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Whatsapp and Signal are among the messaging apps that use end-to-end encryption (Alamy)

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Regulators equipped with powers from the Online Safety Act could require platforms to use scanning technologies to analyse or intercept content that would otherwise be protected by encryption.

End-to-end encryption is a common security feature for emails, messaging services and internet banking, which ensures that only the sender and receiver can access the contents of messages and files. Even the service provider cannot read encrypted content.

Prominent campaigners, including Russian human rights activist Olga Borisova, exiled Afghan journalist Zahra Joya and Uyghur activist Rahima Mamut, fear that weakening encryption could put the safety of activists at risk.

Borisova, who now lives in London after fleeing Russia, said weakening encryption would have immediate and serious consequences for activists working with people in authoritarian states. 

“If this new regulation starts working, then all our work will be paralysed,” she told PoliticsHome. 

“I speak a lot with people from Russia and Belarus… just the fact that these people could send some information abroad could be considered high treason, and there could be a criminal charge, and people could go to jail for it.

“Encryption helps us to learn about the human rights situation in those regions, and it’s crucial to our work. And in our case, encryption saves lives because Signal is used by people, for example, in Russia, contacting human rights defenders to help them leave the country, leave persecution, leave from being conscripted to the war. And it is crucial.”

Major tech firms, including Signal and WhatsApp, have threatened to leave the UK market or remove services rather than weaken end-to-end encryption to comply with the Online Safety Act.

“Human rights defenders based here in the UK will lose one of the few secure ways they have to communicate with people living under authoritarian surveillance,” Borisova said. 

“The UK is home to many exile activists and journalists like me, and if secure tools disappear here, the UK becomes a less safe place to do human rights work, not by intention, but just by technical design.”

While serious crimes, including child sexual exploitation, do take place in private, encrypted messaging spaces, Borisova said she believed that other methods, including targeted investigations, intelligence-led operations and lawful hacking would be more effective at tackling these crimes, rather than “blanket access to everyone’s private communications”.

“I don’t think the UK government is following an authoritarian tendency, I just think it’s a lazy solution,” she said.

Conservative MP John Whittingdale, who chairs the All-Party Parliamentary Group on media freedom, told PoliticsHome that weakened encryption in the UK could be exploited by hostile states. He said that the push to access encrypted material was being driven primarily by the Home Office in a drive to crack down on serious crime.

“Whilst we have assurances that it would only be used in extreme circumstances to detect terrorists, people distributing child pornography, or the worst kind of crimes, the problem is that as soon as you create the means by which that can be done, you weaken the security of the communication system,” he said.

“The ability to hack into it or to somehow break through the encryption is not restricted to UK law enforcement.”

Elements of the Online Safety Act have already been coming into force over the past year, including duties on platforms to tackle illegal content such as fraud, terrorism and child sexual exploitation.

Groups including Open Rights Group, Big Brother Watch, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Index on Censorship have been collaborating to highlight the risks of weakening encryption – including hosting an event in Parliament earlier this month, which was attended by cross-party MPs.

Ofcom is currently developing draft guidance on message-scanning requirements and the “minimum standards of accuracy” for such technology, which it will present to the Secretary of State Liz Kendall in April. 

However, Ofcom’s CEO told the Lords Communications and Digital Select Committee in October that it is not clear whether technology to scan messages without infringing on freedom of expression will exist, and conceded that these powers remain speculative at this point.

A government spokesperson said: “When carrying out its regulatory responsibilities, Ofcom must take account of users’ rights to privacy and freedom of expression. Services must also consider this when implementing safety measures.

“Ofcom requires services to take steps which are both proportionate and technically feasible to tackle child abuse material on their service. It is only right that we raise the expectations on online services to deal with this horrific illegal content.”

While Ofcom’s rules do not require private messages to be automatically scanned, whether they are encrypted or not, but in serious cases where it is “necessary and proportionate”, the Online Safety Act gives Ofcom the powers to tell a company to use or build specific technology to deal with that content.

Before those powers can be used, the government would need to approve and publish minimum standards of accuracy, following advice from Ofcom, and any technology would need to be formally accredited.

It has everything the media could want and the country could do without.

A paedophile sex trafficker, a big beast politician who has held high office and been sacked three times, possibly the Russians, countless victims of the first with horrific stories of abuse, a Prime Minister, Advisers, spooks and two former Princes: one once of the House of Windsor the other of ‘Darkness’

Political hacks, and I’ve been one, will occasionally play, for their own amusement, a game of who can come up with a scandal that has it all. This one, had anyone dared suggest it, fits the bill.

