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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: London’s former head of Counter Terrorism has told this programme that the Communications Data Bill is essential to fighting terror. The Bill would give intelligence services greater powers to monitor our emails, text messages and social media activity but the Lib Dems blocked that Bill. In a moment I’ll speak to the party’s Deputy Leader, Simon Hughes. Let’s say a very good morning to Simon Hughes, you’ve heard it I know over the last week, so many senior voices from the intelligence community and also from politics saying we need the Data Communications Bill, it is an important tool in the fight against terrorism. Why have the Lib Dems set their face against it?

SIMON HUGHES: Well let me start by saying we’ve just seen pictures from the service in Middleton in Manchester, this is a day to be thinking about Lee and his family and his comrades in their regiment and as a south London MP we’re very much thinking about that too. I think we need to be careful that we don’t start to have a party political debate whilst we’re waiting for reports from the police and the security services on this particular incident and the Home Secretary was very clear about that this morning. On the Bill there is no evidence at all as far as I am aware, and I have made obviously appropriate enquiries as have my colleagues, that an attack with a machete and a knife on the streets of south London would have in any way been prevented by anything that was originally proposed in the Communications Data Bill.

DM: We are in the realms of what if’s so maybe other attacks that don’t happen, the unknown knowns whatever they are but the intelligence services say they need this, do you not trust them to use their powers responsibly?

SH: Pause a second, there is no evidence so far that in this particular case anything in the Bill would have had any effect at all on this sort of attack and everybody has always said we must be very careful of knee-jerk reactions, we mustn’t make them and it would be very wrong to legislate on that basis. Now there were various proposals put forward as a Bill, a Committee of all parties looked at that, was not persuaded that they were as a group of proposals a good idea. There was a proposal that we should track all the traffic coming through the UK, no other country that I am aware of does that, the States don’t do it. The industry said it would be impossible. There was a proposal that we should monitor every single web blog, again very strong opposition from the industry as to its practicality. There was a third proposal which was in the Queen’s Speech and the Queen’s Speech was clear and there was a discussion across government, an agreement across government that we should provide – and I’ll just read it because it’s important that I get it right and your viewers see it - “on matching internet protocol addresses”, this was in the Queen’s Speech, “we will bring forward proposals to enable for the protection of the public an investigation of crime in cyberspace.” So the Communications Data Bill as originally proposed has one key element in the Queen’s Speech and we will be legislating on it and of course, as a responsible party, we will always be willing to take measures that are necessary where the evidence is persuasive.

DM: So it is in your assessment as politicians that they are necessary. The security services, the police, the Home Secretary, saying that this Bill as it was formulated is necessary and fundamentally you have got to answer the question, the old adage, if you do nothing wrong what have you got to fear? You mustn’t trust the security services to use this information responsibly.

SH: Well, I start from the presumption that we are a country that wants to defend freedoms and maximise freedoms. A poll in the Mail on Sunday said today there were a larger number of people who were against what is called colloquially the Snoopers Charter than in favour of it so it looks as though the public were not persuaded, that the general monitoring of everything for everybody even if there has been no suspicion that that person has been involved or was involved in any activity, was inappropriate. So we start from that place, we do it not from some theological or ideological position but because we have to make sure that our laws are focused and targeted and appropriate. We of course have advice from security services and we respect them, I have never called it a Snoopers Charter because actually the intelligence work they do is a very appropriate piece of work but I think it was Jim Callaghan who said when he was Prime Minister, “My job is to hear the representations of those in the security services and the police and then make an independent judgment as Prime Minister and as government as to what is appropriate for the country.”

DM: But there are plenty of politicians saying this now as well. We all agree that we never, ever, ever want to see what happened on the streets of Woolwich last week ever happen again and this Bill may not have been any help at all in preventing something like that, we’ve established that, nevertheless we need to reinforce our armoury don’t we against those who would do society harm and those that are responsible for protecting us tell us this might, it just might help. So why don’t we go for it?

SH: That’s the debate parliament has and government has and in government there has been that debate and I’ve said to you, there will be a Bill coming forward which is agreed across government to deal with some of these issues, perfectly reasonably address them and we will support it. It’s not something that we as a party oppose. Whether there need to be other proposals, the Prime Minister has said that there will now be a review of the legislation. We know from people who are friends of mine like Fiyaz Mughal of Faith Matters, that there has been a rise in incidents against the Muslim community. We’ve really got to be careful that we don’t see an antagonism against people, the majority of whom are peace loving people of a particular faith in this country and I commend the work, there have been many Imams who absolutely immediately spoke out against what happened, Adnam Mansour and others, people writing in the paper. So we have to have a balance that calms things. I think the Home Secretary is very clear about that from what I’ve heard her say, the government as a whole is clear but of course you always have to look at whether we have, as it were, the right weapons in the locker but don’t think that anybody in my party or any party is any less determined to have the safe and civilised society that we need, that protects us from people using the internet or using websites in an inappropriate way. We have had changes of law in this parliament in how we deal with what people say and …

DM: Ah, I wanted to ask you about that because you are staunch defenders, as we all are, of freedom of speech of course but there are those that say things that stay within the boundaries of the law as it is currently formulated but who say things which are liable to inflame and are perhaps liable to influence others to go further than the preacher or whoever is saying what they are saying themselves.

SH: We have tried over the years, you know there have been several Bills in parliament, public order bills, to try to get the balance right, to make sure we protect people’s freedom to say things that may be offensive to other people and offensive to faiths because in a free society you have to allow people to be offensive but not to incite people to crime, that’s always been the boundary. There have been debates recently about whether a certain cleric who we are seeking to deport to Jordan should have been prosecuted in this country for what he said so parliament will look at that and the Prime Minister has said that will be reviewed.

DM: But what about Anjem Choudary, he’s been appearing on television screens putting across some of his views which many, many, many people find extreme and offensive to say the very least. Is there anything that can be done about him or is the Prime Minister barking up the wrong tree when he talks about part of his task force can gag the hate preachers as the headlines say?

SH: Well I think the best approach, and I have a large Muslim community in my own constituency and have worked with them over the years, I co-chair the party group on Islamophobia with Conservative and Labour colleagues. You have to start young, you have to start with educating young people to understand tolerance and respect, to make sure that the mosques in this country like the churches don’t preach fundamentalist hate and that they preach a tolerance and a respect. So it’s no good as it were only coming in at the end of the exercise and then of course you have to have intelligence services that watch when people go abroad and are trained to do terrible things in countries in the world that are not under control but I’m clear that after this terrible incident affecting one of our soldiers on the streets of south London, we need firstly respectfully to make sure the families of our armed forces are supported, secondly we need no knee-jerk reactions and not to overreact but thirdly, of course, we need to continue to look at whether the equipment we have in our legal locker, as it were, is available and we have to remember that if we enact legislation here then we can expect other countries to follow our example and what we have to be very careful is that we don’t cross the line to take away freedoms in a way that if it were done in China or Russia or Iran or somewhere else, we would be very critical of it. We have to set the best example and I believe we as a government and we as a party will always do that.

DM: Okay, Simon Hughes, thank you very much indeed for those thoughts.