'Snoopers charter' to cost £1.8bn The price tag for what critics call the "Snooper's Charter" was disclosed today as Home Secretary Theresa May published draft legislation for the contentious plans. The costs include equipping internet and telephone companies to retain and store data on behalf of the police, the security services, the Serious Organised and Crime Agency and HM Revenue and Customs. The Home Office said the expected benefits from the outlay would be in the region of £5 billion to £6.2 billion, including from reducing tax fraud and seizing criminal assets. Mrs May also compared the average £180 million-a-year cost of the plans with the annual policing bill of £14 billion. "This communications data is vital for catching criminals," she said. If we don't do this, if that money isn't spent, then we are going to catch fewer criminals. Amid criticism from civil liberties campaigners that the Communications Bill heralds an unwarranted intrusion into people's privacy, she insisted the innocent had nothing to fear. "The only people who have anything to fear from this are the criminals," she said. The £1.8 billion cost, which also covers reimbursing communication service providers for processing requests for data, does not allow for inflation or include VAT. The Home Secretary said the draft Bill would not introduce real-time monitoring or allow the content of communications to be subject to surveillance. Local authorities would not have access to the information, Mrs May said. The plans were designed to enable law enforcement agencies to keep track with modern technology which was being exploited by criminals to go undetected. "If we stand by as technology changes we will leave police officers fighting crime with one hand tied behind their backs," she said. Checking communication records, not content, is a crucial part of day-to-day policing and the fingerprinting of the modern age - we are determined to ensure its continued availability in cracking down on crime. Despite disquiet among Liberal Democrats about the proposals, Mrs May said Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg was signed up to the Bill. "This is a coalition Government proposal that is being put before the public today," she said. The Deputy Prime Minister is supportive of these proposals. Conservative backbencher and former shadow home secretary David Davis condemned the plans as "incredibly intrusive." He said Prime Minister David Cameron had attacked similar proposals when they were advanced by the former Labour government in 2009. "It's not content, but it's incredibly intrusive," he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme. If they really want to do things like this - and we all accept they use data to catch criminals - get a warrant. Get a judge to sign a warrant, not the guy at the next desk, not somebody else in the same organisation. Nick Pickles, director of civil liberties and privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch, said the Bill was "an unprecedented and unwarranted attack on our privacy that will see the Government track where we make calls, who we email and what everyone does online." "We are all suspects now," he said. It proposes the same data collection first mooted by Labour, with no court authorisation and a huge amount of powers that the Home Secretary can use without needing parliamentary approval. The cursory concession on local councils is pure misdirection to try and disguise what are deeply unsettling proposals. Across 117 pages the Home Office has set out the greatest attack on the private life seen for generations. Rachel Robinson, policy officer for civil rights organisation Liberty, said: "The argument for the Snooper's Charter is that we must all compromise our privacy because crime sometimes happens on the web. It's good that local councils won't be able to watch the entire population but even law enforcement should be targeting suspects - not all citizens. Britain's most senior police office officer, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe, strongly backed the plans. He acknowledged there a risk of the police becoming politicised over the issue but said his focus was on catching criminals. "You could say there is a risk (of politicisation), but the thing I'm passionate about is making sure criminals can't get away with crime," he said at a Home Office briefing for journalists. If that's regarded as political, it's a sorry state of affairs. Mr Hogan-Howe said the police did not regard the proposed powers as "new intrusion nor extra intrusion - it remains the type of intrusion that's been carried out for many years." The Scotland Yard chief said the practice sometimes "saves lives," adding: "It is certainly vital in terms of our preventing crime or alternatively in terms of investigations." The draft Bill is to be subjected to pre-legislative scrutiny by a joint committee of MPs and peers. The Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), which is appointed by the Prime Minister to study the work of the security services, will also conduct an investigation into the plans. ISC chairman Sir Malcolm Rifkind, the former foreign secretary, issued a statement on behalf of the committee: "Given the importance of communications data to the work undertaken by the intelligence agencies, the ISC has begun its own investigation into this area. We will take evidence and examine the rationale behind the proposals and how rigorous the safeguards are to ensure the privacy of individuals.