Terrorist Asset-Freezing etc. Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Noakes and Baroness Hamwee

Wednesday 6th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, on his energy in tabling Amendment 3 relatively quickly. When I opened all the papers after a break in the summer, I thought that I had better check to see whether any amendments had been tabled, having written “belief” as the first thing in my notes. I found that the noble Lord had got there before me. I am delighted that he did and delighted that the Government have taken the point. It was one of the major points concerning my noble friend Lady Falkner and me, but not the only one. Some of the points that have already been made, particularly by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, we will come to in later groups of amendments. I, too, welcome what the Government have done so far.

I shall start with a technical point. I hope that the Government and the House will accept that noble Lords may wish to look at amendments to these government amendments at the next stage. I have tripped over this in the past when I have been told that I had accepted a government amendment in Committee. There is plenty that is worth further debate now that we have had more of a chance to consider them. The critique by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, of Amendments 29 and 31 goes to that point.

On a general note, the Minister referred to the counterterrorism review. One point that he did not cover when addressing whether asset freezing should fall within the review is the different regimes for asset freezing. The differences between the regimes continue to be troubling.

There is a difficulty in how one splits between this group and the third group one's points on whether the decision should be an executive decision or a judicial decision. I recognise the need for speed. The courts are capable of speed and, as has been said, could deal with an ex parte application by the Treasury in order to take what one might call precautionary interim steps in order not to find that the prospective designated person has outwitted them. Our amendments show that I was prepared to contemplate an initial designation by the Executive, subject to an application to the court, which is our third group, but I remain concerned about whether this should be an executive matter or a judicial matter. In this speech, I shall not cover reasonable suspicion for the 30 days as I hope my noble friend will refer to that in a moment.

If I use the term “draconian” for the asset-freezing regime, I will be told that that applied to a previous regime and that the licensing that the Treasury now implements is more benevolent, but I do use the term because I still see asset freezing as very close to control orders. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, said that in one of the cases that we have referred to. He said:

“In certain respects, indeed, they could be thought to be even more paralysing”.

However you analyse the differences, asset freezing is very close to the restrictive end of the spectrum, with an impact not only on the designated person but, as we will come to in more detail later, on that person’s family. Standing back from the technical words, we can think about living in a family where the main breadwinner is not able to function and the impact that that has on the way the whole family operates, the stigma attaching to it and the relationships with the outside world. If I were the spouse of a designated person, I would not want to go shopping in a supermarket feeling that everybody in my community was looking at me. If I were the child of a designated person, I would be really worried about going to school. The prospects for bullying and so on are enormous. That is not to say that we should not protect the public, but we have to bear that other side in mind. The existence of designated persons under an asset-freezing regime is an existence rather than perhaps full life.

It comes down to whether we think the prime responsibility should be that of the Executive or of the courts. For the reasons that I have given, I continue to believe that the impact should be a judicial responsibility. Is it appropriate? Recognising the objective, is it even proportionate for the Treasury to be both the accuser and the judge?

[Baroness Noakes]

My Lords, I was not able to take part at Second Reading, which I regretted as, when I sat in the seat now occupied by the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, I covered the terrorist asset emergency legislation earlier in the year. I have of course had an opportunity to read that very good Second Reading debate. Despite the fact that I have now moved to this side of the House, had I taken part in the debate I would have regretted that the Government had not moved on from the formulation of asset freezing bequeathed by the previous Government and my tone would have been probably somewhat critical of my Front Bench. So it is a great delight to me to find that the Government have tabled the amendments in this group. They show that the Government have listened to some of the concerns from the civil liberties groups and from noble Lords and noble and learned Lords. In particular, I believe that the belief formulation is superior to the suspicion formulation, and the interim designation solution is a practical response to the issues that have been raised.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, raised an important point on amendments to amendments. My noble friend will be aware that if we accept these amendments in practice without agreement, there can be no further amendments. But the Government tabled these amendments particularly late—even later than normal for a Government to table amendments. Conjoined with the fact that when they were tabled we were still in recess, and for many of us it was difficult to access things, I hope that my noble friend will accept that it is reasonable for your Lordships’ House to discuss the substance and the detail of the points that come up in relation to the amendments, which I am reasonably confident your Lordships' House will accept this afternoon. It would not be right to stand on the formality that, having accepted the amendments, we can no longer discuss them in the later stages of this Bill.

Having said that I support the amendments in this group, I have one question for my noble friend. It will be interesting to see how these interim designations are used in practice and whether they are converted to final designations. Under Clause 24, there is to be a regular Treasury report on the use of the powers in the Bill. Will my noble friend assure me that that report will cover the extent to which interim designations are converted into final designations? We would want to have some assurance that the power that is being used in relation to interim designations was sufficiently robust and did not fall significantly short of the standard that we would regard as acceptable for draconian actions to be taken in respect of people’s assets.

Finally, picking up on what my noble friend said about the Home Office review, I think he led the House to believe at Second Reading that that review would be available before we returned. He referred specifically to the Commons Summer Recess ending before we returned. It is a considerable disappointment that we do not appear to have that review available for our Committee stage. Is it possible that we will have that Home Office review before finalising the remaining stages of this Bill? It would be disappointing if the Bill left this House without sight of that review. In particular, although my noble friend referred to the fact that it concludes that there are enough significant differences between the control order regime and the asset-freezing regime, many of us remain to be convinced of the translation of that into legal effect. We would value looking at the arguments and analysis that led to that conclusion.