Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 (Amendment) Order 2021

Lord Mann Excerpts

Monday 17th May 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Mann (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, it has taken some time for some very simple action to be taken on benzodiazepines. I first recommended this action in 2003 in the House of Commons and was ignored. I do not want to take issue with the Minister—I hope she does not feel that I am—but there is a concept which she and the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, raised, which I want to disagree with. It is about the unintended consequences of it, and it is not nit-picking, because of where the logic comes from.

Part of the justification for the proposal to the Committee—I entirely endorse the merits of agreeing it today—was that these three benzodiazepines have no identifiable health benefit. That rather misses the point, because even if they had a health benefit, the use of benzodiazepines in the illicit-drug-using and problematic-drug-using communities is prodigious. It can of course take place elsewhere, and there is a huge market for the resale of prescribed drugs; the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, alluded to that. That same market is particularly problematic when it comes to problematic users, by which I mean users whose drug dependency is such that it dominates their entire life and leads them into forms of behaviour that damage others. That is distinct from those who suffer misery by themselves in their own home, which can be through illegal drugs but which is far more often through the misuse of prescribed drugs. That latter category of people do not tend to buy the drugs illegally; they simply get them through perfectly legal prescriptions. However, there is a huge market in the sale of all products, some of which are obtained technically illegally—they are prescribed and then sold on—while others are in the entirely legal market, such as these three particular benzodiazepines.

Part of the dilemma we have and part of the weakness in the system in this country is that the ACMD logic still ties in with what criminal justice sees—and criminal justice still has a tendency not to want too many things to have to regulate and criminalise, because it means more work—as well as with health, and particularly public health, which has had an obsession with the perceived positive benefits of a cocktail of drugs, defined as one drug being used to counteract another drug. That is precisely the kind of use that drug addicts have for benzodiazepines. In my experience, I do not know anyone who has a heroin addiction, for example, who does not also use benzodiazepines. The two go together, although not usually literally together. So the public health input has often been to say, “Things are better out there, because it will help people’s health”. I think that is fundamentally wrong.

Our inability to get on top of drug treatment in this country is partly because criminal justice takes too much of a lead in this. That is not the Minister’s fault, although it is her problem, because she then has a responsibility. I happen to be Lord Mann, of Holbeck Moor in the City of Leeds, and I hope that the Minister will at some stage—I would be happy to accompany her—look at the managed prostitution red light district on Holbeck Moor. It is a health disaster and catastrophe and very unpopular with members of the local community, as I know from listening to them. I in no way purport to represent them; that is for the far more illustrious Members of the Commons. However, the notion of a managed red light district is precisely the kind of problem that has led to so much time being taken to make benzodiazepines illegal.

The Minister is right to bring this forward, but I think we need to knock heads together more, particularly in public health, which is silent too often. It is precisely why usually primary care, although it can be hospitals, has been allowed to overprescribe things that are actually a danger, either through overuse by the individual or misuse by others who get hold of them, sometimes by purchasing them. Benzodiazepines really fit that model in terms of the kinds of markets that are there.

I commend the Minister for this, but there is a great opportunity for this Government to take a leap forward in getting the public health agenda aligned with the criminal justice agenda. For all sorts of reasons, the Government are well positioned to do this in ways that other Governments were more fearful of. I hope that the Minister will look at that. It is not enough simply to make this illegal, because the same people will still be buying it, whether it is legal or illegal. We also need to try to get to the root causes and look at how health does or does not deal with it, and then the country will literally be a healthier place.

Undercover Policing Inquiry

Lord Mann Excerpts

Wednesday 14th April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I assume that the noble Baroness is referring to Northern Ireland. It is probably inappropriate to comment on that at this point, while judicial proceedings are ongoing.

[Lord Mann (Non-Afl)]

An inquiry cannot request files where it does not know that they exist. Can we be assured that there are no files within the Home Office that have not been sought out, retrieved and provided to the inquiry?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

If the Home Office is asked for files that it has, it would most certainly have to provide them to the inquiry.

Domestic Abuse Bill

Lord Mann Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 17th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mann (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I do not intend to replicate the points made by three excellent and very focused contributions; my comments will be not be instead of but additional and complementary to those, but I will stick to my complementary points because that will assist with brevity and perhaps even with clarity.

