Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Bill

Debate between Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb and Viscount Brookeborough

Report stage & Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 13th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, on tabling the amendment. I am deeply sad that it needed to be tabled. It is staggering that the Government could even try to legislate in such broad terms to permit people to commit murder or any sort of outrage without limits and with blanket legal immunity. I would have used the word “inconceivable”, but obviously at some point somebody has conceived that this would be all right. I very much dispute that.

The Government’s response is also that some sort of ethereal legal soup will magically prevent these powers being used for murder, rape or torture. That just is not good enough. This question has to be put beyond any doubt.

The amendment also covers the issue of obstructing or perverting the course of justice. The people who use the powers in the Bill are the very people entrusted by society to uphold the law and fight for justice. The fact that the Bill even puts into any question that they might obstruct or pervert the course of justice is frankly embarrassing.

I mentioned earlier public incredulity, as the noble Lord, Lord Young, put it, from anyone not involved in day-to-day policing, because when they are told of this practice of advanced immunity, they are frankly horrified. When I was buying a coffee today in my local grocers, I explained this part of the Bill to Maxfield, who was making my coffee. He was shocked and said, “It’s a licence for crime.” It is a licence to kill. It is a licence to commit endless perversions of the law. The rule of law demands that we pass the amendment and insist on it at ping-pong.

[Viscount Brookeborough (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I had not intended to intervene—[Inaudible]—discussed in the context of CHIS operating in non-terrorist criminal organisations and rather less of those in terrorist groups. Because the Bill covers both at once, I feel there is a danger—[Inaudible]—extent that it might seriously inhibit the latter, which is the fight against terrorism. I therefore cannot fully support the amendment as a whole, but I would support proposed new subsection (c) on sexual offences on its own if I could do so.

The major difference between non-terrorist crime and terrorism is that the former—[Inaudible]—of death. Terrorism always has death and destruction as its aim. I know little about the former apart from what I have read in the press and heard in the very excellent debates on the Bill. However, I have some knowledge of—[Inaudible]—we remember the serious nature of the criminality that terrorist groups seek to carry out. The intelligence that CHIS gather prevents large numbers of deaths and serious harm to the public.

There have been, I believe, some misconceptions in these debates about the terrorist world. There has been mention of informer—[Inaudible.] All agents are informers, but not all informers are agents. The single-use informer is a person who is short term only and would probably be paid off or given another life after the operation, such as the dismantling of a drug-dealing gang. This is because he will have been exposed by the arrest—[Inaudible]—operator in a large organisation that provides ongoing information that can go on for years or even decades. The noble Lord, Lord Paddick, suggested that a CHIS operating under one of these authorisations is called a participating informer. Perhaps that was so in the areas of his experience, but it was not so in mine, when—[Inaudible]—these types of agents, strategic agents in a terrorist group or short-term criminal informers.

In Committee, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Stewart of Dirleton, said:

“Let us suppose that in becoming a member of a terrorist organisation, a CHIS is required to fill out a membership form … The handlers may therefore assist”—[Official Report, 24/11/20; col. 151.]


in filling the form out. I hesitate to disagree with such an eminent noble and learned Lord, and while I do not doubt that this might be the case for other groups, I am not aware of any terrorist organisation that produces a membership application—although the IRA had a green book that was given to people once they were inducted.

[Inaudible]—in Northern Ireland for 23 years of the Troubles. More recently, I am well aware of the agent-handling protocols from the Troubles era and that they have been adapted and improved for use in Iraq and Afghanistan. For centuries, perhaps for all time, there have been spies and intelligence gatherers at state level, where it is basically strategic intelligence within a pyramid of government structure. This is, if you like, the Le Carré world. Spies rarely have to commit crimes, such as planning and carrying out a bombing—[Inaudible]—in the last 60 years is worldwide terrorism and the need to have long-term deep plants or active terrorists who have been turned.

[Inaudible]—that states have. Terrorist organisations are very flat in structure and every person from the top to the bottom is—[Inaudible]—for want of a better word. They are active terrorists. It is also important to realise that it is very difficult to—[Inaudible.] In 40 years of the Troubles, there were only, I believe—[Inaudible]—figures of such people. We saw what happened when Robert Nairac thought he could become a member of a family. As a result, most CHIS are turned terrorists or at the very least members of the same communities. They will have committed and will almost certainly continue to commit crime—[Inaudible]—a big part of the induction process in the first place. There are no convenient forms to sign, and any reluctance to take part, from initiation onwards, is suicidal.

Imposing these legal limits, as laid down in the amendment, could put CHIS in the terrorist world at substantial risk. After being inducted into a terrorist organisation, every part of that individual’s life from then on contributes, one way or another, to the terrorist aims, death and destruction—criminality of the highest order. Becoming a CHIS cannot change that much. However, the outcomes of their provision of intelligence saved many lives.

I shall give a true example of a small event. An agent turned up at a meeting of his IRA ASU—active service unit—in the county where I live. He was told to deliver a car bomb immediately. He could not refuse. He delivered the car and, luckily, the TPU—the timer power unit—gave him time to call his handler from a call box before the bomb was to blow up, thereby avoiding loss of life. If I may say so, that is not the most extreme case.

Of course it is right that CHIS activity should be regulated and the Bill does just that. There are protections in place such as the Human Rights Act. However, there may be times when participation in serious crime is necessary and at short notice. Any refusal to be involved would result in the loss of an agent, and no further information from that source. It may have taken years for him to become so deeply involved. This is real life in that terrifying world. The running of the protection of such people is vital and complex. There has to be a way in which to manage them. Inserting increasingly tight legal limits on what they can and cannot do is not the way forward, as those limits may be largely unenforceable in those circumstances.

I will not go into examples of the protection. However, there is an analogy which shows the value of sources. The Enigma was a provider of intelligence, albeit a machine, rather than a person. When the code was broken, the first signal referred to an immediate attack on a convoy by U-boats. It struck me that that was a similar situation to those of some agents. Turing’s colleagues said quickly, “We must warn the convoy.” He said, “No. We cannot risk such a valuable source for the future, or that will be the end of it.” That is one of the problems for the CHIS.

Terrorism is—[Inaudible]—operations alone. The use of many long-term, deep-intelligence CHIS creates a cancer within the terrorist organisations that does so much damage to them that, although they do not admit defeat, they begin to realise that they cannot win. That turning point is sought after by Governments worldwide, and very much due to CHIS.

In the months prior to the ceasefire in Northern Ireland, over 90% of planned terrorist operations failed or did not take place, largely as a result of long-term deep CHIS. I and my family were among the beneficiaries of such intelligence. I believe that this and some of the other amendments will inhibit the fight against the worldwide terrorist threat.