Queen’s Speech

Lord Bishop of Manchester Excerpts

Tuesday 18th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Manchester [V]]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Fullbrook, whose wisdom I look forward to hearing more often, for an excellent maiden speech. I also refer to my interests, stated in the register, in policing and housing.

A number of Bills mentioned in the gracious Speech will require our police to enforce new laws and regulations. We have already seen considerable disquiet expressed regarding what might amount to a very significant reduction in the ability of the public to engage in peaceful political protest, particularly where such protests directly or indirectly impact on others. I will reserve more detailed comments on this Bill for when it reaches your Lordships’ House, although I note the wise comments made earlier by the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti. For now, I want briefly to lay it alongside my experience of 12 months of rapidly changing coronavirus regulations.

On many occasions, the precise boundaries between regulations—matters that police can enforce—and guidance, to which they can only direct our attention, have been seriously blurred. Meanwhile, ministerial statements have put pressure on our police to issue fixed penalty notices, but the Crown Prosecution Service is quite clear that an adequate chain of evidence will be almost impossible to achieve.

I fear that the nine Peelian principles, which have shaped UK policing since 1829, are being eroded. Behind those principles, carved out in the years immediately after the Manchester Peterloo massacre of 1819, lies the central tenet that the power and authority of our police come from the consent of the public, not the power of the state. The will of the people cannot be collapsed into the ambitions and policies of the Government of the day, no matter what mandate or majority it may hold in the lower House of this Parliament. Our police must never be turned from agents of the public into agents of the state, let alone the enforcers of mere ministerial policy. I look forward to some robust debates in this House during the forthcoming Session.

I turn briefly to two other matters. Several weeks ago, the noble Lord, Lord Greenhalgh, the Minister for Housing, assured me that he would arrange for national representatives of those living in unsafe apartment buildings to meet not only himself and his staff, as they have been doing, but representatives of Her Majesty’s Treasury. I know that the noble Lord has made strenuous efforts to fulfil that promise; meetings have been arranged but then postponed or cancelled due to the Treasury not being available. It is simply not good enough for a major department to delay and obfuscate in this way. I would be extremely grateful for reassurances, either in this debate or in writing straight after, that this matter will be promptly rectified.

Finally, I am grateful that legislation to ban conversion therapy is now under consideration. I share that sense of urgency of the noble Lord, Lord Smith, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, who both spoke in the last few minutes, and pray that the necessary consultation will be focused and time-limited. The General Synod of the Church of England passed a motion to outlaw such therapy several years ago, and by massive majorities, including my right reverend friends on these Benches. However, I fear that too much emphasis may be placed on the methods such so-called therapies employ. Good criminal law concentrates on the impact on the victim; scrutiny as to the traumatic impact of the particular techniques used by perpetrators is far better entrusted to the courts, which can carefully weigh up the evidence in each case, rather than make it central to the legislation.

I look forward to our debates throughout what will be my first full Session as a Member of this House.

Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill

Lord Bishop of Manchester Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 9th February 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Manchester [V]]

My Lords, I draw the Committee’s attention to my interest in criminal justice matters, specifically as chair of the Greater Manchester Police independent ethics committee, as set out in the register.

I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, for tabling Amendment 28. I also note with interest Amendment 27 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Anderson. His arguments are powerful, not least in distinguishing clearly between belief and a mere suspicion, a distinction which for me as a bishop lies at the heart of my day job.

As I indicated to your Lordships’ House in my maiden speech at Second Reading, this is a Bill that I welcome and support. My city of Manchester has all too recently suffered a terrorist attack that killed 22 innocent people and maimed and traumatised hundreds more. We remain deeply grateful for the support we received from members of this House, government Ministers and many others at that time and since.

What I seek from the Bill are provisions that will most effectively reduce terrorism across our nation. My concern, particularly with regard to this clause, is that sanctions that are deemed by particular sections of the British public as either too severe or to be based on insufficient evidence will prove counterproductive. Measures that are overly harsh or that can plausibly be presented as such breed a sense of injustice and resentment, and if those sanctions appear to be directed against particular sections of the community, that may deepen into alienation, and alienation remains one of the most effective recruiting sergeants for incipient terrorists.

