The House of Lords today agreed to refer back a recommendation that would have given force to the House of Commons purported decision to stop UK MEPs from having passes admitting them to the Parliamentary Estate.  The House of Commons decision was intended to avoid having to allow the BNP MEPs, Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons, access but would have had to apply to all MEPs.

In practice, this is not just a matter for the House of Commons.  The Parliamentary Estate is a single entity and there is currently no way in which a passholder can be prevented from entering both ends of the building; it follows therefore that as currently constituted both Houses have to agree to deny passes to particular categories of person.

The original decision to give MEPs passes was intended to facilitate communication between UK MEPs and the UK Parliament and, when the issue was brought to the Lords today, the unanimous view expressed was that this interchange was valuable and important.

There are some 12,000 passholders with access to the Parliamentary Estate – the occasional access by MEPs has not produced any visible problems.

Summing up Lord Brabazon of Tara said:

“The Chairman of Committees: My Lords, I think I can honestly say that I have heard enough. [Laughter] Seldom have I heard such unanimous opposition by noble Lords on all sides and of all political complexions to a House Committee report. I can say that the committee should indeed reconsider this matter, taking into account what has been said today, and we will therefore do just that. Perhaps I may say that the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Tomlinson, is absolutely correct to refer this matter back to the House Committee, so I recommend that the House should agree with his amendment.

Noble Lords: Hear, hear.”

What was left unsaid was: why give Nick Griffin and his sidekick another opportunity to claim martyrdom?

I see from the Evening Standard that a member of CO19, the Metropolitan Police’s specialist firearms command, has had to stand down/withdraw*/quit the command after his profile on an adult dating site came to light.

Apparently, on the site he appears as “funboybobby”, had posted pictures with his weapon displayed and as the Standard puts it:

“In some photographs the CO19 officer appeared aroused while in another he showed off a tattoo above his bare bottom.”

A Met spokesperson said:

“We expect firearms officers to display the highest standards of skill, professionalism and judgement on a daily basis.”

I would, of course, hope that all officers display the highest standards of skill, professionalism and judgement.  The spokesperson then continued:

“This case highlights serious concern about the officer’s judgement.”

Indeed!  I would hope that everyone understands the dangers of putting too much personal information on social networking sites – see my earlier comment following the debate I initiated in the House of Lords.

Or as the Standard reports:

“One source close to CO19 said officers could not lay themselves open to blackmail: “Armed officers keep surveillance on terrorists and serious criminal suspects. It is not appropriate that their most personal details should be open for anyone to view.””

Although, I am not quite clear which personal detail the source had in mind in this case ….

Also, the question arises how did Metropolitan Police management find out about “funboybobby”?  Were they trawling the adult dating site in question?

*searching for a term without triggering a double entendre

At today’s Lords’ Question Time, I am afraid that a spirit of devilment got the better of me.  There was a question on the progress being made towards delivering broadband to rural communities.  I should make it clear that I am a great supporter of the Government’s proposals to ensure that all citizens have access to broadband services.  However, the automatic sense of entitlement that was being expressed on behalf of rural interests finally got the better of me, so I intervened to ask:

“My Lords, can we be assured that, given the extraordinary extent to which city dwellers already subsidise those who live in rural communities, this will not be another example where urban dwellers will be taxed, or have to pay more, so as to subsidise the often very pleasant lifestyles of those who live in rural communities?“

In essence, the answer was that this would indeed be yet another subsidy that everyone else would pay for by the 50p levy on fixed line telephony.  This will go with the subsidy to ensure that all rural households can get digital TV, the subsidy that maintains less well-used roads in rural areas, and, of course, the many subsidies paid to farmers.

This was regarded as being rather “controversial”, but an interesting number of Peers from all parts of the country came up to me afterwards and congratulated me for raising the “elephant in the room” …..

The full series of exchanges were as follows:

“Internet: Broadband

Question

2.52 pm

Asked By Baroness Byford

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what progress is being made towards delivering broadband to rural communities.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Davies of Oldham): My Lords, the Digital Britain White Paper outlined the Government’s universal service commitment for broadband at a speed of 2 megabits per second to virtually every community in the UK by 2012. The paper also outlined plans for a next generation fund, to help to deliver next generation broadband to at least 90 per cent of homes and businesses by 2017. The Network Design and Procurement Company will be responsible for the delivery on behalf of the Government.

