Proposed Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill
Item 6 on the agenda relates to intrusive surveillance. The proposed bill has caused a certain amount of puzzlement, because there has not been much information about it. Today, I would like to have a preliminary discussion on potential witnesses for either stage 1 or pre-legislative consideration of the bill.
Members have received a note from the clerk on the background to the bill. The Scottish bill will effectively mirror part II of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill that is currently going through the House of Commons. I have e-mailed the URL of the relevant website to the clerk. Has anyone looked at that? I see that Scott Barrie is waving his copy of the Westminster bill.
The Scottish bill is being introduced rather quietly. There has not been a huge fanfare to announce it. That means that there has been a certain amount of speculation in the press. I know that the Executive is considering including in the Scottish bill provisions that are unrelated to those in the UK bill and that are also unrelated to intrusive surveillance. I am being careful with my comments because I am not very sure whether that is widely known.
This item is extremely difficult to handle as there have been no press releases or announcements about the bill. However, I know that a bill will be introduced in mid-May. The committee is being asked/required—I say "asked" because the Executive cannot do anything other than ask, and I say "required" because that is how the request has been put—to have the bill turned around and completed by the summer recess. I have advised the Minister for Justice that, to achieve that deadline, we would require to do some work on the legislation before it was introduced, which is why we are discussing it now. Although the Executive has at least made a commitment to provide us with a memorandum on the bill, if not the draft bill itself, it is obviously not available today.
Finally, I have also advised the minister that standing orders will have to be suspended to remove both two-week gaps between stage 1 and stage 2 and stage 2 and stage 3; otherwise, the Executive's timetable for the bill's passage will be unachievable. That is assuming that the committee can begin consideration of the bill at our meeting on 2 May, which means that we might have to start taking evidence without a draft bill before us. Even if we start on 2 May, standing orders will need to be suspended to achieve the bill's passage through Parliament by the summer recess. However, there is pressure on the committee to meet that deadline.
I have already said that we will not be doing any bill work at the meeting immediately after the Easter recess, and the first potential meeting at which we can discuss the bill in any detail will be on 2 May. I want to ensure that we will not be having a preliminary discussion at that meeting and that we make a decision now about which initial witnesses we should invite. We should certainly ask the Minister for Justice and the appropriate bill team to attend that meeting. Furthermore, in view of some of the issues covered by the bill and outside comments on what the bill might do, we should ask someone from the Scottish Human Rights Centre to attend. Committee members might have other suggestions about people to invite.
I suppose that I should be careful about what I am saying in case someone else is watching or listening.
It is all on the record, Michael.
I am aware of that.
There is obviously some suspicion about this bill, not only because it was never really announced, but because we have been somewhat deprived of information about it. I understand that Scotland has an unenviable reputation for direct and intrusive surveillance and that, compared to other countries, we have an outstanding record on a number of those areas. As a result, I have particular concerns about the bill's possible provisions, and I support your recommendation to invite the Scottish Human Rights Centre as I am sure that the organisation has a lot of background information to support its own potential concerns.
Furthermore, we should expand consideration of the bill to include a more international perspective and ask the Scottish Human Rights Centre to examine our position on this bill in relation to other European countries.
As far as I can see, the clerk's briefing note covers two issues: first, the Westminster bill, which I have no difficulty about letting the House of Commons get on with and on which we will be having a debate later this week; and secondly, the Scottish Executive's own bill. Although I sympathise with your difficulties, convener, we are trying to decide on a time scale for the consideration of the bill when we have no idea what the Executive has in mind. The whole thing is absolutely ridiculous. For example, you have suggested a suspension of standing orders before we have any idea of the Executive's proposals.
I cannot disagree with you, Phil. We are in an extremely odd position. Although we must make some preliminary decisions about witnesses to get ahead of the game, we do not yet know what they will have to give evidence on.
