My Lords, I have long been on record as being for radical reform of the House of Lords, but I do not think there are many Chambers in the world that could have had such an interesting debate on such a key subject—certainly not the House of Commons, sadly. Without falling into the old trap of saying what a wonderful lot we all are, it is important that, in such an important Bill, covering so many important areas of civil liberties and national security, there should be an opportunity, before we get to voting, to have this kind of debate and get some of the issues into the public domain.
I am on the same side as the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, on knowledge of the technology—looking back to 20 years ago, when I was on the committee that worked on the communications Bill which set up Ofcom, I see that we were genuinely innocents abroad. We deliberately decided not to try regulating the internet, because we did not know what it was going to do. I do not think that we can have that excuse today.
Perhaps an even more frightening background is that, for three and a half years, during the coalition Government, I was Minister for Digital Protection—a less equipped Minister to protect your digital I cannot imagine. However, I remember being taken to some place over the river to have a look at our capacities in this area. Having seen some of the things that were being done, I rather timidly asked the expert who was showing me round, “Aren’t there civil liberty issues in what you’re doing?” He said, “Oh no, sir. Tesco know far more about you than we do”.
There is this element about what is secret. The noble Baroness, Lady Fox, in her last contribution, said that children look with contempt at some of the safeguards and blockages that keep them away from things. I do not think anybody is deluding themselves that there is some silver bullet. As always, Parliament must do its best to address real national concerns and real problems in the best way that we see at this time. There is a degree of cross-party and Cross-Bench
unity, in that there are real and present dangers in how these technologies are being used, and real and present abuses of a quite horrific kind. The noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, is right. This technology has given a quantum leap to the damage that the abuser and the pornographer can do to our society, in the same way that it has given a quantum leap to those who want to undermine the truth and fairness of our election system. There are real problems that must be addressed.
Although it has not been present in this debate, it is no help to polarise the argument as being between the state wanting to accrue more and more powers and brave defenders of civil liberties. As somebody who has practised some of these dark arts myself, I advise those who are organising letters to ensure that those sending them do not leave in the paragraph that says, “Here you may want to include some personal comments”. It waters down the credibility of this as some independent exercising of a democratic right.
I make a plea, as someone on the edges of the debate who at times had some direct responsibilities, to use what the Bill has thrown up to address whether it is now in the right shape—I hope the Minister hears it. The Government should not be ashamed to take it away and think a bit. It may be that we can add some of the protections that we quite often do, such as allowing certain interventions after a judge or senior police officer or others have been involved. That may already be in other parts of the Bill. However, it would be wrong to allow the Bill to polarise this, given that there was no one who spoke this morning who is not trying to deal with very real difficulties, problems and challenges, within the framework of a democratic society, in a way that protects our freedoms but also protects us from real and present dangers.