Detainee Inquiry

Debate between Lord Clarke of Nottingham and Jeremy Corbyn

Thursday 19th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

I endorse what my hon. Friend says about the determination of the ISC to help the House to bring these matters to a proper conclusion and to form its judgments on them in due course.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

Is not the heart of the issue the lack of effective accountability of the security services, and the fact that the ISC is not an ordinary parliamentary Committee? It is appointed by the Prime Minister and reports to him. Are not the Minister’s proposals just a way of sidestepping the need for a serious examination of the accountability issue and for holding an independent judge-led inquiry rather than the process that has been set out?

[Mr Clarke]

I have addressed that point already, and I would have hoped that my earlier answer would have satisfy the hon. Gentleman. My starting point is the same as his. We need the intelligence services, and I share the gratitude that many have expressed for the bravery and determination that they demonstrate in protecting the citizens of this country from the undoubted threats to their lives and safety. I want intelligence services that work properly. Indeed, I hope that they will steal the secrets of our serious enemies. I also hope that they will alert us to what those enemies are proposing to do, and help us to frustrate them. It is the experience of quite a number of people in this House that that is exactly what the intelligence services do, and that they do it very effectively.

It is also important, as the hon. Gentleman says, that what the intelligence services do is proportionate to the scale of the risk posed, that they are accountable and that, when they start going in for subterfuge, it is authorised by a Minister who is democratically accountable to this House. That is what marks out our intelligence services from those of totalitarian regimes, and that must always be the case. Those standards must apply to all the activities involved, including collecting data, surveillance and the activity of the agencies in the field. I am afraid that, in the modern world, such activities will always be necessary to protect the safety of our citizens, so long as we are not damaging our values and so long as we can be confident that everything is accountable and authorised by the proper people.

Justice and Security Bill [Lords]

Debate between Lord Clarke of Nottingham and Jeremy Corbyn

Monday 4th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

I shall start giving way in a moment and will do so at least as frequently as my opponent, the right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan).

I will not use my own words to make the general case for the measure. I think I am in agreement with the Labour party, the Liberal Democrats and, I hope, my own party, or at least the bulk of it—that is sometimes the least certain proposition one can make in British politics these days. A collection of people whom I admire wrote to The Times a few months ago:

“In national security matters our legal system relies upon a procedure known as public interest immunity. Under PII, evidence which is deemed to be national security sensitive is excluded from the courtroom. The judge may not take it into account when coming to his or her judgment.

This procedure is resulting in a damaging gap in the rule of law. To protect national security evidence from open disclosure the Government is forced to try to agree substantial settlements with claimants who have not had the opportunity to prove their case. Civil damages claims made against the security services are not therefore being scrutinised by a judge in a court.

It was to resolve a similar problem that previous Governments introduced Closed Material Procedures (CMPs) in immigration and control order cases, and courts have ordered them by consent in the past.

CMPs are not ideal, but they are a better option where the alternative is no justice at all. The Special Advocates who operate within them are more effective than they admit…and the Government loses cases in these hearings.

We believe the Government is right therefore to extend the availability of CMPs to other civil courts. This will ensure that the security and intelligence agencies can defend themselves against allegations made against them, that claimants are given the greatest opportunity to prove their case, and that concerned citizens will have the benefit of a final judgment on whether serious allegations have foundation.”

That puts the general case impeccably. One of the signatories was Lord Reid, the former Home Secretary, which is not too surprising given that most Opposition Members who are former Ministers with experience of dealing with these matters are pretty supportive of the Government and have been throughout, particularly those who are still up to date because they are on the Intelligence and Security Committee. Another signatory was Lord Mackay of Clashfern, who was a Conservative Lord Chancellor many years ago, but who was the most independent Lord Chancellor I can recall. He is an impeccable lawyer and a man whom no one could accuse of not having regard to the rule of law.

I stress that the former Lord Chief Justice, Lord Woolf, whose name has entered the fray again today, is a great defender of personal liberties who invented, I think, the whole concept of judicial review by which Governments are now held to account better by the courts for ministerial decisions. I have great respect for his opinion and today—this is my final quote before I start to give way—he has written:

“What is important is that the operation of…CMPs should be under the complete control of a judge. That the Government has now given him that control is to be welcomed. The Bill now ensures that we will retain our standards of general justice, while also putting an end to the blindfolding of judges in this small number of cases.”