Many outside the media bubble are describing it as the biggest ever scandal in British politics, edging Profumo and Kelly out to allow the name Mandelson to overtake it. His former Lordship clearly felt his last two falls from grace were not sufficiently spectacular enough and he’s decided third time unlucky.

Only luck has nothing to do with it.

Despite his lucrative dismissal from the highest diplomatic position Britain has to offer, the choice to appoint in the first place was made in Downing Street, against warnings – and even David Lammy, the then Foreign Secretary who actually did the appointing, has let it be known he warned about it – as the PM’s rivals, sorry, colleagues, dive for cover.

Last Wednesday Kemi Badenoch fired the potential kill shot.

She simultaneously proved that whilst strong performances at PMQs are not enough to make someone Prime Minister, on occasion they matter enormously, and that when you disprove naysayers who complain you weren’t good enough at it, being consistently better and better is seemingly never enough.

The impact of forcing this Prime Minister to damn himself at the dispatch box in one word was nothing short of seismic.

Part of Badenoch’s personal revival has been built on an impressive collection of scalps. Hitherto it’s contained a gaggle of Ministers, a deputy leader and deputy Prime Minister, the infamous Mandelson himself, and now she’s going for the big  two. The Prime Minister’s chief of staff and the PM himself.

Downing Street this weekend is seething with anger and resentment. Starmer has been swinging between enough foul-mouthed fury to fuel a power plant, and a sense of bitter betrayal that is souring dealings with a cabinet that have concluded Labour would be better off following the Tories past example and swapping horses mid race.

That there is ‘no way back’ for Sir Keir is now old news. He may still cling on, his own fall is not a done deal, but he can’t ‘turn it around’ now. When he answered Badenoch’s question whether security vetting had mentioned Mandelson’s ongoing relationship with paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, post-conviction with a hesitant ‘Yes’ he confirmed what everyone felt they knew. And so did he, but appointed him anyway.

As someone who has gone through that vetting process, it is hard to see how Mandelson ‘lied and lied again’ with much success. Starmer habitually looks for others to blame, and has called for an immediate tightening of vetting procedures. Well without going into detail, they seemed pretty ‘tight’ to me!

Four hours with a quietly persistent inquisitor who ran through practically every aspect of this story but applied to me. Questions, however intrusive and unexpected on sex, money, substances, abuse, nothing is off limits where they are not judging, but seeking, as I suspect Epstein did, for anything that could make you susceptible to blackmail or ‘Kompromat’. There’s only two bits of advice you get whispered to you beforehand by those who’ve endured it already: ‘don’t lie, and if they ask a question they probably already know the answer’ they just want to see if yours matches the ones they have.

I can see why there are questions about how someone like Mandelson could possibly have got through, but we now know there were warnings in there that the PM was informed of, and decided to take the risk anyway.

It’s that, more than anything, that’s blown this up in Starmer’s face. As one shadow Cabinet member told me:

“Think of all the people, like Gove, Marr and Finkelstein, and some of your colleagues in the lobby who wrote the risk was worth taking, a ‘bold and clever move’. That’s the point with risk – if it pays off you look a genius, if it doesn’t you look a fool. Starmer was urged to, and took, a massive risk, ignoring other people who were up to the job, and it didn’t pay off. The consequences however are all of his own making. If Mandelson was right that Epstein is ‘like dog mess’, Starmer’s just rolled and rolled in it”

That the story has moved to ‘who replaces Starmer’ not just in the media but the Labour party shows he too can’t get rid of the smell. Beaten and bruised in the way he most despises, his ‘integrity’ called into question. The immediate outlook for Labour is bleak.

So the Conservatives must be feeling pretty good, right?

Reform have not made the running on this. As the Telegraph’s front page interview with Badenoch this weekend is subtitled – and remember the months where the Tories struggled to get a hearing at the bottom paragraph of a page 5 filler:

“Both in the Commons and out on the road, the self-assured Tory leader shows that she is no longer finding her feet – but setting the pace”

After a year of wondering where the promise of Renewal 2030 had got to, Badenoch has shown herself, particularly dealing with big betrayals in her own Tory ranks, to be tough enough not only to shore up her own position but wreak havoc on the Government in the process.

