it does not, but I will say it anyway—I would favour quite a high test for ICRs, and significantly higher than six months. Alongside that, it might be possible to itemise the other individual occasions on which they could be used, be it online grooming or missing persons. The danger with trying to capture it all in a single time period is that we might open the net to other offences that we would not want to be included. I fully acknowledge that this is a complex area. That is why I want to give the Ministers leeway to see whether, working with us, they can find the right definition.”
“It would give a pretty decent profile of what kind of person they were and some of the information could be highly personal. That is why I say that we need to legislate with great care in this area if we are to carry the public with us.”
“The review is clearly a good idea, but it is also a good idea to tighten the definition and the threshold now, because we need to ensure that there is a degree of public confidence in what is being done here. I fully accept that the review is important. The point is that although ICRs in themselves may not necessarily solve a crime, they may let the authorities know where to go to ask for more intrusive information. They will identify the app, service or whatever it is that is being used, which might allow further lines of inquiry. I would not be casual about this point—not that I am suggesting the hon. Gentleman was being so. If we were to publish somebody’s 12-month website visiting record, which effectively is what an ICR is, it would reveal a large amount of information about them.”
“We will have to see what it concludes, but our working assumption is that it will be incumbent on Members on all sides of the House to respond to the review and if necessary reassess their position on the back of it.”
“and learned Friend and the Security Minister, terms of reference have now been agreed and the review can start in earnest. It will be concluded in time to inform proceedings in the other place. Crucially, it will consider the necessity of the powers and whether the same result could have been achieved through alternative methods. It will also have a balance of security expertise and human rights expertise. This is a significant move by the Government and will ultimately help build public trust in the Bill. To hark back briefly to the debate on the last group of amendments, it is too early to say what we will do on the back of the review.”
“That is why it is important that they are granted on the basis of what is strictly needed rather than what it would be helpful to have, a point made by the Intelligence and Security Committee in its extremely valuable report. The Joint Committee on the draft Bill also recommended that there should be an independent review of the bulk powers. It was a point upon which I laid great emphasis in my letter to the Home Secretary, and my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras has done the same throughout the passage of the Bill. We are extremely pleased that the Government have agreed to that request. We agree that David Anderson, the independent reviewer, is the right person to lead the review. I understand that, following correspondence between my hon.”
“On top of the general six months test for all communications data, we want a higher threshold for the more personal data in an internet connection record. I am glad that the right hon. and learned Gentleman intervened because we have now made that explicitly clear to the House. I turn now to the independent review of the operational case for bulk powers, which allows me to finish on a more positive note. All the bulk powers in the Bill—bulk interception, bulk equipment interference, bulk acquisition, bulk personal datasets—give rise to privacy concerns because of the more indiscriminate way in which they might be used.”
“I will certainly take the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s points into account. He is making the same case as we are in our amendments. To be clear, those amendments would create a general seriousness test for all communications data collection, which would have to be passed before any of those data could be released. The test created by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras in amendment 292 relates to offences for which the sentence is imprisonment for more than six months. We felt that that was proportionate. It begins to meet some of the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s concerns, as it would knock out some of the lower-level offences he has just described. Given what the Minister has said, I do not intend to press that amendment to a vote, but it is the bottom line from where we start.”
“That said, I thank the Home Secretary, the Solicitor General and the Security Minister for the constructive way in which they have approached our discussions. Because of the consensus we have been able to find, the legislation is more likely to succeed and to stand the test of time.”
“There is an exchange of letters between the Security Minister and my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras, which I hope is in the public domain, and which I believe allays the fears of the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael). To be clear, it was a sticking point for Labour that the review had to consider necessity and not just utility. That is enshrined in the terms of reference, so I hope I can reassure him on that point. Clearly, there is further to go on journalistic material and internet connection records, although it appears from what the Minister has said this afternoon that we are heading in the right direction. I stress again that progress on the ICR points that I have made are a personal red line.”
“I am listening carefully to what the hon. Gentleman is saying, and he is obviously aiming some of his comments in Labour’s direction. In a world where people are making fewer voice telephone calls—and if he is proposing that he would not want to collect this data—how would he propose the authorities go about locating a missing child in the early hours after the disappearance?”
“To fail to respond to that would be a dereliction of our duties to them; it would also fail our constituents. The Bill is ultimately about their safety, the safety of their families and their privacy. I think we can look ourselves in the mirror tomorrow and say we have done our level best to maximise both.”
“Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Simon Kirby), who has been the most helpful Government Whip I have ever come across. Let me be clear: the Bill is not there yet. We need further changes on internet connection records—the Home Secretary alluded to that—and on the protection of journalists and their sources, and on legal privilege. However, if the Government continue with the same approach as the one they have adopted in recent weeks, I have every confidence that we will get there. We must do that for those who depend on the Bill we are debating. The police and security services do incredibly difficult work on our behalf and we thank them for it. Their job has got harder as both the level of the threat has risen and the nature of communication has changed in the modern world.”