Baroness Byford: My Lords, while thanking the Minister for that response, I understand that Ofgem does not have powers to compel internet service providers to provide broadband in rural areas, which has resulted in some 166,000 people having no internet at all and more than 2 million having inadequate service provision. How will the broadband be delivered in these circumstances, particularly with regard to the proposed new megabyte speeds of 24, 40 and 100? Will this not be more focused on urban areas, leaving rural areas out in the cold?

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, Ofgem cannot command to be done what cannot be done technically. The noble Baroness is right to identify that a percentage of our households cannot receive the requisite signal. We are addressing that. Under the universal service commitment, which we have been following since the summer, we are committed to ensuring that all households have access to the basic service of 2 megabits per second. The second, longer-term project concerning vastly improved speeds, to which the noble Baroness referred, depends partly on market conditions and provision by private companies, but the Government are also taking steps to ensure that we universalise that service in due course as far as we are able to do so.

Lord St John of Bletso: My Lords, does the Minister agree that, with more and more people in rural communities working from home and the increasing trend to media-rich content, the requirement for broadband speeds is more in the region of 50 to 100 megabits per second? What assurances can the Government give that rural communities will move to these speeds in the future?

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, that is exactly the objective of the next generation access. It is clear that we will not be serving our communities, nor will we be remaining competitive with other countries, if we do not guarantee that next generation broadband is more universally available than it is at present. Certainly, there is provision of broadband at present from, for instance, Virgin, while BT is also interested in spreading its reach in these terms. However, the Government are concerned about that reach and I am grateful to the noble Lord for emphasising how important it is.

The Lord Bishop of Exeter: My Lords, the problem of lack of access to broadband is compounded for those rural communities that have poor analogue TV, no digital TV and often, at best, limited mobile phone connectivity. Do the Government have any plans to provide suitable grant aid to enable local rural communities to develop their own broadband, where it is clearly not commercially viable to provide that through the telecoms company? If there are no plans, will they consider that as part of implementing Digital Britain?

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, far from there being no plans, there is a major government commitment to meeting the exact objective that the right reverend Prelate has indicated. We are going to use funds from the digital switchover—£175 million—to guarantee that we reach those areas that have not got digital television at present; the development of broadband goes along with that. The Government have identified the funds that will be made available. We have not the slightest doubt that that is merely objective No. 1. The right reverend Prelate will recognise that we are spreading digital television across the whole of the UK in the next four years.

Lord Harris of Haringey: My Lords, can we be assured that, given the extraordinary extent to which city dwellers already subsidise those who live in rural communities, this will not be another example where urban dwellers will be taxed, or have to pay more, so as to subsidise the often very pleasant lifestyles of those who live in rural communities?

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, that may be regarded as a somewhat provocative question in some quarters. I merely emphasise to my noble friend that we are intending to guarantee that these services are available across the whole country, because they are essential to our future economic and social success. That is why there will be a tax on telephone users of 50p per month for a line—we are not talking about an excessive amount—to subsidise and help to spread the opportunities across the whole country, in circumstances where we could not possibly have parts of our communities having no access at all to these services.

Lord Greaves: My Lords, I am tempted to invite the noble Lord, Lord Harris, to come with me to visit some of my upland sheep farmer friends, who do not exactly have a luxurious lifestyle. Back in July, Defra announced that money from the European economic recovery plan, which rural development agencies would use as part of the rural development programme, would help to fill some of the holes in broadband provision, not least for my upland sheep farmer friends and for people in places like that. What is the mechanism by which this money will be used and what will it be used for?

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, we are of course grateful for resources from wherever they emerge, but the noble Lord will be all too well aware that £2.5 million from Europe is a flea bite in relation to the total issues to be addressed. While it is welcome and is directed towards particular areas, the context of this question is universal access. That is a massive project and we have given clear indications since the summer of how we intend to tackle it. It can be fulfilled only by a long-term commitment to the objectives that I have identified.

Lord De Mauley: My Lords—

The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Lord Hunt of Kings Heath): My Lords, if noble Lords asked shorter questions and gave shorter responses, we would have time for more questions. We are in the 24th minute.”

Provocative – me?

The Ministry of Justice has issued a consultation document on proposals to introduce prison sentences for thsoe who who seek to profit from the illegal trade in personal data, and for those who knowingly or recklessly disclose personal data to those who have no right to have it.