So champers all round then? Any Conservative tempted should cork it.

If the narrative today is that Starmer is at serious risk post May local elections which are now, if they weren’t already, a referendum on his premiership – and he hasn’t gone already – make no mistake the risk of brutal results for the Conservatives has not gone away.

Badenoch may have seen off any post-May Jenrick challenge, and will now survive a battering, it will make something stark. A personal win and improved public standing is great for a leader to have, but it doesn’t mean the brand is back. And Reform if they do as expected will be there screaming that from the roof tops.

She can push as hard as possible for renewal of Tory fortunes, but it is not a given that they will match her own. She can be seen like some doggedly determined fighter pilot of yore, an impressive tally of scalps painted on her plane, and still face watching the party fail to take off.

Sticking with the economy, where Reform is still weak – as the Shadow Chancellor will explain for readers tomorrow – stick to opposing Government relentlessly as the official opposition should, is all good strategy, but the Conservatives – not Badenoch – are still struggling for a hearing.

Too many of the public have moved from anger and rejection to indifference towards the Party. Liking the ‘cut of Badenoch’s jib’ doesn’t mean they’ll vote Conservative, yet. Or again.

We still need more policy to chew on from the promised ‘red meat’ restaurant, more fighting contribution from the ‘team’ the leader is always keen to promote, more sense that ‘business as usual’ has been firmly discarded and that the ‘as usual’ bit has been confined to the past, with genuine contrition for what was bad.

Mandelson may end up dragging Starmer down with him, and I for one won’t cry for his loss, but on the ground, on the doorstep and in the streets of places far from the drama of Westminster, no committed Conservative must think this alone will put them back in play.

Mandelson 1) Lammy claims he warned against appointment

“David Lammy turned on the Prime Minister as allies revealed he had warned against appointing Lord Mandelson as the ambassador to the US. In a blow to Sir Keir Starmer, friends of the Deputy Prime Minister confirmed on Saturday night that he had not been in favour of bringing the “Prince of Darkness” back into government over his links to Jeffrey Epstein. Mr Lammy is the first Cabinet minister to break openly with the embattled Prime Minister, whose future hangs in the balance over the Mandelson scandal.” – Sunday Telegraph

• ‘Starmer’s position untenable’, says Richard Burgon MP – BBC
• Police finish search of Peter Mandelson’s addresses – Sunday Times
• Three things that could bring Starmer down and what might save him – BBC
• Prime Minister “agonising over his future, see-sawing between anger and self-reproach” – Sunday Telegraph
• Starmer’s losing sleep – Caroline Wheeler, Sunday Times

Comment

• From the Russians to the Americans, and from our own spies to the Civil Service, everyone knew the truth about Mandelson – everyone, that is, except Keir Starmer – Dan Hodges, Mail on Sunday
• Shorn of its moral purity, what is Starmer’s Labour now for? – Leader, Sunday Times
• Starmer must go. But there may be worse to come – Leader, Sunday Telegraph
• How Mandelson and a bunch of revolutionaries created the sordid world in which we live – Peter Hitchens, Mail on Sunday
• For once, Keir Starmer thought outside the box. It may finish him – Matthew Syed, Sunday Times
• Starmer’s gullibility over Mandelson vetting scandal gets worse by the day – Leader, The Sun on Sunday
• I saw first-hand how Epstein and Ghislaine got their claws into the world’s most powerful men – Barbara Amiel, Mail on Sunday
• Starmer has only his own judgment to blame – Jason Cowley, Sunday Times
• Controlling the story is what Mandelson is about – and now he has lost it – Janet Daley, Sunday Telegraph
• The Peter Mandelson scandal has turned ‘No drama Starmer’ into a lurid soap opera – Andrew Rawnsley, Observer
• A soft-left coup won’t save Labour. It’s not what people voted for – Josh Glancy, Sunday Times
• I have known Peter Mandelson for 40 years, He has always had two sides and one of them is dark like Voldemort – David Blunkett, The Sun on Sunday
• One thing we know: Epstein was no Mossad agent – Jake Wallis Simons, Sunday Telegraph