I think that we all agree. There may be some rare exceptions from the ultra-liberal end of the left or the right, but by and large practically everybody in this House agrees with that case. What we are arguing about now is the fact that every time we table an amendment, further amendments are tabled in order to make it more practically difficult ever to have a CMP. The lawyers who are persuading various groups to table those amendments and who are drafting them for them actually think that the law as it stands is perfectly satisfactory, but they keep trying to invent fresh conditions, tests and processes to get in the way of CMPs.

The Litvinenko inquest is proceeding under the old law. I gave in to all the lobbyists who said that none of this should ever apply to inquests. In inquests, secrecy must therefore remain the order of the day so far as the coroner, the family and everyone else is concerned once a PII has been applied for and granted. I do not think that that should apply to civil claims, but people will no doubt try to persuade me that it should.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for giving way and for the way in which he is trying to present a not very strong case. If we have a Security Service, it must be accountable, and if we have a criminal law process, it must be open. The process that is being introduced and previous processes end up, in effect, with people being criminalised in secret without knowing the full case against them. Does he not accept that there is a danger in the process that he is presenting?

[Mr Clarke]

The Bill most emphatically does not apply to the criminal process. I would be against any evidence of which the offender was not aware being given in a criminal case. That gets us into the control order problem, which is that sometimes there is no evidence in a case, but responsible people are terrified of the prospect of the person being left at liberty because we cannot prosecute. However, that is for another day. I do not believe that there can be a criminal case with secret evidence. I quite agree about that.

In civil cases, I would prefer there to be open evidence all the time. I particularly agree with the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) that the security services must be accountable to the courts and to Parliament wherever possible. At the moment, they are not accountable to the courts, because all the material that the Government want to bring in their defence cannot be given in open court. By definition, this is not evidence about our being involved in torture, rendition or anything like that. We deny that we are and most of the allegations are not that we have done such things, but that we have been complicit in another agency doing them. The evidence that we are talking about is evidence that the security services and their lawyers believe would enable them to defend the action and refute the allegations. At the moment, because we cannot hear such evidence in closed proceedings and because it cannot be heard in open court, it is not heard at all. We just offer no defence and pay out. If we have this procedure, it will make the services more accountable to the courts.

The other half of the Bill greatly strengthens the work of the Intelligence and Security Committee, which I approve of, by making it a proper Committee of this House and by strengthening its powers. I agree with the hon. Member for Islington North that we must reassure the public that we are defending our values by the most reputable methods and that we are respecting human rights. There must therefore be accountability to the courts and to Parliament.

Justice and Security Bill [Lords]

Debate between Lord Clarke of Nottingham and Jeremy Corbyn

Tuesday 18th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

I answered that in the written question that the hon. Lady put to me. She is welcome to put an oral question to me at Cabinet Office questions, now that she has discovered who is handling the Bill. Most such Ministry of Defence cases do not give rise to national security considerations, and the Ministry of Defence does not expect to start invoking closed material proceedings. One cannot anticipate it, but it is possible that the circumstances of the tragic death of a soldier might involve some highly secret operation, and then the situation might arise. We have not had problems on this front so far and the expectation is that it need not arise. If it were to arise, there would still be the judgment of the judge and a decision in the case.

I am trying to think of examples that could conceivably arise. If a soldier was killed and it was alleged that that was the result of some actionable negligence, which apparently we are now going to allow people to argue in our courts, and that took place in some highly secret operation in some unlikely part of the world, I cannot rule out a CMP application being made. The Ministry of Defence is more robust than I am. I am told that it does not think that most of these cases involve national security at all.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

In reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Joan Walley), the Minister outlined extreme circumstances of an injury to a British soldier. Would the same process apply if there was embarrassment over arms sales to a particular country, where those sold arms had been used to deny the human rights of many others, against the policies and wishes of this country, and there was a desire not to make that too public?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Clarke of Nottingham and Jeremy Corbyn

Tuesday 31st January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

Does the Justice Secretary agree that much of the media speculation and attacks on the European Court of Human Rights are damaging to the interests of many people all over Europe who are suffering serious human rights abuses? This country, which prides itself on having a Human Rights Act, should support the European convention and the Court, and recognise that it is in everybody’s interest that we protect human rights in this country, as well as in Hungary, Russia or wherever else they are under threat.

[Mr Clarke]

This country is a great advocate of human rights throughout the world, and should continue to be so. The Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and I have confirmed in recent speeches at Strasbourg our commitment to the European convention on human rights and our desire to see human rights maintained all the way from this country to the Russian Federation, which is the furthest-east member. However, we seek to strengthen the Court by making it operate properly. It should concentrate on the important cases and those that raise serious issues of principle obtaining to the convention. At the moment, it has 150,000 cases in arrears. It takes years to get them heard, and it sometimes gives judgments despite the whole issue having been properly considered by national institutions and national courts.

