My Lords, Amendment 132B—a probing amendment—is in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Hain. The Committee will know that everyone here is engaged
with scrutiny of the present Bill because we believe that police powers, criminal justice measures and the criminal law need to be on a clear and, for the most part, statutory footing—certainly on a clear legal footing. A brief skim of this very hefty piece of legislation will throw up references to well-established and legendary Acts of Parliament. The Police and Criminal Evidence Act is an obvious one, as is the Public Order Act; the list goes on. These measures, over the years, have come to govern police powers in particular: powers of arrest, investigatory powers, and so on.
However, because we are nearly a quarter into the 21st century, so much technological development—some of it just as intrusive as traditional powers of arrest and subsequent investigatory powers—has proceeded apace. I, for one, despite having been around this territory for a couple of decades, am not clear about the statutory footing for much of it. That is really the legal and constitutional basis for this probe, if I might put it like that. In a moment, my noble friend Lord Hain will use a more specific example that spurred us to table this amendment, even though that was only a couple of days ago.
In a sense, this is not that dissimilar to the amendment that the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, and many of his friends on the Benches opposite debated a few days ago. That was about non-crime information sitting around on databases, potentially to the detriment of citizens. His cry then, supported vociferously by people from across the Committee, but particularly that side, was that it must be on a statutory footing. The same must be true as a matter of law, not least the law of the European Convention on Human Rights but constitutional principle, in relation to the commissioning of weapons, surveillance equipment, investigatory technology and new algorithmic technology—much of which is currently under investigation by the new House of Lords Justice and Home Affairs Committee, ably chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, who is in her place, and comprising many illustrious Members of your Lordships’ House.
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That committee is conducting a very important investigation. I recommend that the Committee takes a glance at some of the evidence that is emerging about how this technology is developing apace—sometimes commissioned by individual forces, sometimes by consortia of forces. Where, I ask the Minister, is the parliamentary debate, the public scrutiny and, ultimately, the hard legal and constitutional basis for it?
This is not to say that any particular technology is offensive per se—some of it may be very useful to criminal investigations and crime prevention in the public interest, but, goodness me, it needs to be on a statutory footing. Look at the way in which the extraction of mobile phone data developed and was not, for a considerable periods of time, on a statutory footing, what happened and how the Government then had to respond, even in this Bill. I am asking for a broader response to all of this kit—all of this technology. I beg to move.