One of the joys of being a peer is being able to give a completely fresh view of things that disrupts the accepted dialogue about a topic. Here I am raising objections to the Investigatory Power Bill at a meeting in the Grand Committee

 

The government were defeated twice in the courts on this Act and had to rewrite the Bill to take out the most draconian powers. Part of that process was removal of local authorities and others from the list of people who could snoop on people in this way. Three sets of organisations are being added back in, plus an obscure body that is responsible for stopping foreign eavesdropping on people in the UK. One of the ways they will stop spying on us is by snooping on them. Meanwhile, an agreement to share data with the US government has lots of obvious downsides with President Trump using every trick he has to dish the dirt on political opponents. “