Complying with that wish and having made my earlier comments, I think that we have to consult consumer associations, business organisations and even churches, as the Executive's intention behind the bill probably has moral implications. We might also need to take evidence from victims organisations; indeed, many people might be influenced by this legislation. We should certainly invite members of business organisations, on whom the impact could be quite considerable.
On Thursday, there will be a 45-minute debate in the chamber on a motion that has come to be known for reasons that no one understands as a Sewel motion—which I presume refers to Lord Sewel—on the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill. Although the bill is going through the House of Commons, aspects of the bill—over and above the part of the bill that will be mirrored by the Minister for Justice's bill—should be arguably dealt with in Scotland, because they affect criminal justice here. Thursday's Sewel motion is basically to allow Westminster to legislate on devolved areas.
I am trying to explain the situation clearly because, as Thursday's motion concerns the Westminster bill, which the Scottish bill will partially mirror, there is a danger that we might get confused about the subject for debate. We could invite an endless number of witnesses to give evidence on the bill; for example, it will directly impact on organisations such as the Internet Service Providers Association. However, although I appreciate Phil Gallie's comments on that point, we should not replicate the consultation on the Westminster bill, because the Scottish bill will not mirror the whole of that bill. We must focus in—as much as we can, given that we have so little information—on what we need to do about the Scottish bill.
We have recommended inviting the Scottish Executive and the Scottish Human Rights Centre; I think that it would also be helpful to invite the Law Society of Scotland, which has already submitted evidence on the Westminster bill and obviously has views on such legislation.
I actually have something from the Law Society of Scotland that I printed off from one of my e-mails this morning.
Everything surrounding this bill has been very top secret. I should read the newspapers more often. I am concerned about the fact that the Westminster bill creates offences in the area of Scots criminal law, which means that it impinges on devolved areas and, as such, raises very serious constitutional issues. For example, are we being bounced into conceding principles that require careful examination? The areas of reserved powers, such as national security and so on, are very clear; however, I am concerned when legislation intrudes on and erodes the independence of Scots criminal law.
I have had a memorandum from the Executive about the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill and Thursday's motion. Have other members received a copy? It seems not. We will try to get copies circulated to everyone today.
My understanding, from the conversations that I have had, is that the motion on Thursday would be to allow Westminster to go ahead and legislate with respect to HM Customs and Excise and the intelligence services. Matters concerning those bodies are reserved, despite the legislation covering criminal justice in Scotland. I think that that will be Thursday's debate. I may be wrong—I am just as confused as everyone else, and have not had time to read everything.
We clearly want to take a view on some of the issues concerned before Thursday. I am concerned to establish at this stage who we are going to invite to our meeting on 2 May. We will have the Minister for Justice and representatives of the Scottish Executive, the Law Society of Scotland and the Scottish Human Rights Centre coming along, but my biggest concern at this stage is not knowing whether I will have further, better information about what we are inviting them to talk about by 2 May.
I also have concern about other sections of the bill, which effectively have nothing to do with intrusive surveillance. It could mean having to invite other witnesses as well.
I agree, convener. I feel a bit confused about this issue at the moment, because I do not really understand what it is about. The first thing that we must do as a committee is to ensure that we know exactly what it is that we are being asked to consider. It might be useful to get more detailed briefing before 2 May, even if that is during the recess. I would certainly welcome that.
I would like to pick up on a point that Phil Gallie made right at the start of the meeting: it is not just a question of time, but one of sorting out the business so that we can all absorb what we are being asked to make decisions on. I think that Phil's point was important because we have had one or two meetings in which we switched between three different pieces of legislation. I confess that I found that a wee bit difficult.
We also have to consider preparation. We have to think carefully about the subjects that we slot in. Are we able to say at this stage what other subjects we will be discussing on 2 May? It would help us now to know that. My feeling is that, until this is cleared up, I would not want to hear too many witnesses. I want a starting point, and ideally it would be the witness who comes along first who is the most helpful in giving us a grasp on what we are being asked to deal with.
