Today sees the Second Reading of one of the most controversial Bills before Parliament. The Investigatory Powers Bill sometimes referred to by its opponents as the Snoopers Charter. The Bill has a been a very long time in the gestation period having undergone very extensive pre-legislative scrutiny and has already been considered by a committee made up of members from both Houses of Parliament. I make no secret of the fact that I support the giving of increased powers to the police and the security services. I appreciate the concerns of those who say the Bill takes away too much privacy but my view is that the freedom of my constituents to go about their business without fear of , for example, terrorist attack is paramount. I will be supporting the Bill today and I am confident it will in due course finally make it on to the Statute Book.
David Nuttall 
I agree with you.
I’m not aware of any terrorist incident (7/7, 9/11, Paris, etc.) that could have been prevented if the intelligence services had yet more access to our private dealings. Indeed, in almost every case the perpetrators were known to the authorities beforehand.
We have already seen how RIPA has been miss-used by the authorities – after we were assured that it would ONLY be used to combat terrorism.
And this weekend Obama admit that he wan’t Apple to compromise security on their products not to combat terrorism but because otherwise ‘everybody would have a Swiss bank account in their pocket’.
More and more surveillance and theft of our privacy will drive a wedge between the government and those it is supposed to represent.