“I pay tribute to the Home Secretary for the courage she has shown in being prepared to do that, but I say again that she should be prepared to carry on going wherever that evidence takes us. Following the Hillsborough verdict, I believe that that trail now leads very firmly to Orgreave, and, following the court settlement last month, to blacklisting. I will continue to press the Home Secretary on those matters, but I congratulate her on how she and her Ministers have handled discussions on the Bill. The Security Minister, or Brother Hayes as we might now call him after his starring role in today’s papers, has brought all his considerable experience and personality to bear in moving the Bill forward. It is all the better for it. Although he probably does not want me to mention him, I feel the need to mention the hon.”
“I say this to those who might be planning to vote against the Bill tonight: a vote against it is to deny people those safeguards and to leave on the statute book a much weaker piece of legislation that does not afford those protections. Our consideration has also been helped by the way in which we, as a country, continue to shine a light on some of the darkest chapters in our past. We continue to learn of instances where the power of the state has been unfairly used against ordinary people. By being prepared to open up about that and be honest about how we were governed and policed in the past, I believe we are now beginning to make better legislation in the present.”
“That is due in no small part to the forensic mind and engaging approach of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer). By setting out clearly after Second Reading our seven substantial concerns, we have been able to bring a focus to this debate that I think has been to the benefit of this House. I am pleased to say that we have secured major commitments on all seven concerns, in particular on bulk powers, the independent review, the privacy clause, judicial oversight and the double lock, and trade unions. Thanks to the constructive work of Labour, there are stronger safeguards in the Bill that protect people’s privacy and their human rights.”
“We have elevated the debate above simplistic loyalties to the security or privacy lobbies. As a result, we are now significantly closer to developing the balanced, modern, world-leading framework, which the Home Secretary spoke about, for the use of investigatory powers that this country needs in the digital age. I echo the thanks the Home Secretary gave to right hon. and hon. Members of this House and its various Committees: all Members who have contributed in the past two days; the members of the Public Bill Committee; the Chairs of that Committee, the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Nadine Dorries) and my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen); and the Clerks and the Public Bill Office for overseeing such a high quality process. The Bill leaves this House in a much better state than we found it.”
“I was first elected to the House 15 years ago to this very day. In that time, debates on security and privacy have produced some of the most fractious exchanges I have seen. It is treacherous territory littered with past failure. Too often, such debates are pitched as a clash between two absolutes of privacy and security, where there can be no compromise and only one winner—witness the Apple versus FBI debate in the US. I have always started from the point that people should not be forced to choose between the two. We all have an interest in maximising both our personal privacy and our collective security. We have to work to find the best point of balance between the two. Over the past three months, this House has got closer to finding that balance than ever before.”
“The right hon. Gentleman seems to be advocating an argument that we can only achieve progress by being oppositional or party political. Surely there are occasions when we can do more by working across the House. We have shown that on this issue and on others, such as Hillsborough and other past injustices.”
“It is right to debate it as the Bill progresses to the Lords, and perhaps we can return to it later.”
“If amendments were forthcoming from the Government, we would certainly support them.”
“Is it not the case that the prisoner transfer agreement at least provides a framework to speed up the process and that country-to-country deals are far harder to achieve? Is it not also true that our access to the Schengen information system and the European criminal records information system helps us to stop criminals arriving here, and the European arrest warrant means that they can be brought to justice? Finally, would not the British people be better off listening to the two former Met commissioners and other senior police who, at the weekend, said that our membership of the EU helps us to fight crime, rather than to the unpleasant scaremongering of the leave campaign?”
“In the last Parliament, the National Audit Office found that more than a third of failed removals were the result of factors within the Home Office’s control. Despite that, we now learn that the problem is getting worse, not better, in some areas. The Select Committee said that it was deeply concerned that there were nearly 6,000 foreign national offenders living in the community—the highest figure since 2012. Can the Home Secretary explain why the figure is so high? How many of those people are still subject to active deportation proceedings, and what is she doing to bring the figure down? She urgently needs to get a grip on the issue. Does the Home Secretary agree that it is much easier to do that while remaining part of the European Union, and that leaving would make it harder to deport people?”
“While I congratulate the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) on securing this question, I hope that he will not be too offended that I do not agree with every word of his opportunistic election broadcast on behalf of the leave campaign. Is it not plainly the case that this is not an EU question but a question of the competence, or lack of it, of his Government and his Home Secretary? As last week’s Select Committee report makes clear, while there has been progress on the deportation of foreign national offenders, it has been too slow. Does the Home Secretary agree with what the Prime Minster told the Liaison Committee in May? He said that she and the Home Office “should have done better” on this issue. This is not the first time that the Home Secretary has been warned about these failings.”
