Justice and Security Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Kennedy of Shaws and Baroness Williams of Crosby

Wednesday 21st November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws]

I, too, feel strongly that this is an issue of some importance and I thank my noble friend Lord Dubs for raising it. I know that it is too late an hour for us to consider voting but, when these matters are taken up in the other place, I would really like this to be considered. In any consideration, one wants a judge to recognise that there are some things that basically cannot be covered even by national security or by any control principle that operates between intelligence services.

If we were to discover that there had been crimes of such an egregious nature, such as genocide, murder, torture, slavery, and all the most horrifying of crimes that we can document, and that those crimes would be covered by some kind of secrecy, that would be a source of great shame to us. That must be something that is taken into consideration when looking at ways of introducing new procedures into our courts. In the end, any consideration of such serious human rights abuses has to trump even issues of national security.

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

I also support this important amendment. We know that some countries that are considered to be relatively close allies of the United Kingdom have human rights records that are indescribably bad. It would be a tragedy to have a situation where we cannot take seriously these human rights violations because of the limits that are placed in the language of this Bill.

We are increasingly seeing human rights becoming a new, very important structure of international law, which perhaps encouraged such movements as the Arab spring, and which undoubtedly helped to release many people from the acts of coercion by their own governments. We have close relations, as does the United States and our other allies, with some countries with poor human rights records. When those poor human rights records enter into the area of international criminal action, of the kind described by the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, I hope that we recognise that we have an obligation as a country with a very strong record of supporting human rights to maintain that standard and record. Indeed we are basically the founder of the original European Convention on Human Rights legislation, which binds us all today. We therefore will expect the Government to look very closely at the wording of this part of the Bill before we get to Third Reading to ensure that it will not mean that such major acts of criminality will be disregarded because of our legislation.