'Snooper's charter' delayed after Lords threaten block

The Government was forced last night to delay its controversial plans to expand electronic "snooping" by public bodies and promise extra safeguards to reassure its critics.

The Home Office said that it would announce todaynew measures to ensure the powers could not be abused amid warnings from the House of Lords that it would block the plans.

A draft parliamentary order was to have been brought forward today, giving seven new Whitehall departments as well as councils and other local bodies access to e-mail and telephone records.

But the order, called a "snooper's charter" by critics, was postponed yesterday amid claims that the threat of a rebellion by Tory and Liberal Democrat peers had forced the Home Office to reconsider.

A spokesman for Mr Blunkett said last night that the order would now be brought before the Commons on Monday.

Although the Government could use its large majority in the Commons to push through the change, the in-built anti-Labour majority in the Lords could ensure it does not become law.

The draft order would extend surveillance powers under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, which are currently restricted to the police, the intelligence agencies, Customs and Excise and the Inland Revenue.

The Government departments that would have been covered under the extended powers include Health, Trade and Industry, Transport, the Home Office, the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

The order would also have covered every council, and would have extended to a range of bodies from fire authorities to the Food Standards Agency.

The Conservative leader in the Lords, Lord Strathclyde, saidthe Government should use the delay to reconsider its approach. "This will give the Government time to rethink and hopefully to withdraw the most illiberal and intrusive of these measure. We support the war on terrorism. We oppose district councils and quangos being given power to survey private communications. Surely even this distressingly authoritarian Government can see the difference," he said.

Robert Ainsworth, a Home Office minister, said the measure was intended to create a proper statutory framework, setting out the circumstances in which public bodies could access information. "It is in no way a snooper's charter for exactly the reasons that we are bringing this in, to provide safeguard and guidance as to when people can get information and when they cannot," he told BBC Radio 4.

He insisted claims that the measures would allow more organisations to get hold of private information were based on a misunderstanding. "There are people in the Food Standards Agency now who apply for, in what they consider are appropriate circumstances, data about people's communications and they get it. There is no guidance. They are not told when they can and cannot do that and the purpose of the regulation is to say to them clearly you can only do that in these circumstances and not in those."

Lord McNally, deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats in the Lords, said: "If the regulations were to come to the Lords in their current form, they would not get through. Liberal Democrats remain hostile to any erosion of civil liberties, to blanket powers and to unnecessary extensions of Government power."