David Davis
MP for Goole and Pocklington · Conservative · United Kingdom
“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. May I start by congratulating my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) on putting a Bill in front of the House that has support from literally everybody in the Chamber?”
“The Post Office Horizon scandal highlighted the institutional instinct to find a convenient scapegoat. Innocent people paid the price, while the institution sought to protect itself. If the Thirlwall inquiry asks too narrow a set of questions, systemic NHS failures will go unexamined.”
“Last month’s sentencing of Nicola Sturgeon’s husband exposed the real reasons behind the Scottish Government’s persecution of Alex Salmond. From 2010 to 2022, Peter Murrell abused his position to embezzle almost £500,000 from the SNP to buy luxury items. He used SNP money to buy a £33,000 Volkswagen Golf.”
“The consultants also reported that in the two months since the change infants have been sick but recovered as expected.” The report highlighted deficiencies in staffing levels, leadership and communication, but, in the trial, it was not shown to the jury—they knew nothing of it.”
“One of the nurses let go later described it as “the decimation of the Nursing and Midwifery service”, adding that “eight registered nurses...were replaced with nursery nurses...unqualified staff are replacing qualified staff”.”
“There was little space, cots and incubators were stored in corridors, and mothers struggled to find somewhere to breastfeed their babies. Susan Gilby, the hospital’s chief executive between 2018 and 2022, later described the unit as “dark, dingy and cramped”, providing a “less than ideal” environment to work in.”
The complete record
Every one of 5,828 lines we hold for David Davis, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 70 of 117.
“It is all right, Mr Speaker. I was not sure whether it was the other David Davies whom you were calling. We are fortunate to live in a democracy. We are not guided by Cabinet Secretary guidelines. As far as I know there is no manifesto basis for this, and as far as I know there has been no House of Commons vote for it, so what is the constitutional basis of the Prime Minister’s decision? Is it the royal prerogative?”
“The Prime Minister has centred much of the renegotiation on immigration, so can he tell the House, in his estimation, by how much the welfare changes will reduce immigration from the EU in the coming year?”
“We cannot tolerate their ordering assassinations on the streets of our country. Will she take targeted economic sanctions against them and, where possible, travel sanctions, although obviously those are not possible with a Head of State? Will there be an expulsion of intelligence officers—both FSB and others—from the Russian embassy, which would be entirely appropriate? It has been asked whether we should encourage our allies to help us. Of course we should, but we should also tell countries such as the Bahamas, Switzerland and Cyprus—all the Russian financial boltholes—that there is no hiding place for the money of these people.”
“I thank the Home Secretary for the tenor and thrust of her statement. The magisterial report written by Sir Robert Owen says in paragraph 10.16: “The FSB operation to kill Mr Litvinenko was probably approved by Mr Patrushev and also by President Putin.” Given the secrecy of the Russian state, I do not think we need to worry too much about the word “probably”. This is way beyond the normal civil legal requirements and what is needed to take economic, political and diplomatic action. What is certain is that the Russian state under President Putin has killed over 100 opponents—lawyers, accountants, journalists and politicians. It is a kleptocratic state that uses assassination as a policy weapon. May I ask the Home Secretary what we intend to do about Patrushev and Putin?”
“I wish to express a view that is opposite to that of my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine). The simple truth is that if we ban something and then take it back again later, we bring the law into disrepute. There is nobody in this House who is fiercer than I am in terms of banning inappropriate substances, but this is the wrong way round. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt) that we should keep poppers off the banned list until we know the facts.”
“I apologise to the hon. Lady for intervening a second time, but I just want to ensure that we get the reference point for harm clear. I know almost as little about poppers as she does—I spent this morning reading about them on the web. They can sometimes cause fainting and minor cases of blood damage. Paracetamol can cause damage; it can be used for suicide. Aspirin can cause damage; one can die from duodenal bleeding as a result. Let us be clear about what damage means. On the face of it, poppers do not appear to be harmful drugs.”
“My right hon. Friend is exactly right, for two reasons. First, many fitness supplements and other supplements work through the brain. There is no doubt about that—growth hormone-related ones do, and benign things like sage oil do. The other problem she faces is in the definition in the explanatory notes, which says that a psychoactive substance is a substance that causes “a range of effects including, but not limited to hallucinations; changes in alertness, perception of time and space, mood or empathy with others; and drowsiness.” All of those could apply to everything from antihistamines to, as I say, something as benign as sage oil. The problem is that if we are not careful we will end up with bad law that will undermine the status of people such as her constituent.”
