The Snoopers’ Charter: Shameful Opportunism

Wonderful summary of the arguments that can be used to defeat this amendment on the floor. I hope we can collectively make many of the British MPs aware of the situation and help to stop this legislation from going forward.

The actionable part of the EFF's article is at [1]. It's a list of Twitter accounts of British politicians that you can contact directly to make them aware of this.

[1]: https://act.eff.org/action/tell-britain-s-lords-don-t-let-th...

Not my post, but a comment that potentially explains what's happening here and provides an interesting viewpoint:

"I am a former parliamentary assistant with experience working on complex and controversial legislation. I do not think this is a bona fide attempt to pass the amendments.

1. Generally, the government lays amendments it actually wants to pass in the name of the minister leading on the bill. In this instance that's Lord Bates. He's put lots of other amendments on the list[1] but not this one.

2. In bill committees, MPs and peers often table amendments that they are not trying to pass. They do this to secure debating time, argue about the principles, and occasionally extract commitments from the government. They get the chance to make speeches and then withdraw the amendments without them ever going to a vote. I suspect the four peers who tabled this are trying to kick start a cross-bench movement in favour of stronger security laws. They'll use their chance to make speeches and then withdraw their amendment. (EDIT: They have since made clear that this is an earnest attempt to legalise the powers but as noted above, they are raising this without any co-operation with the government. Source[2].)

3. Even if this is a genuine attempt to insert this language, it is a highly irregular way to go about it and I would bet against it surviving a vote. Peers are very aware of the role they play in making legislation and they know they aren't supposed to ram in controversial language like this. It's for the elected members in the Commons, who have the democratic mandate, to make the crucial decisions and for the Lords to focus on technical elements. This would not go down well. In the Lords, the whole House votes at Committee stage. This means hundreds of peers, who are independently minded and relatively difficult to whip, would get to express their view. I would not expect them to let this by.

4. Even if it survived the committee, the Bill needs to go back to the Commons, in a process known as "ping pong". The new clauses would almost certainly be defeated by MPs because the Lib Dems would be whipped against it[3], depriving the government of its majority, and Labour has already said it won't support it either[4]. The numbers just aren't there. I am not close to this issue and could not tell you what they are trying to do. This is all guess work. But it really does not look like a genuine attempt by the government, and I wouldn't say it stands much of a chance."

Sources:

Post: http://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/2te41m/lords_...

[1] - http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/lbill/2014-20...

[2] - http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jan/22/snoopers-char...

[3] - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-30870442

[4] - http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/11/ed-miliband-sno...