IP Bill is 'undemocratic', says Conservative MP

Investigatory Powers Bill is being rushed through parliament in order to avoid proper debate, argues David Davis MP

The way the government is rushing the Investigatory Powers Bill (IP Bill) through parliament is undemocratic, according to Conservative MP David Davis.

Davis, who in July 2015 won a High Court ruling stating that sections 1 and 2 of the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act 2014 (DRIPA) were unlawful, told Computing that the government is trying to rush the Bill through because it is scared of proper debate.

"It's the government's strategy now to do these things too quickly," said Davis. "It's because they are outgunned by experts in the public domain who understand the subject better than they do. Now that's not a very high bar, I wouldn't trust most ministers to programme my video recorder!"

Drawing a parallel with the original so-called 'Snoopers' Charter' (the Draft Communications Data Bill, much of which now forms part of the IP Bill) he added: "They put that in front of a pre-legislative committee chaired by David McLean, a famously right wing minister of state of the Home Office, and that committee absolutely gutted it, which destroyed the credibility of the government's evidence.

"So their strategy has gone from trying to do this via the conventional parliamentary route, to the absolute opposite, to push things out so fast."

Davis, a prominent privacy advocate, said that when he offered to join the joint committee designed to scrutinise the draft Bill "the blood drained from the whip's face".

"It was plain that they were never going to have me anywhere near that committee! Somebody who knows about the subject? Good God!" He exclaimed.

This same rush strategy, Davis explained, was used previously when the government attempted to push through DRIPA, which was presented to the House of Commons as an emergency piece of legislation.

"We know via the Liberals [the Liberal Democrat party], who were in government at the time, that [the government] discussed this for three months [among themselves] before bringing it to the Commons to go through in one day. A Bill like that should take three to four months to debate. After it had gone through the House of Commons in one day, it took them six to nine months to put the statutory instruments in place to make it work. So where was the urgency? There was none! It was completely bogus!"

Davis also bemoaned the state of the opposition, suggesting that the process could be challenged were Labour more inclined and able to fight the issue.

"If we had a decent opposition there could be a comeback to this. The technical majority [on the government's side] is between 12 and 16. I'd have to find between seven and nine people on my side if the opposition was uniform, but it's all over the shop.

"Andy Burnham [the Shadow Home Secretary] has got neither the confidence nor the courage to take this on. But that's not entirely pejorative. It's highly technical and [the opposition] is afraid of being accused on being soft on terrorism."

Davis also criticised the amount of time being allowed for debate in the House later this month.

"We are supposed to come back to this in two weeks' time and debate [the Bill], and each of us will have six minutes [to comment on the Bill and suggest amendments] in a speech. It's undemocratic. We ought to have a couple of days on the floor of the House for what's called the second reading, that's the 'in principle' debate.

"You can't even deal with one of the subjects in this Bill - and there are probably five or six big subjects - in six minutes.

"Then there's the Committee Stage, which should be held on the floor of the House when it's a constitutional Bill like this. The report stage, which is the final amendment stage, should be on the floor of the House, and it should have plenty of time."

He added that the government has attempted to ward off any bad press by promoting the fact that the Bill has a section setting out protections of journalists' correspondence - hoping that journalists will be sufficiently delighted to cover the proposed legislation favourably.

"They're trying to weight the coverage [in their favour]," said Davis.

"They know that after the telephone hacking scandal [that they got bad press], in part because journalists weren't very happy about it. It's very cunning."