Rowena Mason, political correspondent 

MPs raise fears over move to push surveillance bill through Commons

May dubbed 'Mrs Snoop' as politicians say emergency measures applied to new legislation could have 'unintended consequences'
  
  

Theresa May, House of Commons
Some senior politicians are concerned that home secretary Theresa May will rush through the bill with just a single day of scrutiny in the Commons. Photograph: PA Photograph: PA

MPs have expressed concern about the rushing through of new surveillance law as "emergency" measures that allow the retention of people's phone call, text message and internet data.

David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband all support the new data retention and investigation powers bill, after a European court struck down a directive that required internet and phone companies to keep data on communications for 12 months.

However, some senior politicians raised worries that the bill would be rushed through by home secretary Theresa May with just a single day of scrutiny in the Commons. Chris Bryant, a shadow minister, said he was "deeply suspicious of hasty emergency legislation supposedly necessitated by a court judgment from this April".

He added in parliament: "The only reason this is an emergency that has to be dealt with in a single day in the House of Commons is because the government has spent three months making its mind up and has decided that we're going on holiday in 10 days' time. Would it not make far more sense to enable proper consideration, so that we do not have unintended consequences from this legislation, if this was considered in this House on two separate days, so that we can table amendments after second reading?"

Another shadow minister, Steve McCabe, said he thought May was turning from "protections of freedom queen" into "Mrs Snoop".

David Davis, the Conservative former shadow home secretary, also questioned the justification for rushing through the new laws quickly.

"The case was put to the European court of justice some time ago and it took some time to come to its conclusion on 8 April. If there is an emergency, this was a predictable one. There has been plenty of time to look at the clauses to relate to data retention since then. So, why, if this is an emergency, is it now not then?"

Peter Wishart, the Scottish National party MP for Perth, said Scotland had not been consulted and it sounded like "snoopers' charter, the prequel", while David Winnick, the Labour MP for Walsall and member of the home affairs committee, said he would "not be supporting it and I think it quite wrong that such important legislation should be rushed through in one single day".

However, dozens of MPs spoke in favour of the legislation including former Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell, former home secretary Alan Johnson, former Home Office minister Hazel Blears and Sir Malcolm Rifkind, chairman of the intelligence and security committee.

Johnson said the new laws were "necessary but not sufficient" and called for the government to go further in closing loopholes in data collection that could help the police stop terrorists and other criminals committing crimes.

Mark Field, a Conservative member of the intelligence and security committee, said he was "instinctively uncomfortable" about rushed legislation and consensus among the parties, but he thought the new laws were important.

Outside the Commons, the new legislation has been labelled a "stitch-up" by civil liberties campaigners at the Open Rights Group.

Jim Killock, its executive director, said there was "no legal basis for making internet service providers retain our data so it is using the threat of terrorism as an excuse for getting this law passed".

"Blanket surveillance needs to end. That is what the court has said," he said.

Tom Watson, a prominent Labour MP who helped uncover the phone-hacking scandal, said it was a "secret deal between party leaders".

He told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: "There hasn't been a bill published and yet we find out this morning, when parliament is on one-line whip and MPs are in their constituencies, that next week they will railroad emergency legislation to put right a decision made by the European court of justice that the current legislation was beyond human rights law. Now that doesn't seem right to me.

"There are hundreds of thousands of people out there very concerned about this particular policy issue. They've not seen this bill either, but it doesn't really matter this year because there's been a deal done between the three parties and it'll be railroaded through. If you're an MP you probably shouldn't bother turning up to work next week because what you are thinking doesn't really matter."

However, the bill won support from Julian Huppert, a Lib Dem MP who campaigned against the so-called snoopers' charter legislation that would have extended data retention from phone calls and text messages to wider internet usage. He insisted that the new laws, which will expire in 2016, do not amount to a return of the bill that was previously vetoed by Clegg.

"As a Liberal, I care passionately about privacy and civil liberties, and that's why we fought so hard against the 'snoopers' charter', which really went far, far too far – I was really pleased we managed to kill that off," Huppert said.

"This is not doing that. This is restoring previously existing powers with some extra safeguards so they are even more constrained, but much more importantly, because this legislation will automatically delete itself in 2016, it forces something that we in the Liberal Democrats have been arguing for a very long time which is a complete rethink of how the entire system works – how Ripa [the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act], the legislation that underpins this, works."

 

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