That will be the minister and the Executive team. At the moment, the agenda for 2 May will include this item and, potentially, budget evidence. I am sorry that I cannot be more helpful about this, but I am slightly in the dark.
It is not your fault, convener.
My biggest concern is about getting invitations out. We need to do that so that people are aware of the date. I will certainly write to advise the Minister for Justice and the Executive that we want to address this matter substantively on 2 May and that, for us to do so properly, we will really need to know some of the detail before that date. Even if the draft bill is not available, I would like the Executive to give us at least the memorandum before 2 May, so that we have some way of focusing on that date. We do not want to end up with witnesses in front of us without our having much of a clue what to ask them about, and then having to ask them back when we are clarifying the situation.
Is it safe enough to leave it at that at the moment?
I have a number of suggestions about the people who could come along. This bill is all about police powers, and I think that it would be essential to find out the police views on the requirements for change.
The problem with the police is that three different organisations could potentially be asked: the Scottish Police Federation, the Association of Scottish Police Superintendents and the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland. We could invite all three, or we could start at the top.
I would opt for ACPOS.
Could we open the list of witnesses? I might want to make some suggestions.
Absolutely. All I am trying to do now is to anticipate the most obvious choices on which we can all agree and which will require no real forethought. Let us get the invitations out for 2 May.
This is about how we go about selecting witnesses. Some are dead obvious choices, but, in the course of our evidence on prisons, we omitted the prison visitors, which really was not our fault.
Is there some way that we can get this into the public domain? We are not committed to taking the witnesses, but if we are taking evidence, it would be interesting if any interested party or group contacted us. I can see inherent difficulties with that, but there are problems with our relying on each other to come up with ideas.
For the Adults with Incapacity Scotland Bill, people came to us, saying, "We didn't know." I appreciate that this is out in the public domain, on the internet, but not everyone has access. I wondered if we could think about some other approach.
I will speak to the clerk about this: it is entirely up to us if we want to put out a press release dated today, making the general invitation. The problem is that we cannot guarantee that the newspapers will print it. We would be entirely in the hands of editors. It is the only way that we can go about doing this, however.
That is fine.
Given the nature of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill, and given some of the comments from lobby organisations about their concerns, I find it extraordinary that I have not been getting lobbied like mad already—I have not been. To an extent, we are also in the hands of interested organisations' keeping abreast of changes in their areas of interest and coming to us with their concerns.
I know that there is concern about some of the overall implications of the bill among internet companies, web design companies and companies involved in e-commerce. That, however, is more about the Westminster bill. I am finding it a little difficult to focus on whether there are separate, different considerations applying specifically to part II. That is where we should focus.
I was suggesting a general procedure for dealing with something that requires witnesses. Perhaps it is just a matter of publicising it in the papers and doing the best we can.
It is already publicised. Every time that we have such a procedure, it goes in the business bulletin, on the net—everybody knows that that is the first call for information. We are able to put out a press release from this committee to invite interested parties to contact committee members, but there can be no guarantee that that will get the kind of widespread coverage that we might wish.
Short of compiling our own list of potential interested organisations and writing to every single one of them ourselves, which I do not think we can be in the business of doing, all we can do is rely on interested organisations' being up to speed and approaching us. We are all, as is only appropriate when discussing surveillance, completely in the dark. [Laughter.]
Maybe the story should be that the Justice and Home Affairs Committee is looking for help from anybody who knows anything about this bill. [Laughter.]
Okay. We have enough potential witnesses to get us through the meeting on 2 May, assuming that we know what to ask them by then.
I propose a five-minute adjournment before we proceed to the final item on the agenda—not least because I have drunk 250 ml of water.
A comfort stop.
That is on the record.
We will then move on to consider our draft Carbeth hutters report. That item will be taken in private, as previously agreed.
Meeting continued in private until 11:56.