“Supply does seem to me to be a very grey area. I understand that the policy is not intended to victimise current users, but it puts them in a position—dealing with a criminal—in which they might be susceptible to blackmail if they are a public figure. It seems to me that it will criminalise people whom it does not intend to criminalise.”
“Gentleman tell us that what he is after today is to win by persuasion and not by coercion?”
“The hon. Gentleman is making a very persuasive case. I start from the presumption that, where matters of justice are concerned, the hurdle for withholding information is much higher, so I start from a presumption in his favour. It has been reported in the newspapers today, or by the Press Association today, that the shadow Home Secretary is proposing to withhold support for the Investigatory Powers Bill if he does not, as it were, win his argument today. It seems to me that there are two arguments here: one, which is very powerful, that the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram) has just made; and another one, which again is powerful, against the Investigatory Powers Bill. It seems to me that both arguments are diminished by joining them. Can the hon.”
“For me, the problem of cross-national justice is that countries are sometimes very keen to convict foreigners, and there is therefore a propensity to miscarriages of justice. We saw that with the plane spotters in Greece, as my right hon. Friend may remember. He has of course been in the position of suffering a politically driven miscarriage of justice. What is interesting for me is that the Home Office has done a very good job in preventing the false positives and miscarriages of justices. Does he agree?”
“I take my right hon. Friend’s point about the European Court of Justice, but the fear in respect of some of the protections he has talked about, such as the extreme case of whether the database is used for speeding offences, is that the Court could change the guidelines in a way that is outside our control. I do not think that it is true that that could happen in this case, but I think that he should address the point, rather than just dismiss it.”
“The reason is that despite the availability of a large number of aircraft and all sorts of weapons systems—including Brimstone, and others that compete with and might be better than Brimstone—the constraint will be the targets. The Americans are flying about seven sorties a day in Syria, while the Russians declare that they are flying more than 140. That is because the Russians are being given up to 800 targets a day by the Syrian army, while we are getting fewer than half a dozen, by the sound of it, from the Free Syrian Army. If you want a practical demonstration of the usefulness in war of the 70,000 fighters we are being told about, you have it there. They are not useful, even as target-spotters.”
“Arguably, we are achieving the opposite. Last week, the greatest modern warrior, the American ex-special forces general Stanley McChrystal, was in the House and I spoke to him. He was talking principally about drones and aerial warfare, and he said, in terms, that we should never believe that we can cut off the head of the snake in this kind of war, because it always regenerates and reorganises. He said that that was the wrong metaphor for this kind of warfare, and that it would not work on any level. Another point leapt out at me. I have heard arguments from many knowledgeable colleagues, but no matter how skilful and brave our pilots are—and they will be both—it is debateable whether they will make even a marginal difference.”
“The proposal is to add a few British fast jets to the American-led air campaign in Syria and Iraq. We should face some facts, however. That air campaign has so far, in both countries, mounted some 10,000 sorties, one third of them in Syria, against 16,000 targets. The avowed aim? To degrade ISIS, or Daesh. The outcome? In the period in which the campaign has been operating, recruitment to Daesh has doubled from 15,000 to 30,000 personnel. By a macabre coincidence, that is about one extra recruit for every target we destroyed. So, from that point of view, we are not achieving our aim, although we are doing some good things. The former Foreign Secretary, the right hon. Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett), who is no longer in her place, talked about pinning ISIS down in Kobane, but we are not achieving what we intended to achieve.”
“I agree entirely with the excellent speeches by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron), and by the Chairman of the Defence Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis). They both made eloquent speeches, and I shall therefore focus not on the high principle but on the practicalities. I shall start with the Prime Minister’s point that all Members on both sides of the House want to see the end of ISIS. We are therefore talking about not the aim but the practical method of achieving it. I think that all hon. Members could agree with 90% of what is in the motion. The contentious part is whether we should engage in the bombing. That is being proposed for entirely understandable but symbolic reasons. Symbolic is not a small word; they are important symbolic reasons.”
