Police and Justice Bill committee in the morning. Bill committee all afternoon. I tried to get some oversight (i.e. safeguards) into the latest extension of the surveillance society. The Bill would mean air flight passenger lists being given to the police even with no crime committed – but Hazel was stony ground as per usual. Ms Blears rarely gives an inch – and even when we score – the Government won’t admit it. They simply table their own version of our or the Tory amendments.

But a small victory. Clause 35 is about computer hacking. The way it was written, it would mean that IT companies couldn’t carry out their own hacking tests on their own computers, because that would be hacking. And other such silly things! (More details on The Register).

We’d tabled an amendment to deal with this. I now notice that we have a new Government amendment which does the same thing. Imitation is the best form of flattery!