In common with all the speakers who have made their contributions thus far on Second Reading of the Investigatory Powers (Amendment) Bill, I will not say that I oppose the Bill or that these powers should not exist or be updated in this rapidly developing area of technology. As others have observed, the rapidly evolving technology is creating threats about which we could not have dreamed when the original Act was introduced after an ISC report on privacy and security in 2015. Although the issues are evolving, some things stay the same, namely that in a democracy it is important that the security services and all the agencies, whether they relate to police or security, can be held to account by the democratic structures that are created to make our democracy real.
I emphasise a point that has not been stressed by others: we are living through an era during which authoritarian governments across the world are beginning to challenge the openness of democratic structures and test whether those who live in a democracy have the political will to maintain their democracy, keep it vibrant and protect it from threats. Against that background of being challenged—we do not have to look much further than Europe and the borders of Ukraine to see how some of those challenges are beginning to develop—we are being asked whether we rate the health and strength of our democracy enough to protect it. We are also being asked, which is the nature of this debate, to justify
the powers we are giving to the security and police services to our constituents and those citizens of our country who wish to see their democracy protected, as well as having a proper balance between democratic oversight safety and the powers we give our security services to do their jobs.
As others have mentioned, there is a balance between the effectiveness and speed of those powers and the safeguards that this Parliament puts in place in order to ensure that there is proper oversight and use of them. We have heard how that balance and safeguarding has been developed in law. We are looking now at amendments to the existing law in order to update and modernise those powers to make them more effective, efficient and easier to use, and to ensure protecting our security, be it from criminality, terrorism, paedophilia or state actors who wish to our country harm, is balanced correctly with safeguards, openness and transparency oversight. Then we can protect our society and values, while respecting the privacy of every individual citizen who enjoys the freedom of living in our democracy.
The Bill seeks an expansion in investigatory powers and some of those powers available to agencies to deal with the evolution of this area. Our job, not only in the debate tonight, but in the scrutiny of this Bill in Committee, is to test and ask the appropriate questions about whether the right balance has been struck by Ministers and the relevant agencies in the extra powers that they want to introduce. As the newest member of the ISC, I believe that, as the investigatory powers evolve, it is also important that the powers of the Intelligence and Security Committee to do its job in these new areas are properly developed and resourced. I shall just leave that on the record. It is not a surprise to those who have read the Lords debates that this is an issue.
I draw attention to an area of the Bill where amendments were agreed in the Lords: what is known as the triple lock, rather than the double lock. That is the mechanism that protects the communications of Members of this Parliament and other relevant legislatures from being arbitrarily intercepted by agencies for no reason. In fact, it is part of the protection that one would expect in a robust democracy for those people who are elected to represent their constituents. They have a reasonable expectation, I think, to be allowed to go about their business without being subjected to that kind of intrusive power, unless there is an extremely good reason for it. Members will know that the underlying principle is that the communications of Members of this Parliament and other relevant legislators should be intercepted and read only where it is absolutely essential to do so—in the most serious of circumstances. In the Investigatory Powers Act 2016, which this Bill will change, Parliament recognised that that was an issue by adding a third layer of safeguards to the approval process for warrants for targeted interception and targeted examination of communications. Those warrants are issued only by a Secretary of State and reviewed by a judicial commissioner, which is the double lock, but they are also approved by the Prime Minister personally. As my right hon. Friend said from the Dispatch Box, there is an issue if the Prime Minister is unavailable to do that. It is important that there is not a gap in security protection, which would happen if the Prime Minister is unable to be the third part of that triple lock.
Nobody disagrees with the idea that that process should be made more robust, but there is also an issue about how wide the power to issue that final approval—currently, that final approval rests only with the Prime Minister—should go. There were debates about that when the Bill went through its stages in the other place. The question of balance is how the new Bill deals with ensuring that the triple lock is robust while not creating a lacuna should the Prime Minister be indisposed and unable to issue warrants without that power going too wide. The ISC supports the intention behind this, which is to provide resilience around the current arrangements. It is important that the Prime Minister is the person who approves these things, but this may affect the operations of the intelligence agencies when they are seeking a targeted interference or a time-sensitive warrant. None the less, there was agreement that, in truly exceptional circumstances, it may be appropriate for a Secretary of State to temporarily deputise for the Prime Minister. The Committee considered that it was important that decisions in this area should be delegated only in the most exceptional circumstances, and delegated only to a limited number of Secretaries of State who are already responsible for authorising relevant warrants. We want the Prime Minister to retain sight of all warrants relating to Members of a relevant legislature. Most of that was agreed in the other place, although there is an issue about whether the relevant Secretaries of State—there can be up to five of those—are ones that already issue warrants.