“They have asked, “Shouldn’t we help the French?” Yes, we should help our allies, and we should do it by destroying ISIS, but we should do it properly and not by symbolism.”
“First, we could demand—not request—that Turkey shuts the Turkey-Syria border. ISIS gets $1 billion of income from putting oil across that border, and it sends weapons the other way. This gives freedom of movement to ISIS. Turkey is a NATO member, and it should not be giving any sort of comfort to our enemies. Secondly, Saudi and the Gulf states are supposedly our allies, yet they send tens of millions of dollars into these Islamist organisations—not just ISIS but al-Nusra and others. That money is used essentially to employ soldiers in a country where starvation is always at the door, so that money is incredibly powerful. If we want to do something straightaway that would achieve more than several squadrons of aircraft, we should get our allies to do their job. People have raised another issue several times today.”
“I have already told my hon. Friend that; he cannot have been listening. The simple truth is that the bombings have not achieved their aim; they are doing some useful things, including pinning some people down, but by themselves they cannot achieve what we have been told is their aim—namely, the reduction and removal of ISIS. That is their failure. So where do we go from here? I will not go into elaborate detail on the long-term plan. We have heard about that from a number of colleagues, and all their arguments have been very well made. We know that the diplomatic creation of the future Syrian state and the creation of an army on the ground will be difficult and not very dramatic. However, people are looking for immediate action, and there are a couple of things that we could do pretty much straightaway.”
“From that point of view, drones are perhaps the biggest risk that we undertake.”
“For those suffering drone attacks, there is an inability to strike back, a fear of constant danger, and a never-ending threat that is always there. There is strong evidence that this syndrome radicalises and militarises civilians, and unites militants. Drones can act as a recruiting sergeant. The most obvious example is the American drone operation in Pakistan, which, although it has taken out a lot of Taliban leaders, has also acted to recruit a number of others to their cause. Again, I suspect that will manifest itself in the battle against ISIL, because such organisations recruit worldwide. Last year, ISIL’s estimated recruitment was 30,000, having climbed from 15,000 during the course of the American attacks in Syria. That is an incredibly serious element of the strategic risk of using drones.”
“One squadron was attributed with 1,626 kills, which is far more than any normal aircraft squadron would carry out. There is a long-distance version of post-traumatic stress disorder. However, one other element worried me even more than that. It comes back to the legalities, to which I will return in a minute in putting a question to the Minister. If we undertake drone attacks outside a defined war zone, the location from which those attacks are operated may become part of a war zone, and we may legitimise a counter-attack on that area. Since many of those places are in rear areas, that has real issues for the operation of our RAF bases, such as RAF Waddington. The big strategic risk that was raised by a number of people, particularly McChrystal, at the RUSI conference was the damaging impact on hearts and minds in battle.”
“As such, one of the strategic risks of the use of armed drones is an increased risk of armed conflict. The second point that came up, which is not really a strategic risk but is a matter of concern, was the effects on drone pilots. There was a great deal of concern about the fact that drone pilots, as it were, go home to their families each night with no time to decompress after effectively being in the war zone all day. They witness the violence, whereas most people who are involved in a war are distanced, at least to some extent, from the people who suffer from their weapon system. The sheer fidelity of the drone systems makes the witnessing very close and personal, in some senses. The sheer number of kills that some armed drone squadrons achieve increases the stress.”
“One forgets that many of the reasons for imprecise targeting are not the drones or the weapon system, but the intelligence on which the targeting is based. Very often there is a precise weapon system, but it is not more precise than the intelligence can make it. The other point made by General McChrystal that is worth considering is that the use of drones may make accidental conflict more likely. He cited the example of the Turkish air force shooting down a Russian aircraft a week or so ago, and said that had the incursions by the Russians into Turkish airspace been made by drones, they would have been shot down much earlier because the price of the action would have been smaller. That may lead to a lower threshold for an aerial conflict, so there are other ways that the use of drones can reduce the threshold.”
“That is one of the strategic risks that I want the Government to consider. Beyond that, there are other genuine concerns. The first was made clear by General McChrystal last week: on one hand, drones lower the threshold for and make it easier to enter into armed conflict, and appear to remove the risk to our personnel and to render warfare almost like a video game; on the other hand, there is an illusion of precision. For those reasons, drones make the propensity to go to war far greater for countries that are worried about, say, their casualties. Most countries will concern themselves about casualties. Casualties are the political price paid for going to war and, as we will see with the Chilcot inquiry shortly, they create a great back pressure against war. As I said, there is an illusion of precision.”
