Home Secretary Theresa May has been ordered to go “back to the drawing board” on the draft Communications Bill – dubbed the Snoopers’ Charter – after a select committee of MPs slammed it for being too intrusive.
Under the proposals, police and security services would gain sweeping powers to access communications data, and Internet and phone firms would be forced to store information on every email, phone call and Internet clicks consumers make.
The joint committee accused ministers of using ‘fanciful and misleading’ figures to back up the proposals, with Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg adding his demand that the draft bill be ripped up.
He said: “The report makes a number of serious criticisms – not least on scope; proportionality; cost; checks and balances; and the need for much wider consultation.
“It is for those reasons that I believe the Coalition Government needs to have a fundamental rethink. We cannot proceed with this bill and we have to go back to the drawing board.”
But Home Secretary Theresa May insisted she will “not allow these vitally important laws to be delayed any longer in this Parliament”.
The report found the Government had exaggerated the financial benefits of the £1.8bn proposal. Tory MP Dominic Raab said: “This report casts doubt on the security case for such sweeping surveillance powers.”
And Isabella Sankey, director of policy for the campaign group Liberty, said: “The Government has been sent back to the drawing board by this cross-party committee. It is clear that a proper public consultation would leave this snoopers’ charter, not just in the long grass, but dead and buried.”
UPDATE: Downing Street says David Cameron has accepted the criticism from MPs and peers of the draft Communications Data Bill and would rewrite it. No 10 said bringing in new powers was a “government commitment” and everyone was “committed to fixing this problem”.