I accept that our prisons are already seriously over-full, but I am quite clear that we will not achieve higher standards of data security in this country until there are much tougher penalties.  The Government is committed to ensuring a robust framework of protection for personal data and wants to increase public confidence in its use and deter and punish appropriately those who seek to profit from its illegal trade.  (Quite properly it is proposed that there be a “public interest” defence to protect genuine investigative journalism.)

The only thing that will concentrate the minds of those engaged in this sort of trade will be the threat of prison.  Such crimes are not “victim-less”.

Those who doubt the clarity of purpose of the mission in Afghanistan should listen to the interview on Radio 4′s “Today” programme this morning with Captain Andrew Tiernan of the Grenadier Guards.  He is on leave and about to return to Afghanistan.   This is his thrid tour of duty and he is clear about the progress that has been made and the importance of the role that British troops are fulfilling.

At the beginning of the interview it was made clear that his appearance on the programme was not at the behest of the Ministery of Defence, but was a consequence of his expressing his frustration to his mother about the way in which the work that he and his colleagues are doing in Afghanistan is being portrayed in the news media.

He emphasised that talk about a pull-out is undermining the work that they are doing and demonstrates a failure to support the troops out there.

I hope his message is taken to heart by those in the Conservative and Liberal Democrat Parties who are sniping at the clarity of the mission or are toying with calling for our troops to be pulled out as some sort of  pre-election stunt.

When the Government introduced the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 for the first time it placed a proper legal framework on the extent to which public bodies like local government could use certain surveillance techniques.  If I may remember correctly prior to this the only protections the citizens had were under Common Law.  The new Act codified and limited local council powers with a view to ensuring that Councils only used surveillance powers where there was criminal or potential criminal activity taking place.

In the last few years, however, a number of concerns have been raised that councils were using the powers inappropriately or too frequently.  Conservative Wandsworth Council used the powers nearly three hundred times in four years in some instance to identify people wrongly using a “Blue Badge” parking permit.  Conservative Northamptonshire County Council used the powers to go through people’s rubbish and Conservative Poole Borough Council tracked a woman’s movements to see whether her family properly lived in a primary school catchment area.

The Home Office has now tightened up the rules.  In a written statement, David Hanson MP, Minister of State for Policing, Crime and Counter-Terrorism, has made it clear that:

“The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA) marked a major step in the protection of privacy. Prior to RIPA, many of the more intrusive techniques which it regulates could be used by any public authority and authorised at any level, for any purpose. There was no comprehensive system of independent oversight, no independent judicial complaints mechanism available in relation to all these techniques, and no means by which Parliament could prescribe the ranks of authorising officers or limit the purposes for which the techniques could be used. …

Nevertheless, a small number of local authorities have authorised techniques under RIPA in circumstances when most of us would say it was not necessary or proportionate for them to do so.”

As a result of a review, the Government will now be introducing the necessary secondary legislation to stop this happening again which:

“will include measures to:

a) clarify the test of necessity and proportionality so techniques will not be used for trivial purposes such as investigating dog fouling or people putting bins out a day early;

b) raise the rank of authorising officer for RIPA techniques in local authorities to senior executive at a minimum of “Director” level;

c) give elected councillors a role in overseeing the way local authorities use covert investigatory techniques;”

This is sensible.  There will be occasions when it is right that public bodies should properly use limited surveillance powers, but such use must be proportionate and the use must be as rigorously controlled as the regime of limitations that apply to the use of such powers by the police and the security services.

I spent a hugely interesting morning (with some MPA colleagues) visiting the Explosive Ordinance Disposal Unit of the Metropolitan Police – the unit that contains the Explosive Officers whose task is to dismantle or make safe any bombs or explosives found in London, such as those in the car bomb outside the Tiger Tiger nightclub in the Haymarket.

All the Explosives Officers are ex-military with many years of experience in the field and they are trained to handle a full range of threats from unexploded World War II bombs through to bombs potentially laced with chemical, biological or radiological agents.  They are able to provide a response 24 hours a day throughout the year and because of their location are able to reach to reach central London locations within minutes and have ready access to the rest of the capital.  Their equipment – some of it robotic – was fascinating and the dedication of all of those involved (and their acceptance of the personal risks to which they might be subject) was hugely impressive.

London is well-served by them.

The Liberal Democrats’ amendments to the Policing and Crime Bill creating a loophole in the proposed new laws on prostitution were finally reached at about 9.40pm last night.  (I think the LibDems had been hoping to spin out the debates on earlier amendments with a view to the debate on prostitution being held over until Thursday.)