“For example, if 20 people were sent in to make an attack, 80 or 100 force protection soldiers were needed. Those are no longer needed because of the reconnaissance sight capability, so drones are an incredibly important weapon system, even just as a reconnaissance system. They are also incredibly precise strike weapons. They are apparently largely riskless, with very little chance of loss of human lives on our side, and have pinpoint-accurate strike capability. The use of drones can therefore provide a never-ending threat inside and outside war zones. I will come back to the difference between the never-ending threats in those two categorisations in a moment. Drones consist of relatively accessible technologies. As a result, we might take it that proliferation is inevitable.”
“Last week, the all-party parliamentary group on drones and the Royal United Services Institute had a conference on drones, at which we were addressed by probably the greatest warrior of modern times, General Stanley McChrystal, and his English counterpart, Graeme Lamb, both of whom devised and operated the strategy against al-Qaeda in Iraq and destroyed that organisation. In doing so, one of the primary tactics involved using a drone to backtrack any suicide bomb attack on the green zone, signals intelligence to follow up on the origin of it, and special forces to arrest and stop the instigators. That allowed us pretty much completely to eradicate al-Qaeda in Iraq, so it was an incredibly important element of our operation there. McChrystal talked about the use of drones as a force multiplier.”
“In the recently published strategic defence and security review, the Government proposed 20 new Protector armed drones to “enhance our…global strike capability”, by which I assume the Government mean inside and outside war zones. That distinction will come up time and again in what I have to say and, I hope, in the Minister’s response. Reconnaissance drones—I will deal with these for a second without going into the armed element—give troops enormous advantages. They are an unblinking eye in the sky for 24 hours a day, with a very wide angle of view and great precision. They are enormously valuable to special forces and in counter-insurgency operations, let alone in conventional warfare. They are reliable, give real-time intelligence, and are able to replay events quickly so that troops can know what has just happened.”
“I beg to move, That this House has considered the rules of engagement and the use of armed drones. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. In all my time in the House of Commons, this is the first time that I have proposed a motion in Westminster Hall, so I beg your indulgence for any errors of procedure that I make. The issue before us is hugely topical, particularly given the debate on Syria in the House tomorrow. Armed drones, unmanned aerial vehicles or unmanned combat aerial vehicles have been described by some as just another weapon system—a modern version of the rifle or the missile—and by others as offering unparalleled operational potential, but with associated strategic risks.”
“There are three pages of questions—I will not read them out—that crystallise the inquiry. They are all good questions, but I finish on the point that drones are not just another weapons system; they are an incredibly effective weapons system subject to legal and technical proliferation, and to change in the behaviour patterns of both politicians and senior commanders. There is a great risk of acting in a way that is tactically incredibly successful but strategically dangerous. It seems to me that we need a clear and unambiguous legal policy, in the interests of our soldiers, our citizens and our allies.”
“Typically the MoD and lower formations take the law officers’ confirmation of legitimacy as gospel. They also then seek to make the rules as flexible as possible to allow commanders the greatest possible latitude.” Essentially, he is saying that the MOD is using a set of language to explain the rules of engagement and the area of operation that is not the same as the law officers’ definition of what is and is not a war zone and the like. That seems important. The relationship between the rules of engagement, international and national law and policy is the point where the rubber meets the road. One can expect soldiers and airmen to operate on the basis of the rules of engagement only, and nothing else. We must be very clear in this area. The Joint Committee on Human Rights has begun an inquiry on the legality of the drones policy.”
“The memo encapsulates the problem about which I am worrying: “Following the conference last week, I came away with the distinct impression that the MoD is using a different lexicon to the APPG and academe resulting in us talking at cross purposes. Where the APPG and Human Rights Select Committee…are talking about war zones and so forth the MoD have very carefully couched their wording in terms of RoE and operational areas. Typically RoE have an opening preamble covering the legitimacy of the operation involved…The wording for this will be sanctioned by the MoD legal advisers and endorsed by the law officers’ staff. The RoE then set out the area of operations and it was clear to me from the comments at the conference that this area included parts of Syria—hence everything being done (including 21 Aug) was within the RoE.”
