Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Bill

Debate between Lord Mann and Lord Haskel

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The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris of Aberavon, have withdrawn, so I now call the noble Lord, Lord Rooker.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