Mandelson 2) Payoff worth tens of thousands for being sacked as ambassador

“Lord Mandelson received a taxpayer-funded payoff worth tens of thousands of pounds despite being sacked as ambassador to the US over his links to the paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein. Mandelson, 72, secured an exit payment equivalent to three months’ salary from the Foreign Office after he was forced out in September last year, just seven months into the role. His salary has not yet been published by the government but the post of ambassador to the US typically commands the highest in the diplomatic service — pay band SCS4, between £155,000 and £220,000 per annum. It would imply that Mandelson received an exit payment of between £38,750 and £55,000 before tax and other deductions.” – Sunday Times

• Foreign Office to “review” payment – BBC

Mandelson 3) Brown defends Starmer as “man of integrity”

“Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown has told the BBC the situation facing Sir Keir Starmer was “serious” and suggested he may have been “too slow to do the right things” concerning Lord Mandelson. The prime minister is under mounting pressure from Labour MPs over his decision to appoint Lord Mandelson as the UK’s US ambassador in 2024 – despite Mandelson’s relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein being a matter of public record at the time. Brown said the appointment had been a “mistake”, saying he had also made a mistake by bringing Lord Mandelson into his own cabinet in 2008. But he told BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme he backed Sir Keir as a “man of integrity” who had been “betrayed” by Lord Mandelson, adding the prime minister was the right man to “clean up the system.” – BBC

• Ditch Starmer for a caretaker leader, Labour MPs say… as insiders claim PM’s closest aide McSweeney is on brink of quitting – Mail on Sunday
• “Starmer has to stay. You wouldn’t sack a football manager after 35 minutes” – Sadiq Khan interview, Observer

Mandelson 4) Ed Miliband “plots return”

“Ed Miliband has told pals he wants to run again to be Prime Minister – and will model his leadership on New York’s new leftwing Mayor. The Net Zero minister will stand if Sir Keir Starmer is ousted from No10 over the Peter Mandelson scandal, insiders said. Mr Miliband thinks Angela Rayner will not be able to stand while the probe into her tax affairs still looms over her – clearing the way for him to be the leftwing candidate. He wants to run as leader who can “bring down the cost of living” – despite the failure of his pledge to cut energy bills by £300.” – The Sun on Sunday

Lord Alli is named in the Epstein Files

“Emails show Lord Alli appeared on a list of guests due to attend a dinner hosted by Epstein at New York’s Monkey Bar restaurant in February 2010. Both men were also listed as guests at a large society dinner in August 2010 – although it’s not known whether Lord Alli attended either dinner. Lord Alli’s name also appears alongside that of Peter Mandelson in an email Epstein wrote to himself entitled ‘contacts’. In another email from May 2012, Epstein mentions to a friend that Mandelson and Lord Alli were staying at Shelter Island in the Hamptons, the exclusive summer playground for America’s elite.” – Mail on Sunday

Reeves under pressure not to give Spring Statement

“Rachel Reeves is under pressure to duck out of delivering the Spring Statement to avoid unsettling the financial markets, The Telegraph understands. Officials in her own department have discussed the possibility of lining up a junior minister to stand in for the Chancellor, according to discussions which are under way in the Treasury. Mandarins are keen to stress that the statement, set to take place on March 3, will be a “non-event”. Some in Whitehall believe excluding the Chancellor from making the statement would emphasise its “low-key” nature, but such a move would probably raise questions about Ms Reeves’s future amid speculation of a Cabinet reshuffle.” –  Sunday Telegraph

“Where are the wets? ” asks Badenoch

“Badenoch is adamant that those who remain on her benches are bona fide Right-wingers. “Where are these ‘wets’?” she asks, rhetorically. I quietly mention Ruth Davidson and Andy Street, two respected Tory figures who just launched Prosper, a new movement to attract moderate voters, of which there are apparently seven million. “I don’t think they’ve fully thought it through,” she replies. As for a Reform pact, it remains out of the question – not so much because Farage maintains his ambition to destroy the Conservatives, but because Badenoch believes it’ll embolden the Left to form some alliance of their own.” – Interview with Kemi Badenoch, Sunday Telegraph

Academics challenge Phillipson over threat to free speech

“Bridget Phillipson has been accused by more than 300 academics of undermining free speech after mothballing plans to tackle “cancel culture” on university campuses. The education secretary pledged at the start of last year to establish a legally enshrined complaints system to protect academics from attempts to censor or cancel them by students or university authorities. However, the Department for Education has failed to set out any timetable to bring in the protections, with sources suggesting it is unlikely to be included in next year’s parliamentary session. In a letter to Phillipson, 370 academics including three Nobel laureates and senior figures of civil society accused the education secretary of kicking the scheme “into the long grass” with “real consequences for academics at the sharp end”. ” – Sunday Times