“This is my direct question to the Minister; I understand that she may not be able to answer it today, but hopefully she will be able to indicate where she is going towards on this question. If the rules of engagement are properly drawn up, they must be within the law, within declared Government policy and within any parliamentary limits that have been set. The Syria debate will address the limits set by Parliament, but action must fit within all three areas. I would normally assume that to be the case but, after our conference last week, I got a memo from somebody who does not want to be identified, so forgive me if I do not identify him.”
“At the very least, it would amount to a significant change in the Government’s stance on what is legal and what is not, and it therefore requires careful consideration. Those concerns are amplified by the recent change in the ministerial code relating to international law. I happen not to think that the change has any legal standing but, from a political point of view, it raises concerns that, again, could be used against us by our opponents. I have argued time and again that one of our strongest counter-terrorism weapons is the fact that we abide by a high moral standard. If we do not abide by a high moral standard, we lose one battle to our opponents straightaway. I am driving towards the relationship between the rules of engagement and the legalities I have just mentioned.”
“The concern raised by the Khan attack, and indeed by the subsequent attack by the Americans, relates to what we might call “targeted killing”—some have used the phrase “extrajudicial killing.” The concern, which again was raised by General McChrystal, among others, was that that could be seen as an easier alternative to arrest or prosecution when dealing with terrorists. We had that argument in Northern Ireland 30 years ago, when we were accused of hard arrests, as it were. We do not want to revisit that argument, because it was pretty unedifying at the time. If we give in to temptation and such strikes happen, it may be morally right in the case of the individuals concerned, but it would be legally dubious.”
“As it stands, an armed attack must already have been launched, or at least be imminent, in order for states to resort to force in individual or collective self-defence; that is one element. Action against past attacks, if not done during the course of a war, risks being categorised as reprisal, which is unlawful in peacetime. Action against future attacks, which might be considered pre-emptive or preventive, is also considered unlawful. There is quite a narrow gap for strikes, which must be necessary and proportionate.”
“There was a series of arguments, but the basic argument was imminent self-defence. In a letter to the United Nations, the Government cited the collective self-defence of Iraq as the second argument for the strike. I am not a lawyer, but it seems self-evident that this is a little like someone turning up in court to face an assault charge and saying, “I wasn’t there, but if I was there, he started it.” One argument undermines the other. The presentation of two arguments to the United Nations weakens, rather than enhances, the claim. I do not know why that was done, but again it highlights why we need absolute clarity on such matters. This is not an area in which we can risk having doubt—in the interests of our officers, let alone in the interest of our national reputation—about whether we have done the right thing.”
“When Reyaad Khan and Ruhul Amin were targeted in Syria by a UK drone on 21 August 2015, the Government claimed: “This airstrike was a necessary and proportionate exercise of the individual right of self-defence of the United Kingdom.” The Government also said that there was “clear evidence” that these individuals were planning and directing armed attacks against the United Kingdom. There was a lot of debate about that at the time, and there were questions about how imminent the attack might be, and how it was possible for there to be an imminent attack when these individuals were in Syria and the attack was cited as being in the UK. Some of the events that were cited happened in advance of the air strike, so it is not obvious how they could have been prevented by it.”
“It is not fair to ask our soldiers to carry out tasks without absolute legal certainty. Most of us do not know the exact background of some of the recent drone strikes—I am sure the Minister knows, but I do not. After the Khan strike, a headline in The Sunday Times stated “Army chief demanded legal cover for killing”. The article claimed that the director of special forces asked for specific legal advice on the strike. I do not know whether that is true, but it highlights one of the issues for me, which is that when we are going into a controversial military technology, we must absolutely ensure that the officers who use it are properly protected and clearly understand the limits of its use and where they might cross the rules of war, international law and so on. That is one of the major drivers of my argument.”
“It is absolutely clear that, if that is not possible now, it will be possible in the extremely close future. Drones are an element of proliferation that I suspect is already out of the bag. There is not much that we can do about it except plan our defences against drone attacks. That is too big a story for this debate, but the hon. Gentleman makes a good point. I now come to the nub of this debate. The legal framework we create for drones has implications for strategic risk, for the way drones are used, and for whether their use acts as a recruiting sergeant. All the elements that I have talked about can be affected by the legal framework, which needs clarity to maintain the UK’s international standing and to protect the pilots and the armed forces from prosecution.”