Victims and Witnesses Strategy

Debate between Lord Clarke of Nottingham and Jeremy Corbyn

Monday 30th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

I am glad to say that the figure is coming down, but delay is the most serious symptom of the underlying failing of the system. For as long as I can remember, we have had deficits in the funding and an inevitable delay in payments because they cannot be funded. Every year, the Home Office previously and now the Ministry of Justice has had to find more money to put into the scheme to try to keep ahead of the claims. A realistic attempt to concentrate the funding on the most serious offences that have lasting or permanent consequences should enable us to pay those people more promptly, rather than paying quite as many people as we do at present for a wide range of injuries.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

There are many people who are victims of crime, but no prosecution follows because they are victims of racist harassment, neighbourhood terrorism or domestic violence. There is a problem of getting independent witnesses and therefore getting a prosecution. Within the context of the reforms, is the Secretary of State prepared to consider enhanced funding and support for professional witness schemes so that we can bring about a greater sense of safety for those people who are suffering serious racist harassment in our society?

[Mr Clarke]

One of the things that we are consulting on—we have not mentioned it much, but anything we can do would be valuable—is increased support for witnesses. It has got better in recent years, but support to enable witnesses to find the experience a little less intimidating than they otherwise might, and to explain to them the process through which they will go, is always valuable and needs to be improved. On people who are victims of crimes about which they do not complain or which have not led to a prosecution, we have considered that and are issuing a consultation document. But the underlying rule of the scheme has always been that, in order to get compensation, people must be prepared to co-operate with the police and the prosecutors to get the crime dealt with, and we have to keep that. We have dealt specially with repeated physical violence, and that is meant to address domestic violence and some of the other cases to which the hon. Gentleman referred.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Clarke of Nottingham and Jeremy Corbyn

Tuesday 8th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

Certainly, the Government take a serious view of the use of a nuclear weapon; I hope that not too much of that breaks out in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency. We discussed these proposals in the House only last week, and we achieved the House’s approval for them. There is an indeterminate sentence called a life sentence, which is the best and most established form of indeterminate sentence. Having got rid of the failed indeterminate sentences for public protection, we expect that quite a lot of people will get life sentences who hitherto would have been given the rather unsatisfactory IPPs.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State consider the problem of pre-release of prisoners where insufficient preparation is made for training or, particularly, for somewhere to live or some kind of community support? That means, in turn, that they either stay longer in prison or are released into the community, where they are inadequately supervised and end up back in a whole regime of crime.

[Mr Clarke]

We are looking at that problem very seriously, and we hope to produce a substantial improvement on the present situation. In particular, I am working with colleagues in the Department for Work and Pensions to try to ensure that offenders leaving prison can have instant access to the work programmes that we are developing for other people seeking work. Enabling people to get back into employment is one of the best ways of improving the chances that they will not offend again.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Clarke of Nottingham and Jeremy Corbyn

Tuesday 13th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

I think the commission is a very helpful idea for getting some objective and balanced advice on the whole subject. Otherwise, I agree with my hon. Friend that there is no reason why human rights should interfere with the proper balance between the responsibilities and duties that one properly owes to society. Everybody in this country is in favour of basic human rights and everybody wants to have an orderly society. I think the commission will help to steer the debate in a more sensible direction.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State take this opportunity to assure us that any review of the Human Rights Act will not include withdrawal from the European convention on human rights or the European Court of Human Rights? Will he recognise that both those institutions have done a great deal of good to improve the human rights of minorities and ordinary citizens across Europe and that the convention is worth staying in?

[Mr Clarke]

The convention was largely drafted by British lawyers led by Lord Kilmuir. Successive British Governments have adhered to the convention and have put great value on it and the Court. Since the fall of the Berlin wall and the end of the cold war, the convention has acquired new importance in making sure that we support advancing standards in eastern and central Europe. There is not the faintest chance of the present Government withdrawing from the convention on human rights, and we are waiting for the commission to give us—[Hon. Members: “Ooh!”] Have a look at our coalition agreement. Indeed, it is not just the coalition agreement—we have agreed to have a fresh look at this through the commission and we are not prejudging its findings.

Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Debate between Lord Clarke of Nottingham and Jeremy Corbyn

Wednesday 29th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

Complements—it might do both, but I hope it will complement our efforts to tackle drugs in prison.