In backing the amendment, I want to bring to the House two examples from my experience. The first is the major investigation into heroin abuse that I carried out in 2002 in the mining villages of north Nottinghamshire, where I spoke to more than 300 local heroin users. I found one extraordinary correlation that I did not expect. While they had very different stories, backgrounds and situations, every single one of them bar none had suffered some form of major trauma in childhood. That trauma had not been noted by the system—by which I mean primarily schools and, in some instances, social services, but I am concentrating particularly on what schools missed—or, where it was noted, it was not addressed.

I cited in that inquiry specific examples of young children, primary school children, who got to school late because they did not know when they were meant to get up, because no parent was available to get them out of bed. So they would arrive at school at various times and in various forms of wear to try to participate. My experience was that they were not as successful in school as they could have been. But there was no additionality in the local authority, in its processes and in its funding to identify those problems.

Some children had experienced significant violence in their household, sometimes done to them, and, of course, where there was domestic violence against the mother, there was often violence also against the children. That was a critical part of the trauma in many cases. Such trauma can manifest in very different ways at an early age. One of the most common ways that I found was truancy; in other words, the simple act of not attending school, particularly when it was secondary school. What I noted with some disdain—and I continued to do so for many years, though I would argue against it—was how certain children were categorised as disruptive and their behaviour regarded as dysfunctional, which, on the face of it, it sometimes certainly was, and they did not attend school and school was often happy not to have them.

The fundamental problem that then arises is the effect on all the core communication skills, not least literacy. In a disproportionate number of cases, that directly correlates with domestic abuse, as spelled out in this Bill, in the household. That is example number one.

Example number two is that of a friend of mine, Terry Lodge. He was badly abused as a child. There was always violence, and as a consequence Terry did not go to school. He did not go to primary school as often as would have been helpful, and he did not go to secondary school at all. He was forced to work, and put into major industrial manual work at the age of 11 by his family.

Terry’s is one of the cases I took to the national child abuse inquiry. I represented him there, and I still assist him. He has had a full apology from the local authority, but no compensation yet, four years after his apology. That is absurd and disgraceful—and, more importantly, in my view, damaging. All the way through, Terry Lodge has had one primary request: he never learned to read or write. Nobody is prepared to address that fully. His compensation, if it ever emerges, will be for being handicapped in the labour market, because he could not get to the levels he would have reached if he had been able to read and write.

That directly relates to this amendment, and what it would create. That requirement, in terms of what local authorities do and how they see the world that they are dealing with, is a fundamental weakness in our systems that still exists today. I therefore commend this amendment to the Government. It is vital, and I hope they will accept it.

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I declare an interest as vice-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Speech and Language Difficulties, as patron of the British Stammering Association, and as a stammerer myself. I warmly endorse all that previous speakers have said, and I thank the Minister for his helpful meeting a few days ago.

I shall briefly address the issue of local authority support, as addressed by paragraph (c) of this important amendment. It is good that the Government have confirmed that local authority strategies will be published, in line with the public sector accessibility regulations, but we need more. Local authorities must also ensure that those will be available in properly inclusive formats, which people without mobiles or access to the internet can see, and in languages other than English.

That is because speech and language therapists, as is mentioned in the useful briefing from the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists, report that various domestic abuse assessments, often verbally communicated, have not always been understood by people with communication needs, because of the level of understanding, retention and processing required, and often also because of their state of mind, exacerbated by stress brought on by abuse. It is difficult for people who are accustomed to communicating with ease to understand the real impediments to understanding experienced by some of those with communication needs.

The consequence, of course, is that assessments will not reflect the problem, appropriate support will not be forthcoming, and any rehabilitation or prevention programme will fail. What a waste of time and resources. Sadly, it is not uncommon for people with learning disabilities, including children, to be abused, and they are at greater risk of an inadequate professional response if we cannot ensure an effective way to communicate with them.

We need more developed and targeted guidance on how to do this—for instance, following my noble friend Lady Andrews, we could insert references, at paragraphs 81 and 105 in chapter 2 of the draft statutory guidance framework, to accessible information and inclusive communication, and we could state explicitly, in Chapter 4, paragraph 125, that any reference to risk assessment must list speech, language and communication needs as a specific vulnerability which requires an appropriate format. Plain English would be a good start.