The Bill would have made it an offence for someone to purchase sex from another person, if that person was trafficked or had been coerced into being a prostitute.  This would have been a “strict liability” offence – ie it would not be a defence to say that the person charged had not known that the prostitute had been trafficked or coerced.

The LibDems were proposing that such a defence should be possible.  The Conservatives were on a free vote (although their front-bench spokesperson spoke in support of the LibDems) and in practice they were split between those supporting the Government and those supporting the LibDems (mirroring the national – more generic – dispute within the Conservative Party between traditionalist Tories and the libertarians).

Despite the lateness of the hour, there was an excellent debate, which you can read here, with excellent speeches from John Sentamu, Archbishop of York, and from the Attorney General, Baroness Patricia Scotland.
As 11.00pm approached, the Chamber slowly filled up with Labour Peers and it became obvious that, despite a speech from the Conservative front-bench taking the libertarian line, the LibDem amendment would be defeated. When the LibDem spokesperson responded to the debate, she indicated that she would withdraw the amendment rather than have it defeated. (This would have given her the opportunity to reintroduce it next week at Third Reading.) She therefore sought ‘leave to withdraw’ – which is normally automatically given. However, when this was put to the House, a number of us growled ‘No’ which meant that the substantive amendment had to be put. A voice vote was taken with a handful saying ‘Content’ against a roar of ‘Not Content’. From the Woolsack it was suggested that the ‘I think the Not Contents have it’ and when – unusually – this did not produce a counter-shout of ‘Content’, it was declared that ‘The Not Contents have it’ and the amendment was defeated without a Division.

One of the Deputy Speakers of the House of Commons has ruled that, while it is permitted to read an extract from a letter printed on paper in the Chamber of the House of Commons, it would not be permitted if the MP read from the same letter stored on a PDA or Blackberry.

The issue arose when Alistair Burt MP (who I remember from his time on Haringey Council in the early 1980s – he was one of the more sentient and civilised Tory members) tried to read out the text of a letter from the Criminal Records Bureau in a Commons debate.  He was told to desist and reprimanded by the Deputy Speaker, Sir Michael Lord MP.

So the state of the rules in the House of Commons seems to be that an MP may text, twitter or send an email from the Chamber and they may read material on a PDA or Blackberry provided they are not speaking at the time.

I am not sure that this makes much sense.  It will be interesting to see where this is on Speaker Bercow’s list of reforms to the way in which the Commons operates.

So what are the rules in the House of Lords?  As far as I can see, the Companion to the Standing Orders is silent on the subject.  The Companion does say:

“4.22  Mobile telephones must be silent in the Chamber, Prince’s Chamber, Peers’ Lobby, division lobbies during divisions, the Moses Room and committee rooms during committee meetings.  In the Chamber and in committee rooms, pagers must not be used to transmit messages to members of the House for use in proceedings.”

So – by implication – mobile phones, PDAs, Blackberries etc can be taken into the Chamber (provided they are silent).  Perhaps, therefore, it also follows in the absence of any proscription that a member of the Lords – unlike in the Commons – could quote from something stored electronically.  I am not sure that this has yet been put to the test.  What is clear is that any transgressions would not lead to a reprimand from the Lord Speaker or from one of her Deputies.  The Companion is quite clear that:

“4.01  The House is self-regulating: the Lord Speaker has no power to rule on matters of order. In practice this means that the preservation of order and the maintenance of the rules of debate are the responsibility of the House itself, that is, of all the members who are present, and any member may draw attention to breaches of order or failures to observe customs.”

A pager message to Labour Peers had to go through several drafts this afternoon before it was considered to be in a fitting state to send out.  In the end, the message said:

“Votes are expected after dinner on prostitution.  Colleagues are asked to stay for this important business.”

This was a reference to the amendments tabled by the Liberal Democrats which would aim to remove or delete the clauses of the Policing and Crime Bill which make it a “strict liability offence” for somebody to pay another person for sex, if that person has been trafficked or is being coerced into being a prostitute.   (It would not be a defence for the person paying to claim that hadn’t known that the prostitute was trafficked.)

Apparently, the original pager message had said something along the lines of:

“We will move on to prostitution after dinner.  Please be ready ….”

There was a concern about Peers who might have left their pagers at home and whose spouses might read and misinterpret the message.