“That is why it is important that I emphasise that these are not special privileges or protections for Members of Parliament, but protections for members of the public. If someone seeks the help of an MP at a constituency advice surgery or of a lawyer, or blows the whistle to a journalist, they should be able to do so with a high degree of confidence that the conversation is confidential.”
“They must consider whether the same result could have been achieved by other means, and whether public interest concerns are met. In short, it will require much closer scrutiny of the initial decision of the Home Secretary and, significantly, bring greater clarity than the Government’s initial judicial review test would have done. We believe that that does indeed amount to a real double lock and, I have to say, a real victory for the Opposition. I confirm that we will support the Government’s amendment tonight. When we talk about protections for sensitive professions —lawyers, journalists and Members of Parliament—it might sound to anyone watching this debate as though we in this House were once again seeking special status for ourselves in the eyes of the law.”
“Labour has always believed that the judicial commissioner must be able to consider the substance of the Home Secretary’s decision to issue a warrant, not just the process. Put simply, it must be a double lock, not a rubber stamp. My hon. and learned Friend has done painstaking work on this issue in Committee and outside, and we thank in particular the Minister for Security for his willingness to listen to our concerns and for the manuscript amendment tabled today by the Home Secretary. It accepts the spirit of the proposals we tabled in Committee by ensuring that judicial commissioners will have to take into account their duties under the overarching privacy clause when reviewing the Home Secretary’s decision to grant a warrant. Judicial commissioners’ decisions must therefore be taken in line with human rights concerns.”
“The Government have part-closed this loophole for sensitive professions, but we feel they need to go further and close it for everyone, to ensure that people cannot be added to thematic warrants by modification without the involvement of a judge. I hope that Ministers will listen to that concern and reassure us that they are open to further discussion. I know that the judicial review test and the double lock have been discussed today, so I will not detain the House long. As Members on both sides of the House know, one of our earliest demands was that there should be independent judicial oversight of the approval of warrants, and we were pleased when the Home Secretary conceded that point some months ago.”
“The group of amendments before us covers three of those seven issues: the double-lock process and the test to be applied by judicial commissioners; the protections for sensitive professions; and the position of trade unions with respect to this Bill. I will discuss each of those issues in turn, but I start by raising an issue that emerged in Committee. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), the shadow Immigration Minister, identified a potential loophole that allowed warrants to be modified after initial approval without proper scrutiny by judicial commissioners, thereby undermining the double lock.”
“Labour has taken a responsible and pragmatic approach to this Bill. We have supported the principle of a modern legal framework governing the use of investigatory powers, recognising that as communications have migrated online, the police and security services have lost capability, but equally, we know that much stronger safeguards are needed in law to protect individuals from the abuse of state power. That is the balance we have been trying to achieve. Following Second Reading, I wrote to the Home Secretary setting out Labour’s seven substantial areas of concern, and I said that unless there was significant movement from the Government in those areas, we would be unable to support moves to put this Bill on the statute book by the December deadline.”
“We believe that the Bill is the right place to codify the thrust of the Wilson doctrine, but in our letter to the Home Secretary we expressed concern that the Bill required only that the Prime Minister be consulted before investigatory powers were used against MPs. We argued that the Prime Minister should personally be asked to approve any such action, and we are pleased that the Government have accepted this. I note that the Joint Committee on Human Rights, chaired by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), has proposed a further strengthening of the doctrine and a role for the Speaker, who should be notified and able to challenge a decision on intercepting the communications of a Member of Parliament. We have not yet taken a view on that proposal.”
“The hon. Gentleman makes a tremendously important point very well. This is about a basic protection for the public—a safeguard for the public. Also, on MPs and the Wilson doctrine, it is also a protection for our democracy that people can seek the advice of a Member of Parliament without fearing that someone else is listening. The hon. Gentleman is spot on, but I have to say that we do not feel that the Bill as it stands provides sufficient reassurance to the public that that confidentiality will be mostly respected. To be fair, the Government have moved on this point, but we believe that further work is needed, and that they need to continue to talk to the professional representative bodies. I will take each group in turn, starting with MPs.”
“Finally, on legal privilege there has been the least progress of all. Serious concerns have been expressed by the Bar Council and the Law Society about the fact that the provisions would weaken privacy protections currently enjoyed by lawyers, but those concerns are not adequately reflected in the Bill. It is disappointing that Ministers have yet to meet the legal bodies. [ Interruption. ] I did not quite hear what the Solicitor General said. I am happy to give way if he wants to clarify the position.”