Domestic Abuse Bill

Lord Mann Excerpts

Report stage & Lords Hansard
Monday 8th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mendelsohn (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I speak in support of this group of amendments, which I have signed. I associate myself with the excellent speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, and my colleagues. I also thank the Minister and the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, and the officials of the domestic abuse commissioner for their engagements on these amendments.

There is indeed progress. As my noble friends have said, there are some clear indications for some modest but significant improvements as outlined. Crucially, I hope we will hear some reassurance, building on what was said in Committee, that statutory guidance, as provided for in Clause 73, will take into account the measures proposed in the amendments.

It is also important to note that there is a host of additional elements throughout this Bill which support the plight of victims and will provide new opportunities for assistance and help, including DAPOs, the role of the domestic abuse commissioner and many others. There is no doubt that more will be done over time. At its very heart, this is a form of gender discrimination that we really cannot accept.

The Government have made a number of arguments as to why they could not go further or place these matters on the face of the Bill. Indeed, there is a reasonable point that the Government have not had enough time to tease through all the different implications for all faiths on this matter. There is a less persuasive point about drafting preferences.

There are two arguments, however, that are surely utterly wrong and incompatible with the underlying intentions behind this Bill: namely, that this is only domestic abuse in certain circumstances and that English law alone cannot solve this matter. A plainly gender-specific arrangement which places women where they have less rights and power in courts, which are exclusively run by the decisions of men, is wrong. This is not a situation we should accept, nor is it an arrangement we should settle for, even under any calculation of what religious freedoms should be accorded to faith communities in our country.

In Holland, the courts have been making rulings which have included fines and even imprisonment of husbands unwilling to deliver gets, with all the support of the rabbinate and the religious courts. In fact, under Dutch jurisprudence since 2002, which was strengthened in specific legislation just a couple of years ago—and which has been accessed by Jewish women across Europe, including, previously, some from the UK who, unfortunately, can no longer access it now—the secular courts are able to unchain Jewish women in these circumstances. The distinguished Chief Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, the head of the conference of European orthodox rabbis, supports this measure, as does rabbi Aryeh Ralbag, the former chief rabbi of Amsterdam, who now works in the orthodox courts in New York to bring reform and change. They support the Dutch judiciary’s proactive approach and recognise that, over 2,000 years, the role of the religious courts and the nature of Jewish communities in modern times is different. In response to the opposition of those who resist any notion that secular values or laws should ever interfere in how the Jewish law operates in liberal democracies. Rabbi Ralbag has powerfully said:

“Am I concerned that this is creating a precedent for interference? In some places, yes, I am. But I and every rabbi need to measure this against the pain and suffering that is being visited on Jewish women right now. And right now, this is what we can do to help”.


Regrettably, we are a long way from that here in the UK, but this is something that I think should inspire us that more can and must be done through this Bill—and indeed after it. I have been truly shocked and humbled over the issues presented by these amendments. I have been contacted by tens of women in this situation since I first spoke out. I have heard the most traumatic stories, including with people I knew, and in some cases people I have socialised with. How true it is that you never know what is going on, even with people you think you know well. The private torments, appalling behaviour, abuse and control—it has been utterly shocking. How important it is that there are excellent organisations such as the Jewish Women’s Aid and GETTout UK. I have been shocked at how some members of the legal profession have been providing the use of the get as a bargaining chip to ensure that women cannot receive what the law is clear and firm they are fully entitled to.

These issues go much deeper than the granting of the get and involve many cases that do not even touch the sides of the religious courts, where they are prepared to intervene. So while I am grateful to the Government for the progress that I hope the Minister will confirm during his speech, we cannot be satisfied with where we are. There is a huge duty on leaders in the Jewish community to face up to this dark side. While thus far it does not do what the Dutch have done, I hope the Bill will make them think and come round to proposing more legislative interventions themselves. I hope Jewish women will find comfort in the support that the Bill will give them in their struggles ahead, and for that we must be grateful.