“No, not particularly. There was a reference to it, but it was a throwaway line, and I cannot tell you the originator of the reference because of Chatham House rules. As I said earlier, plainly the nature of the technology involved in drones is awfully straightforward: the aerodynamics are straightforward; the motive power is straightforward; and the guidance systems are straightforward. Of course, lots of commercial drones are now available. Making an attack drone would take more than that, but it is pretty straightforward to achieve almost every element of building a drone—perhaps not a terribly sophisticated Predator or Reaper drone, or whatever, but a drone that might be used for a single-shot attack, or that could get to a location that is otherwise well protected against terrorist attack.”
“The hon. Lady is very eloquently laying out one of the major areas of concern about the use of this weapons system. Does she think that if the drone operators know unequivocally that what they are doing is legal, it would make their job easier and their chance of suffering stress lower?”
“My right hon. Friend makes an incredibly important point. One of the difficulties with such a legal basis is the requirement of imminence, which gives us an evidential problem. Presumably there was some sort of terrorist cell in this country that was about to carry out a terrorist action, and the Government have failed or refused to answer questions about whether there have been any arrests in the follow-up to that strike. That gives us a problem. The Government may have good reason for not giving us the information, but when drone strikes are carried out they will have to be ready to provide an evidential chain of some sort to show that what they did was correct.”
“The hon. Gentleman makes an important point, which impinges on the speech made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field). One of the most worrying things for me about American policy is the idea that the President approves a kill list every Thursday morning, or whenever it is. That is the kind of area in which I do not think we want to go in the direction of the Americans. Politicians should not have the right to strike someone from the face of the earth, no matter what the logic. Does the hon. Gentleman agree?”
“Will the Minister give an undertaking that the MOD will co-operate fully with the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which will hopefully provide information about exactly that issue?”
“Drone operations in war zones worry me much less than drone operations outside war zones. That is where Governments will be tempted to do things that are beyond what we normally expect of a civilised western Government. I will look very carefully at the 2016 UK air power doctrine for an answer to that issue. Question put and agreed to . Resolved, That this House has considered the rules of engagement and the use of armed drones.”
“To put it in physical terms, a Tornado can cross the length of a football field in one third of a second, but a drone can watch the same football field in orbit for eight hours. Clearly, there are differences in precision. The rules of war were built around the fog of war and the doubt that it creates, so we have an opportunity to make them more precise and humane. However, as the hon. Members for West Dunbartonshire (Martin John Docherty) and for East Renfrewshire (Kirsten Oswald) said, in American strikes, each kill of a terrorist is claimed three times. That implies that at least two innocent people die as a result of failures of intelligence, so there are areas of concern. That brings me to the most important aspect of this debate, which is the blurring of the area between war and peace.”
“Thank you very much for chairing this debate, Mr Stringer. It has been a privilege to serve under your chairmanship. I thank the Backbench Business Committee, and I hope we have justified its decision to give us this debate. Let me quickly pick up a couple of points. I thank the Minister, who answered many of our questions well. My right hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field) argued that we need a new law. Given that the UK air power doctrine will be published in 2016, what we really need more immediately is a robust and clear public application of the current law. That would be the most important outcome of this debate. Some hon. Members argued that this is a new system, but it is operated in the same way as existing systems. The principle is the same, but the practicalities are different.”
“I was tempted to raise this as a point of order. My right hon. Friend does not have to go to Europe to get the guidelines on this; he can look at “Erskine May”. On page 265, under the heading “Improper influence”, it says: “Conduct not amounting to a direct attempt improperly to influence Members in the discharge of their duties but having a tendency to impair their independence in the future performance of their duty may be treated as a contempt.” In other words, what the Government have done to Members of the House would be treated as contempt of Parliament if it had been done by anybody else in the country.”
“In view of the size of the Bill, I will confine myself solely to the judicial authorisation aspects of it. Will the Secretary of State tell the House whether the measure will replace all 66 statutory approval mechanisms for intercept and use of communications data? Will the judiciary involved in the authorisation procedures be appointed by the Judicial Appointments Commission or by the Prime Minister? Will Members of Parliament get the same protections on communications data, to which she referred, that are being extended to journalists? My understanding is that that is not the case.”