Yeah they know that. The whole "let's stop criminals and terrorists" bit is just an excuse.

The conservative government in the UK is really weird and they actually want to be a dictatorship, but they're just not very good at it. I have no idea why they are doing this.

The thing is it's also unlikely to achieve that objective as well because they highly likely to be voting out of power next year. So basically this is a pointless law in every possible regard.