Protection of Freedoms Bill

My Lords, the noble Lord, rightly, is looking for a degree of clarification, as suggested in his amendment. I do not think that we do need clarification, and it might be helpful if I set out the case. First, let me be clear that phone tapping or hacking is illegal. As the noble Lord made clear in his opening remarks, it remains illegal—I want to emphasise this—even if the intended recipient has access to that communication. I am aware of some of the concerns and the point was addressed directly by the DPP in the written evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee in October last year. He stated that his advice to the police and the CPS would be to assume that, "““an offence may be committed if a communication is intercepted or looked into after it has been accessed by the intended recipient and for so long as the system in question is used to store the communication in a manner which enables the (intended) recipient to have subsequent, or even repeated, access to it””." The recent Home Affairs Select Committee report, following its inquiry into unauthorised tapping or hacking of mobile communications, signified the particular importance of Section 2(7) of RIPA and that not enough attention had been paid to its significance. The Committee did not recommend that Section 2(7) be amended. As Members of the Committee will be aware, we also have the Leveson inquiry which is looking at a number of issues related to phone hacking. The first part of the inquiry, which is already under way, is focusing on the role and conduct of the press. The second part of inquiry will examine the extent of unlawful or improper conduct at the News of the World and other newspapers and the way in which management failures have allowed it to happen. The original police investigation and its failings; the issue of corrupt payments to police officers; and the implications of all this for relations between police and the press will also be considered as part of the second part of that inquiry. As the noble Lord will be aware, there are a number of other inquiries and investigations in hand and the police investigation into allegations of phone hacking continues, which I referred to in the Chamber only the other day in answering a Question. We believe it to be most appropriate, which I think the noble Lord would accept, to await the outcome of these various inquiries to know just what has happened, and so on, and to examine the conclusions before considering any changes to the law in this area. Further, we consider that the meaning of Section 2(7) is clear and that there are sufficient penalties in place to deal with offences of unauthorised interception. I refer the noble Lord back to the advice of the DPP to the CPS prosecutors. I hope that the noble Lord will accept that that deals with his points and that it is probably best to wait for the outcome of all those reports before he, we or anyone goes further.