Drugs are widely available in prisons, but we shall start by introducing drug-free wings. My single most radical proposal on rehabilitation is a non-legislative change to introduce a fundamental shift in how we approach the issue by paying by results to unlock private capital, benefit from the innovation of the voluntary sector and get the whole system pulling in the same direction. We will pay providers a return on their ethical investment for what works in the public interest: turning criminals into ex-criminals should be an object of the system.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I am interested in the Secretary of State’s comments on the number of people in our prisons who, unfortunately, suffer from mental illness and need support and treatment, which is often inadequate. Will he recognise the greater problem: that many people who need support with mental illness or who are experiencing mental health crises do not get it, and there are insufficient resources and insufficient understanding among the police and others that the real cause of minor offences often is mental illness and nothing else. We need a more sympathetic, supportive and therapeutic approach to dealing with these poor, unfortunate people.

[Mr Clarke]

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health agrees with the hon. Gentleman and me. My ministerial team and my right hon. Friend’s ministerial team have been holding discussions. My right hon. Friend has a strategy for trying to improve mental health services to the population as a whole. As part of that we are addressing what can be done to help the mentally ill who find themselves in prison. Some of them should be diverted from the criminal justice system altogether; some can be better treated in secure accommodation in the national health service; and many can be treated better than they are at present when being incarcerated in prison is not suitable. I assure the hon. Gentleman that my right hon. Friend and I share his concern.

Underpinning punishment, reparation and rehabilitation is what might be called system reform—simplification, restoration of discretion to judges and the relief of unnecessary pressures on the system. At the same time we must take a more robust approach to costs in the system, including that of prison. We have already shown that through competition it is possible to get prison costs down while improving service quality. Key measures in the Bill include reforming the use of remand. I dealt with this a moment ago. I have told the House that preventing reoffending is the central idea of my reforms. One of the main barriers to doing things in the past few years has been the fact that the prisons have been clogged up, sometimes with people who do not need to be there at all. I will not repeat the arguments that I made a moment ago that give rise to the part of the Bill that restricts the power of courts to remand those who have no reasonable prospect of receiving a custodial sentence, with the exception that I have already described of cases of domestic violence.

Sentencing Reform/Legal Aid

Debate between Lord Clarke of Nottingham and Jeremy Corbyn

Tuesday 21st June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. The figure she repeats—one in two ex-offenders will be caught and convicted within a year of leaving prison—is truly extraordinary. I agree that proper change is needed. We need to protect the public from the worst of that, and where prisoners have the gumption to respond and try to get themselves out of their way of life and become honest citizens again, we should make more of them do so. I am sure that that would be appreciated in Erewash, as it would across the rest of the country.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State invited us to look at what the situation will be four years down the line. Does he not expect there to be a larger and more expensive prison population, with prisoners serving very long sentences for some of the offences for which he is increasing the tariff, and that there will be a large number of people denied access to legal aid, fewer advice services, fewer CABs and a lot of people very disgruntled that justice is not available to them because they are too poor?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Clarke of Nottingham and Jeremy Corbyn

Tuesday 15th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

As the Under-Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Mr Blunt), said in reply to a question a moment ago, sentencing is a matter for the Sentencing Guidelines Council and for the judges, who hear all the facts of the case; they can hear a victim’s statement and they can hear mitigation for the accused. We keep an eye on percentages, of course, but the sentence in each case has to be the appropriate sentence for the facts of and the offender in the case. Although burglary is a serious offence that normally attracts imprisonment, it covers a wide range of circumstances, from someone breaking in with a hood over his head in the middle of the night to someone walking through an open door grabbing a knick-knack and running out through the door again. So we have to leave it to the judges.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

T6. Has the Secretary of State considered carefully the representations that he will have received concerning clause 151 of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill on universal jurisdiction? He will be aware that restricting access to the British courts in respect of crimes against humanity committed anywhere in the world will send a very bad message to the rest of the world and will make this country a more pleasant place for war criminals and those who have committed crimes against humanity to try to come to.

[Mr Clarke]

I must make it absolutely clear that the Government are not reducing, in any way, the importance we attach to the proper enforcement of the law against those guilty of war crimes or crimes against humanity. We are making a slight change to the circumstances in which a citizen can obtain an arrest. The prior approval of the Director of Public Prosecutions will be needed, in order to make sure that there is a reasonable prospect of prosecution in the case; that is not where we are at the moment. I assure the hon. Gentleman that nobody on either side of the House wishes to see this country downgrade the importance we attach to enforcing crimes against humanity and war crimes.