We rightly demand a high level of proof for a criminal conviction and a lesser but still significant standard on the balance of probabilities for civil cases. What we are presented with in Clause 37 as it stands is far weaker. All we are offered as an evidential base for a TPIM is “reasonable grounds for suspecting” an individual. That turn of phrase, suspicion, has a somewhat troubled history. Large sections of our community have, I would argue “reasonable grounds for suspecting” that policing interventions justified by reference to that phrase have been used disproportionately against people of their colour, religion or lifestyle. To apply this suspect standard to something as significant as a TPIM, which may be extended for some years, will increase the very risks to our society that it is intended to address.

In his Amendment 28, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, offers us a modest strengthening of the wording to include a test of probability alongside that of reasonableness. I hope that the Minister will be able indicate to this House that some form of strengthening the clause, either through Amendment 28 or otherwise, will be supported by Her Majesty’s Government as we continue to debate the Bill.

[Lord Strasburger (LD) [V]]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the right reverend Prelate, particularly because he and I are cuckoos in this nest of lawyers. I speak in opposition to the Question that Clause 37 stand part of the Bill.

The TPIM system is seriously problematic because it bypasses the criminal justice system to avoid the usual safeguards that protect liberty and fairness. The system allows a Government to rely on secret, undisclosed evidence while bypassing fair-trial rights and impose measures that severely interfere with the right to liberty, privacy, association and movement, and makes a breach of those measures a criminal offence. I do not expect to win the argument today about TPIMs per se but must object in the strongest terms to Clauses 37, 38 and 40. Between them, they make this troubling TPIM system far more constrictive while removing the main current safeguards.

The Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, Jonathan Hall QC, called the combined effect of Clauses 37 and 40 a “double whammy”. Taken together, they significantly lower the burden of proof at the same time as allowing TPIMs to endure forever for a person who has not been formally charged or prosecuted. The independent reviewer made it clear that he supports not changing the burden of proof and advises that it be left as it is. To my knowledge, the Government have yet to come forward with any convincing evidence for hardening the TPIM regime in any of the three ways that these clauses, Clauses 37, 38 and 40, would bring about. Indeed, the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation said in his note on the proposed reforms that it is,

“not clear why there is any need to change the law in the manner proposed.”

Even a third-ranking police officer, an assistant chief constable, who was wheeled out to support the Bill in oral evidence to the Bill Committee, conceded that,

“there have not been occasions thus far when the current burden of proof has prevented the application of a TPIM”.—[Official Report, Commons, Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill Committee, 25/6/20; col. 20.]

Therefore, my two questions to the Minister are: why have the Government ignored the independent reviewer’s advice and where is the evidence to justify that decision? I look forward to his answers. I hope that he can do better than the “another tool in the box” mantra.

Clause 37 will reduce the burden of proof to such a low level as to make it almost no barrier at all. “Reasonable grounds for suspecting” covers a host of situations where an innocent person could unjustly lose their liberty and other rights, perhaps on the basis of a single, flimsy and uncorroborated piece of evidence. The courts have interpreted the standard of suspicion as a belief not that the person is a terrorist, only that they may be a terrorist. If a Minister merely believes that a person may be a terrorist, that is sufficient justification under this clause to impose a TPIM on them. With the best will in the world, this is such a low burden of proof that it makes the ministerial decision to impose a TPIM into a rubber-stamping exercise, more or less, with no constraints on the action whatever. The implications of such a severe and unfettered executive power should worry every Member of this House.

Combined with Clause 38, Clause 37 would mean that a Minister would have the authority to severely constrain the liberty of a possibly innocent person for ever, on the flimsiest justification, possibly cooked up by a rogue policeman, intelligence agent or government official, or it might just be that someone in the chain of command made an innocent mistake. We cannot allow this proposed new power to deprive someone of their liberty and other rights indefinitely—possibly longer than if they were convicted of a terrorist offence in a criminal court—when the process that put them there is so wide open to errors and abuse. There must be a meaningful burden of proof, but Clause 37 removes that. It therefore must not stand part of this Bill.