If Nick Clegg gets his way, grannies who use garden centre websites will escape the attention of internet security checks.

A reference to garden centres crept in during Clegg’s clash with the Prime Minister over the so-called ‘Snoopers’ Charter’ – revisions to  Britain’s privacy laws – following last week’s terrorist attacks in Paris.

David Cameron and the head of M15, Andrew Parker, believe the intelligence services need new powers to read our communications if “mass casualty attacks” like those on Charlie Hebdo’s offices are to be avoided in this country.

The Communications Data Bill, which would allow the contents of any of our messages, phonecalls and other communications to be read without a warrant, will go in the Conservative manifesto for May’s general election.

The Lib Dems' are opposed to the Bill, which they see as a threat to our civil liberties.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s ‘Today’ programme this week, Clegg said that he supported plans to “strengthen our defences to make ourselves physically safe” but a law closing in on our privacy was a “slippery slope . . . if we start to censor or self-censor ourselves as a society.”