[Lord Mann (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to listen to and follow my noble friend Lord Mendelsohn and the other sponsors of these amendments.

I wish to make two brief points. The first is that whenever there is an unequivocal imbalance in power relations, that affects behaviour. The behaviour relayed to me in the context of these amendments particularly concerns women who remain in abusive relationships precisely because, in any definition of “negotiation”, the odds of getting out are stacked against them. One cannot go fairly into a separation negotiation if the other side has additional cards that are greater than the ones you possess. That imbalance affects ongoing behaviour; it will be affecting people’s behaviour now, as my noble friend Lord Mendelsohn rightly pointed out, in cases where perhaps no one will know anything at all other than the woman directly affected. There is a responsibility on the Government to listen acutely to the expertise being brought.

That brings me to my second point—and it is an apposite time to be making it in the context of Lord Speaker elections and people thinking about the size of the House—about the diversity of this place. There is no purpose in having an unelected Second Chamber if it does not represent the diversity of the communities out there. With these amendments and the Government’s arguments against them, we see a juxtaposition of the best and the not so good. Here we see a community effectively represented, by Members from across the range of the political spectrum knowledgably putting forward their expertise to the Government and to the House. But if we are to have a purpose here and carry out the precise role that an unelected Chamber needs to, we need to be far more inclusive of all communities across the country. The amendments, as clearly as any that I have ever seen, absolutely demonstrate the strengths of this House but also, in a sense—and I anticipate that this will be the Government’s response—part of its ongoing weaknesses, in that we are not inclusive enough of all communities.

I congratulate those who have brought forward their expertise from their community for the rest of us. With such cross-party wisdom, it would be foolish of us to ignore that expertise.

[Lord Polak (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Mann, who, as a non-Jew, has done, and continues to do, so much in the fight against anti-Semitism.

The well-informed debate in Committee was a good one and today’s debate has been just as important and impressive. I am delighted to confirm the assertions by the noble Lord, Lord Winston, about his mother, the late Ruth Winston-Fox; she was a force to be reckoned with but also a wonderfully warm, creative and successful campaigner. She clearly produced quite an impressive son, too.

The Bill, which is welcomed across the House and beyond, is about helping as many people who need it as possible. That is why I support my noble friend Lady Altmann’s amendments; as always, she made the case strongly and eloquently. I too am grateful to the Government, specifically on the Front Bench, my noble friends Lady Williams and Lord Wolfson. There can be no doubt in my mind that withholding a get is abusive behaviour. I also pay tribute to the inspiring work of Jewish Women’s Aid.

Domestic Abuse and Hidden Harms during Lockdown

Lord Mann Excerpts

Tuesday 19th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

The noble Lord makes a good point. If there is money there to be spent for people who need our support, we should try to ensure that it gets out. I shall certainly discuss the matter with my honourable friend the Minister for Safeguarding, Vicky Atkins, and see what we can do to expedite some of the money for the remainder of this year.

[Lord Mann (Non-Afl) [V]]

There are additional complications in dealing with domestic violence in the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller community, and the lockdown, in all its forms, has significantly worsened this. Is the Minister confident that measures are in place to ensure that that community is sufficiently serviced by the services and facilities available?

Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Bill

Lord Mann Excerpts

Report stage & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords & Report: 1st sitting & Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Monday 11th January 2021 Lords Chamber

There is one final thing I would like to knock on the head and that is the constant references to “any crime”. I do not understand this. With some of what has been said, I have wished we had ordinary rules of debate because I would like to have intervened. Some of the things I have seen written by noble Lords are absolutely outrageous. The fact is that the notification of the authorisation of a covert human intelligence source must comply, unqualified, with the European Convention on Human Rights. That is the reality. It rules out any crime. The Bill does not allow the legalisation of any crime. For Peers, who are legislators and opinion formers, to say this—frankly, I do not understand it. It is deliberately misleading the public and others. I think they should stop it and go back and read the reality of what we have been provided with.

[Lord Mann (Non-Afl) [V]]

My Lords, I very much agree with the detail and the general sentiment in the excellent contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker. The word “practical”, which he used several times, is a vital word, to which I would add “mundane”, which I think he used once, referring to the mundanity of many of the orders, and the potential volume of those mundane orders. I speak not as any legal expert, but as someone who was on the receiving end of precisely this. I was on the Economic League blacklist, undoubtedly because of the infiltration of the anti-apartheid movement by an agent of the state.

