Stephen Pollard
NDY BURNHAM, Labour’s shadow home secretary, has said his party may also oppose the Bill. We already know that there are hundreds of IS terrorists on our streets, many of whom have returned from Syria as trained killers.
Just so we aren’t in any doubt about the severity of the threat – the threat that these people are unwilling to let the police deal with – here’s what Assistant Commissioner Rowley said on Monday. He revealed that IS are now focusing for recruits on the mentally ill so some counter- terrorism units are working with psychologists.
IS have long been thought to be targeting the police and soldiers but Assistant Commissioner Rowley warns us that the threat has widened: “In recent months we’ve seen a broadening… [ with] more plans to attack Western lifestyles. Going from that narrow focus on police and military as symbols of the state to something much broader. And you see a terrorist group which has big ambitions for enormous and spectacular attacks, not just the types that we’ve seen foiled to date.”. That could involve a national celebration such as is planned for the Queen’s 90th birthday in April, May and June.
After Paris, when 130 people were murdered, only a fool would deny this warning – and there is indeed no shortage of those who do. They say that the police and security services are scaremongering in order to justify wider surveillance powers.
So when it’s revealed that at least one suspected jihadi is now arrested every day and that there has been a 57 per cent increase in arrests of terror suspects over the past three years compared with the previous three years, their response is to say this proves their case. The police are apparently arresting people to exaggerate the scale of the threat so they need more powers to deal with an
Aexaggerated threat. And yet about half of those arrested end up being charged. It’s a conspiracy theory of the most deluded kind. This is not police scaremongering, this is the police doing their level best to stop jihadis murdering us. You would think that when the security services and police say they need more sophisticated surveillance arrangements – a claim backed up by the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation – then people would want to give them those powers. But, as we have seen, you would be wrong to think that.
Kate Allen, the head of Amnesty International, says: “It beggars belief that the Government is blundering on with its snooping power- grab.” Yet far from diluting our powers to keep the security services in check the Investigatory Powers Bill marks a new high in democratic oversight.
Sir David Omand, a former director of GCHQ, confirms this: “It will be the first time really in 500 years that secret intelligence has been brought fully under the rule of law.” Powers that were previously used outside the law will be brought into the open and codified in legislation. That includes the new powers that are more suitable for modern day communications such as the ability to look at a suspect’s web history or phone records – after a judge’s approval.
And access to web records is still restricted to details of the main website visited rather than pages within the site.
BUT there’s another aspect to this. If Parliament doesn’t pass legislation by the end of the year, then the security services’ authority for some forms of surveillance will lapse.
Which will mean that not only are they not given the new powers they need to monitor terror suspects, they won’t even be able to carry on using some existing methods.
David Anderson, QC, the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, is clear that the Bill “gets the most important things right. By avowing every one of the remarkable powers that police and intelligence agencies exercise or aspire to, it restores the rule of law and sets an international benchmark for candour”.
The real problem is that the Bill’s opponents are fundamentally frivolous people who refuse to accept the gravity of the terrorist threat.
Heaven help us if they ever hold sway in Parliament.
‘ The Bill’s opponents are frivolous people’