THE TORIES’ latest snooper's charter, allowing the bulk collection of personal data on such spurious grounds as “protecting public health,” is illegal and must be scrapped, the High Court heard today.

The Investigatory Powers Act (IPA) authorises web and phone companies to retain communications that provide a “comprehensive and intimate portrait of a person’s private life”  for access by the police and security agencies.

Civil rights group Liberty is bringing a crowd-funded legal challenge to the legality of the Act's data retention powers, arguing that they permit “significant intrusion” into British citizens’ rights to a private life and freedom of expression.

It is also contesting three other parts of the IPA covering bulk hacking powers, bulk interception of the content of communications and the creation of bulk personal datasets in a case that will be heard at a later date.

Liberty is asking the High Court to disapply the “unlawful” retention powers, including those allowing the retention of and access to data for non-serious criminal investigations, where retention and access is not subject to review and where it is for the purposes of “protecting public health,” “assessing or collecting any tax” or maintaining “financial stability.”

The human rights group is also seeking safeguards for legal professional privilege, which protects communications between lawyers and their clients, and for questions of European law to be referred to the European Court of Justice (ECJ).

IPA originated in the Home Office when Theresa May was in charge and became law in November 2016.

The government was forced into concessions after near-identical powers in the Act's predecessor, the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act, were declared illegal by the ECJ in November and also by the Court of Appeal last month.

Martin Chamberlain QC, for Liberty, argued that the new legislation “substantially re-enacts” the previous Act and is similarly unlawful.

He said the IPA provided for the “retention of and access to communications data,” including “data about internet use, websites accessed and [which] can be used to identify a personal computer.”

Mr Chamberlain added that the data that could be unlawfully retained under IPA “can provide a comprehensive and intimate portrait of a person's private life.”

He said that such data would “reveal, for example, whether you have visited a website about sexually transmitted diseases or abortion or mental health.”

Retained data could also “reveal where you have been” through mobile devices’ location data and be used to discover the identity of whistleblowers, he said.

Mr Chamberlain said that part four of the Act, covering data retention, had been in force “in part” since December 2016.

But, he added, “the most important safeguard contained in part four, namely judicial approval of a retention notice, has not been.”

The lawyer pointed to the “very broad [and] undefined” grounds justifying access to personal data, including instances where it was claimed to be “in the interests of public safety” or “in the interests of [Britain’s] economic well-being.”

Mr Chamberlain said public safety was a “very broad term” and did not include a “seriousness threshold.”

The government has admitted that those data retention powers under the IPA that are not restricted to use in “fighting serious crime” and not subject to “prior review by a court” or another independent body are incompatible with European Union law.

But Mr Chamberlain dismissed the government’s contention that it was unnecessary for the court to decide the case as it would remove unlawful parts of the Act.

He said the illegal powers “have been in force for 14 months and will be for some unspecified time to come” if the court does not intervene.

The hearing will conclude Thursday.