My concern is about the competence of the state. A book was written at the time by an extremist, a Stalinist and supporter of the Soviet Union called Denver Walker. The book is called Quite Right, Mr Trotsky! and it was released in the same year that I was having those problems. In it, he starts by saying that this could be Special Branch or MI5 in terms of what he is doing. He exposes every Trotskyist organisation in the country, naming names, citing examples and explaining ideology in minute detail. At the same time all the organisations he named, bar two, were infiltrated. That is now on the public record. The state was spending resources and putting a priority on infiltrating irrelevant, tiny organisations. The Revolutionary Communist Group, one of the two not infiltrated, is described in the book as being presumed by everyone on the ultra-left to be run by Special Branch. That is actually in his book.

Competence is critical. If we are trying to intervene in, for example, terrorist organisations or organised crime, competence is absolute and fundamental. Yet we have this history, in the 1970s and 1980s, of the most appalling incompetence. We had the targeting of irrelevant people, creating consequences for people who were on the side of the state in precisely the terms on which the state was infiltrating these organisations. What conclusions would I draw from that?

I draw the conclusion that the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, whom I normally agree with, is fundamentally wrong to suggest that the judiciary has the wrong skill set for assessing and authorising such decisions in advance. I would say exactly the opposite. The judiciary has exactly the right skill set, not to know anything about extremist organisations or extremists but to hear and evaluate a coherent case—or an incoherent case, and turn that down if it is—when put forward by one of the agencies to or for which we are giving, clarifying or maintaining powers with the Bill.

If you are incapable, as intelligence services, the police or one of the other agencies, of putting a coherent case together for why you need authorisation, it would seem that the authorisation you need has a rather weak case. If that had happened in the 1970s and 1980s, a lot of that nonsense and wrong priorities would never have got past stage 1. They were based not even on a hunch, but on an irrelevance. If we are to have efficiency in getting into terrorist groups and organised crime, having a system that forces those who wish to do so to explain their rationale for what they plan to do, and why, and having someone able to assess whether that rationale is coherent, seems the right approach. The last people who should do it, therefore, are politicians.

The practicalities and mundanity are what we should be determining these decisions on. Of course there will be cases that are far from mundane in their application, but that does not mean that the same principles are not required in getting an agreement. It therefore seems to me that those amendments which push the Government in that direction should be welcomed by the Government, and those that do not should be rejected—not just by the Government, of course, but by the House.

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB) [V]]

My Lords, the interesting lesson from the noble Lord, Lord Mann, on the history of the left—it is a pleasure to follow him—has shown exactly why the Government are right to make a root-and-branch reform, and introduce a structure based on statute for the handling of covert human intelligence sources. We have heard a lot about what happened in the past, but an awful lot has changed since the 1970s, the 1980s and the 1990s. The major changes in this kind of policing started after 9/11, which was like a massive electric shock to the whole system of detecting various serious crimes, because of the arrival of large-scale terrorism on the streets of Europe and in many other countries. An awful lot has happened, too, since 9/11. The methodology has been sophisticated quite enormously, hence the large amount of legislation since the events of 9/11.

I listened with particular interest, because I agreed with what they said, to my noble friends Lord Anderson and Lord Butler and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay. I am a great believer in the theory of Occam’s razor, that entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily or, as it is sometimes put, “Keep it as simple as you can”. To start with, this is an operational issue. In the decision to make someone a CHIS, there is usually a very long period of assessment, a decision by management in consultation with the proposed CHIS handler and sometimes, as I said in an earlier debate, some behavioural analysis. This is an operational matter.

Children: Online Grooming

Lord Mann Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, although I cannot give the actual details of the online harms Bill, that duty of care will push that responsibility on to those internet service providers and platforms to do just that, to protect our children.

[Lord Mann (Non-Afl)]

The question we really want answered is whether the Home Office is pressing for, and the Government are going to provide parliamentarians with, the opportunity to vote in Parliament to create criminal sanctions against the internet companies that are failing to deal with this depravity.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I certainly look forward to having those discussions with parliamentarians in your Lordships’ House, many of whom have such expertise in this area.

Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Bill

Lord Mann Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 1st December 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Haskel) (Lab)]

The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris of Aberavon, have withdrawn, so I now call the noble Lord, Lord Rooker.

As the noble Lord is not responding, I call the noble Lord, Lord Mann.

[Lord Mann (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I will speak to a number of these amendments simultaneously, using a different word to the thematics that have come through, but with the same purpose. The word that I refer to is “competence”: the competence of decision-making, and whether the legislation, in the view of the Minister as well as the Committee, is sufficiently precise in ensuring it. We have heard words such as corruption—that is very important—and concepts of reasonableness, which are also important.

I can recall when I and other trade union colleagues had suspicions about an individual who we thought was acting rather strangely over a period of time. He was observed selling Nazi memorabilia in London Bridge Station on a Saturday morning—not a normal activity for trade unionists, even in those days. We were suspicious, and he suddenly moved on. I had a sharp thought that I would handle his pension because it was an accrued pension entitlement that was to be transferred. Rather than leave it to the finance people, who would have handled it in a very financial way, I made the calls myself. I was fairly certain that he was not who he said he was, and that for some reason he decided to look into the heart of moderate trade unionism. The question that it begged to me, rather than being a question of principle, was what a waste of resources it was—what incompetence.

I found later that I was on the Economic League blacklist. I found out why by a fair amount of research. I looked into the case of the—I think it is fair to say—loud-mouthed communist, the very good actor Ricky Tomlinson, whom I got to know over the years. He was stitched up for being an industrial activist for no good democratic reason. He was a communist without any question and he was loud-mouthed, but he was participating in a perfectly normal way in our civil society, and yet he was stitched up.

Law Enforcement and Security (Separation Issues etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020

Lord Mann Excerpts

Thursday 26th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mann (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, having listened to the Minister and read in detail the documentation, I can recall what I said in the House of Commons 18 months ago and privately, as well as publicly, on many occasions at the time, when I was one of a tiny handful of enthusiastic backers of the agreement that the European Union made with the British Government of the time, which Parliament chose to reject. I said that there is no such thing as a no-deal scenario because this means thousands of deals, but those will have to be done separately and in isolation. One of the problems with that is that there will be so many.

In the context of these changes—which I do not oppose—will the Minister tell us how many separate agreements will be required, purely from the scope of these regulations? Are we talking about bilateral deals with each country, or are we talking about a single deal on a range of different issues with the European Union? Will those deals be in place from 1 January? Do we have the capacity? We have had all sorts of complications, because of Covid, in terms of how we work. One thing Covid has not done is make negotiations easier; it has made them more difficult. It is harder to get people and it is harder to fix meetings for decisions of any kind to be made. When they are multilateral and require negotiation, if we do not have a deal—though I suspect that we will probably end up with one, and I feel that is the way things are moving—are all the individual deals required in place to allow law enforcement to act as it did? I suggest that that is not possible: the capacity to do that in that timescale is not possible.

Will we potentially have the following scenario from January? The Home Secretary and the NCA previously described an earlier operation against organised crime, in which the NCA had managed to break into phones in some way, as the most successful in the history of policing in this country because we managed pretty simultaneously, across many different European countries and in this country, to arrest many hundreds of serious organised criminals. As I understood from what the Home Secretary and the NCA said at the time, these were people who were involved in major crimes—gun crimes and the rest—who were significant and dangerous criminals, and that happened across Europe, including in this country. Are the arrangements going to be in place that would allow a new such operation to begin seamlessly on, say, 2 January?

Will there be criminals in this country whom we have problems extraditing to another country because a deal will not have been negotiated with that other country by the time we get to January? Will there be criminals whom we wish to bring back from other countries—from Spain, France or wherever—to face the prospect of justice in this country, where we might not be able to do so because the agreements are not in place? Would I be right in thinking—as some of these agreements will be very technical and complex—that the presumption has been for a long time that any changes that might come would actually be in the light of a deal, and so would be negotiated over a much longer and more rational time period, rather than forced through in an incredibly short period simply to hold the system together?

