Senior peers drop attempt to revive ‘snooper’s charter’

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/feb/02/senior-peers-drop-attempt-revive-snoopers-charter

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Four senior peers have given up their last-minute attempt to revive the “snooper’s charter” and get it onto the statute book in the aftermath of the Paris attacks.

The former Conservative defence secretary Lord King has told the House of Lords that this attempt to fill “the gap in access to communications data” was opposed by both the government and the official opposition so had little chance of making it into law.

“Our failure to take this exceptional opportunity which could have sent this to another place [the Commons] means that the risk to fill this gap will be longer than it need be. We just have to pray that we do not pay too high a price for that.”

He said that the all-party agreement to fast-track the current counter-terror bill, which tries to tackle the problem of jihadi fighters travelling to and from Syria and Iraq, rested on the condition that no substantial additions were made to the legislation.

King, backed by three other senior peers, Labour’s Lord West, the Liberal Democrat Lord Carlile and crossbencher Lord Blair, a former Metropolitan commissioner, tried to insert the main elements of the 2011 draft communications data bill – known as the “snooper’s charter” – into the current counter-terror legislation. Their amendments run to more than 18 pages.

King failed to press to a vote his amendments at the House of Lords report stage of the counter-terror and security bill on Monday rather than face a crushing defeat in the face of opposition from the combined Conservative, Liberal Democrat and Labour benches.

King cited the support of the prime minister and the home secretary, Theresa May, for the measure, which would have required every phone and internet company to store for 12 months the entire personal online history or communications data of all their customers.

King said he had been told that no further work had been done on unpublished Home Office proposals, which are said to overcome 95% of criticisms made in a damning report on the draft communications bill by a joint committee of parliament, chaired by the former Tory Home Office minister, Lord Blencathra.

The failure of the Home Office to bring forward its revised proposals also disappointed Carlile, the former official reviewer of terrorism laws. He said they would have tabled an amendment incorporating those Home Office proposals.

Lord Blair also voiced his anger that the Conservatives and Labour refused to back their move to tackle the “growing gap” in the access of police and security services to communications gap. “I am acutely disappointed by the failure of both front benches to refuse to support this amendment,” he said.

But Blencathra, who chaired the parliamentary joint committee, said they had spent six months going through the same proposals in the draft communications bill in detail in 2012 and came to a unanimous verdict. They reported it was too sweeping in scope, that it failed to address the issue of blogs, that it needed safeguards against “fishing expeditions”, and that it needed to be substantially redrafted to prevent it being a snooper’s charter.

“I am glad you are not going to push this to a vote,” said Blencathra. He said he hoped after the election there would be a new communications data bill that was based on a review by David Anderson QC, the official reviewer of terrorism laws, and wide consultation with the industry, and “protected the privacy of 60 million people who are not a terrorist threat”, he said.