EU demands Britain accepts “onerous terms” to join £130billion defence fund

“British firms will be forced to source key technology and parts from Europe if Sir Keir Starmer signs up to a £130 billion EU defence fund, The Mail on Sunday can reveal. The clause – slipped into the small print at a backroom meeting in Brussels last week – was immediately condemned as the latest trick to impose EU rules on a post-Brexit Britain. And one defence expert said the conditions would be ‘utterly deadly for our national security’ – amid fears it would block the UK from accessing cutting-edge American defence technology. Eurocrats have also slapped a £2 billion fee on the UK joining the Security Action For Europe scheme, or Safe – a figure the Government has so far baulked at. The fund provides low-interest loans to companies in Europe needing ‘urgent and large-scale’ boosts to military capability such as ammunition, drones and missiles.” – Mail on Sunday

Knives out for Green by-election candidate … from her own side

“Green Party campaigners have serious concerns about their candidate, strategy and “propaganda” leaflets in the Gorton and Denton by-election, leaked WhatsApp messages have revealed. Messages between members of the party’s team last week show staff are worried about “dodgy” data in campaign leaflets, as well as about their candidate, Hannah Spencer. The activists also questioned the Green strategy of claiming it was the only party that could beat Reform UK, while offering “no actual policies” to voters.” – Sunday Telegraph

Other political news

• Home Office ‘tried to silence adviser who raised concerns about Islamism’ – Sunday Telegraph
• Blair “bereft” at death of former constituency agent John Burton – BBC
• Ex-education secretary urges cut in ‘horrendous’ student loan interest – Sunday Times
• Japanese brave snow to vote in snap election – BBC
• How Substack makes money from hosting Nazi newsletters – The Guardian
• Australia’s opposition coalition reunites after row over hate-speech laws – BBC
• Former Scottish health secretary Jeane Freeman dies aged 72 after cancer battle – The Sun on Sunday
• Water bosses in England exploiting bonus loophole face crackdown – The Guardian
• Lib Dem peer suspended again over harassment allegations – BBC
• ‘Wholesale’ reform of Lords planned after blocking of assisted dying bill – Observer
• Nation faces ‘electrical deserts’ as electricians age and too few are trained – Sunday Express

Ashcroft: Is the ‘insecure, manipulative diva’ Angela Rayner really Prime Minister material?

“Polling I have done suggests she’s a more divisive figure than Starmer. Last December people were more than twice as likely to say she would make a worse PM than Sir Keir as to say she would be better. But while Conservative and Reform UK voters were of that view, Labour supporters were more likely than not to think she would be an improvement. In my focus groups, voters often say they find her background and her blunt approach a refreshing change. But not everyone is convinced. While she seems unlikely to win new converts to Labour’s cause, a Rayner premiership could galvanise voters on both sides. I don’t know whether Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage would rather face Starmer or Rayner in the Commons chamber, but I do know that successful prime ministers have a certain je ne sais quoi, absent in Rayner. And for all her strengths, I can’t help wondering whether her lack of experience and impetuous nature would do more harm than good.” – Lord Ashcroft, Mail on Sunday

Lawson: Reform UK is a big state party

“It’s no accident that such a high proportion of the senior Conservatives who have defected to Reform are former acolytes of Boris Johnson (for example Nadhim Zahawi, Jake Berry and Nadine Dorries). Johnson was a big-state Conservative, whose attitude to the public debt was blithely insouciant. It was Danny Kruger, a more austere figure, who, speaking from the Conservative benches in July, said: “I do quite like the Reform party and I agree with its members on lots of things, but there is a problem: they would spend money like drunken sailors.” Two months later Kruger defected to the drunken sailor party.” – Dominic Lawson, Sunday Times

• This might have been the week when Farage won the next election – James Frayne, Sunday Telegraph

News in brief

• What does ‘social value’ have to do with rebuilding Parliament? – Maxwell Marlow, CapX
• The Mandelson scandal is far grubbier than the Profumo affair – Julie Burchill, The Spectator
• What constitutional powers are available to a Prime Minister on the verge of losing office? – Jacob Rees-Mogg, Substack
• Starmer, man of sleaze – Tom Jones, The Critic
• It’s time to defund the British Council – Charlotte Gill, Daily Sceptic