It was approved by 281 votes to 15 and will now move to the next stage of parliamentary scrutiny – known as the “committee stage” – during which the legislation will be debated in detail and various amendments proposed.
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“On the left of politics, there are deeply-held concerns that, in our country’s past, investigatory powers have been misused against trade unionists and ordinary people campaigning for justice”. The main opposition Labour Party says it will abstain, rather than oppose it.
Here’s how the parties stand on the bill, in its current form. It said: “Even our members are not yet fully clear about what the bill will mean for them”.
Laying out the party’s stance, the shadow home secretary said it was crucial to strike a balance between security and privacy, pointing to the example of meeting representatives from Hillsborough families who believe their phones were intercepted following the football stadium tragedy. He said there were “about a dozen” areas that need to be significantly improved for him to be happy to vote for the law. The bill known as the “snopper’s charter” will also authorise the bulk collection of personal data.
The backbencher finished by saying: “Other countries, in particular the most unpleasant ones, are always happy to use Britain as an example for something that they should not be doing”.
The legal profession has also recently said it is unimpressed by the latest version of the bill, with the Bar Council in particular warning that the newest version of the wording did not go far enough to protect legal privilege.
Home secretary Theresa May led the charge, seeing as it’s basically her idea to stir all this up again, telling MPs it’s essential legislation to ensure the “privacy and security” of the nation, despite the fact that maintaining internet connection records would seem – to the layman – to be literally the exact opposite of protecting our privacy. “I find it hard to accept that statement”.
Weak definitions in the bill, said Shaw, open it to very broad interpretation and that the government could use this to force nearly any company using technology to store 12 months’ worth of nearly any data. “There is a fundamental challenge at the heart of the Bill about the idea that it is possible to separate somebody’s contact data from their content data”, she said.
Lib Dem leader Tim Farron accused the party of being “gutless” and “sitting on its hands while the government rams through a law that will erode our civil liberties”. “Alongside the introduction of the bill, we published six draft codes of practice in order that they could be reviewed by the house”.
He accused the Home Office of being “institutionally insensitive” to privacy.
“SumOfUs represents more than one million United Kingdom consumers who don’t want to be spied on by the government”.
The Bill will now pass to committee stage in the Commons.
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“It reduces the amount of time within which urgent warrants must be reviewed by a judicial commissioner, cutting it from five days to three; and it strengthens the powers of the new Investigatory Powers Commissioner”.
