Setting aside the question of whether signal are the good guys or not it's important for non-UK people to understand the political context here. The conservati

Setting aside the question of whether signal are the good guys or not it's important for non-UK people to understand the political context here. The conservative party is eating itself. They have forced 2 leaders to resign in the last year and are trailing in the polls so are terrified of the next election. They won convincingly at the last election on the basis of a "red wall" strategy that involved an appeal to traditionally labour voters who were Euroskeptic and by throwing dog-whistles about immigration to appease people on the right wing of their own party who were thinking of defecting to the UK independence party. All that support is unravelling and they ended up having to do a humilitating deal with the Unionist party in Northern Ireland which is unravelling because their policies there (the so called "Northern Ireland protocol") threaten to undo the peace process and importance of preserving the peace process is just about the only thing the two sides in Northern Ireland agree on. There is also a cost of living crisis with strikes across multiple groups of public sector workers. So right now there is lots of "Performance politics" with policies designed to look tough and appeal to socially conservative right-wingers in an effort to shore up a weak government. Just this week we had the policy to insist that asylum seekers fill in a questionnaire in English no matter where they came from, and now this which they can spin as being tough on crime. I would highly doubt any of the people behind this bill have any interest in the technical pros and cons.