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Yes, Minister! Sir Humphrey Appleby writes to Theresa May over Investigatory Powers Bill

Theresa May’s Investigatory Powers Bill is proving to be one of the most unpopular pieces of proposed legislation in this Parliament. While the Home Secretary has described the bill — which is currently in the committee stage — as ‘world leading’, a new campaign against it claims that all it will do is inspire dictators.

But Mr S has word that a big name in politics has now offered his support for the Home Secretary’s bill. Yes, Minister writer Jonathan Lynn has passed onto Steerpike a letter dictated to him by none other than Sir Humphrey Appleby:

A letter from Sir Humphrey Appleby to the Home Secretary

Dear Home Secretary

You are fortunate that the SNP and Labour Party courageously abstained from the vote on the Investigatory Powers Bill, content with government assurances that mass surveillance of British citizens is not government policy. Mass surveillance is not, and could never be, government policy. Merely government practice.

I congratulate you on your much-quoted claim that the Investigatory Powers Bill will contain a “world-leading oversight regime,” requiring a “double-lock” of both judicial and executive approval. This reference to judicial oversight is a excellent applied example of the Law of Inverse Relevance, which (as I’m sure you know) states that the less you are going to do about something, the more you have to talk about it.

You already have the power to appoint the judges and give them guidelines. Even if you mistakenly appoint unhelpful judges, there would be no problem: judges, like trains, may be impartial but they have to run along the lines that have been laid down.

However, the invention of the so-called ‘double-lock’ mechanism is something of a master-stroke (I hesitate, Home Secretary, to describe it as a mistress-stroke).

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Steerpike
Written by
Steerpike

Steerpike is The Spectator's gossip columnist, serving up the latest tittle tattle from Westminster and beyond. Email tips to steerpike@spectator.co.uk or message @MrSteerpike

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