CIVIL liberties groups welcomed a report yesterday by a powerful parliamentary committee that found government plans for a snoopers’ charter had not yet been justified.

The joint committee on the draft Investigatory Powers Bill proposed 86 amendments and said that the government had further work to do before Parliament could be confident that plans had been “adequately thought through.”

Under the proposals internet providers would be compelled to retain internet communications records (ICRs) for up to a year.

But the committee said it was satisfied that the value of ICRs “could outweigh the intrusiveness involved in collecting and using them.”

It warned of strong concerns about the lack of clarity over what form the ICRs would take and about the cost and feasibility of creating and storing them.

The committee “has not been persuaded that enough work has been done to conclusively prove the case” for ICRs, it said. And committee chairman Labour Lord Murphy of Torfaen said: “The Prime Minister described the draft Bill as being the most important in the current session.

“The fact that we’ve made 86 recommendations means that we think part of it was flawed and part of it needs to be looked at in greater detail.

“There is a lot of room for improvement.”

This latest report is the third such critical assessment of the proposals by parliamentary committees in recent weeks.

This week, the intelligence and security committee said the Bill was unclear, lacked sufficient privacy protections and failed to cover all the intrusive powers used by spy agencies.

Civil liberties groups and privacy campaigners said the report supported their calls for a major rethink.

Amnesty International’s Rachel Logan said: “It’s clear the Home Office needs to go back to the drawing board.”

Liberty director Shami Chakrabarti said: “This report shows just how much homework the government has to do on this landmark legislation.

“The government needs to pause, take stock and redraft — to do anything else would show astonishing contempt for parliamentarians’ concerns and our national security.”

Home Secretary Theresa May said the government would “carefully consider” the conclusions of three committees which have reported on the Bill before presenting its final proposals.