Mark Littlewood, campaigns director of Liberty:

"The EU plans on communications data will throw access to details of who we phone or email ever wider - more people will be able to access this information, for more different and ill-defined reasons, and we won't know when they do it or why.

"You won't even have recourse to UK law to prevent foreign police forces accessing your personal data. The only effective safeguard being proposed is the possibility of a judicial warrant- a protection that the UK should introduce into its own data access laws urgently, regardless of what happens in Europe".