Justice and Security Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Kennedy of Shaws and Lord Reid of Cardowan

Wednesday 21st November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Reid of Cardowan]

Let me finish with the questions that I have been asked and then I will happily come back to the noble Lord.

The third question is whether I am off the point. I do not see how this issue can be discussed without a deeper understanding of the security—I truly do not—and yet in this Chamber I hear speech after speech about law but no one sets out the circumstances in which we have to face these threats. We might as well try to exist in a vacuum. Of course we can turn our eyes and act blind to the world outside but we have at least to try and understand the circumstances that give rise to what the Government are doing, or alternatively we will be forced to say that they are either mad, bad, corrupt with power, lapdogs, murky, conspirators or acting at the behest of evil civil servants.

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws]

The noble Lord is presenting a parody of the argument that I have made, and I refute it. I understand—as does everyone in this House because we have debated it so often—the incredible context of having to deal with terrorism. Sensibly, however, most of us accept that you do not sacrifice the high standards of legal procedure that we have developed in this country to the terrorists. When the British state does that, it descends to the level of the people who bomb, kill and do all the things that the noble Lord has described so powerfully. If there is any question that our security services have in any way fallen from grace—and no one is suggesting that they have tortured—in the standards that we expect and which they normally set store by themselves, it is important that that should be explored so that we can put right any of the wrongs that have taken place. That is the issue.