Will there be bits of information that we cannot access purely because we do not have a deal in place, in a no-deal scenario? As I said—and I am sure that the Minister will agree—there is no such thing as no deal; it merely means that the deal on these issues has not been concluded because there has not been the opportunity to finish and finalise it, since we do not even know if we need it, as that is dependent on whether we get the bigger deal.

I appreciate that this is not the responsibility of the Minister—although it will be part of her department’s problem and the Ministry of Justice’s problem—but it is the problem of government and it is the problem of Parliament, because a scenario that allows criminals more freedoms than the law would wish to give them, simply because of jurisdictions crossing borders, is not—I think I can say without equivocation—what anybody voted for or perceived would happen.

The taking back of control that I and others argued for, voted for and won a referendum on was predicated precisely on the ability to do the things that we want to do and have international agreements in place. As I say, I was very relaxed with what was described as the Theresa May deal—I always tried to describe it as the European Union deal because that was the other party to it—because we would have avoided all these problems. I suspect that I am not the only person in this Chamber now who was of that view. However, we were a tiny majority, unfortunately, and we were unable to persuade any party. We failed the people there—I apologise for my part in that failure—but we tried. At least we recognised that this is probably for the British people the single biggest problem. No politician would be able rationally to explain, “Well, the criminal got away with it because we don’t have the agreement in place because we’ve not had the time to get the agreement in place. We will do but we can’t do so, sorry, come back next year and we’ll try again.”

Are those dangers or am I overstating the risk? I do not think that I am, having heard the Minister and read the documentation. There is a problem, which therefore suggests that, even with this deal at this current stage, the deal that can be agreed would have bigger positives for the country than the so-called no-deal option. That would mean thousands of further deals having to be negotiated, including many in the immediate future; we do not have a good capacity for that, and no one could have the capacity to do that.

Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Bill

Lord Mann Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 11th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mann (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I join the welcome and congratulations to the Lord Advocate for Scotland and the noble Lords, Lord McLoughlin and Lord Walney. I thank the noble Lord, Lord McLoughlin, for the way in which he gave me and others support when we were under pressure at the height of the issues of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party. I acknowledge that what he said in private was far more significant than what he said in public. The noble Lord, Lord Walney, stood on the right side when he did not have to, and took a brave stance. He supported Jewish members of the Parliamentary Labour Party and Jewish Members of the Labour Party. That will not be forgotten, and I thank him.

There have been a number of changes since the 1970s and 1980s. We are no longer fighting countries and armies under rules of engagement in war. We have human rights legislation that we did not have before. Those are significant changes. Since 1997, the strongest trade union organisation in the country is at GCHQ. Being a trade unionist and being loyal to one’s country are not contradictions. The density of membership there is a sign of that. It is part of the checks and balances in the system that makes it work.

We are now in a digital era, which changes many things. In many of the issues that we are talking about today, we are missing the mundanity of the actions that will be required outside the law. Some of the models are rather old-fashioned in terms of approach to what is going on. The mundanity is important to the effectiveness of the powers required.

I particularly want to talk about what happens if we do not do this, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, eloquently pointed out. We go back to the grey area that existed in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s —the shadows, as it was described. What characterised that more than anything was the incompetence of the actions taking place. Nothing could illustrate that better than putting people inside the International Marxist Group or, as we used to call them, the sons and daughters of the bourgeoisie. The only revolutionary thing that that organisation ever did was when some of its members accepted a peerage to come into this place.

The incompetence of the grey area was not in the national interest. There is a worse example. The Economic League sums up the grey area, the shadows and the incompetence. I should know: I was on the Economic League blacklist. When I went to work for the Ciba-Geigy chemical company in Manchester, I got given a job that was then withdrawn because I was on the list. I managed to get hold of the list and found my name on it. That is what happens with a grey area.

The Bill does more than codify; it allows accountability. It does not mean that things will not go wrong and there will not be big issues—there could well be—but it gives us, the people and the victims, the power to do something about it. The grey area is not an option. I want to see the Bill go through.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Duncan of Springbank) (Con)]

The noble Lord, Lord Green of Deddington, will not be speaking in the debate so we will move straight on to the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker.