Terrorist Asset-Freezing etc. Bill [HL]
Debate between Lord Myners and Lord Patten
Lord Myners
My Lords, my contribution today will be brief, and much the most important part of it will be to congratulate the my noble friend Lord Davies of Stamford on a fine maiden speech, rich in content and insight. The noble Lord earned a very good reputation in the other place for his dedicated representation of the interests of his constituents, first in Stamford and Spalding and later in Grantham and Stamford.
It should not go without notice that on more than one occasion my noble friend was awarded prizes for being the Back-Bench Member of the year and the independent Back-Bench Member of the year in the other place. This speaks powerfully to his intellect and independence of mind. Not only was my noble friend an outstanding constituency representative in the other place but he went on to hold high ministerial office, which required undoubted integrity, given the extraordinarily important and sensitive issues for which he was responsible.
We welcome my noble friend to this House and to these Benches. He is a true progressive, in the sense of his journey to join us on these Benches. His academic record is very good; he took a first at Cambridge, won awards at Harvard and went on to carve out a highly successful career in finance and economics. Indeed, I recollect in the 1990s sitting at the back of a room at the clearing bank where I worked when we occasionally had a visitation from the then Mr Quentin Davies, who briefed us on his views on the economic and financial situation.
I should also seize this opportunity to congratulate my noble friend Lady Hughes of Stretford on her equally fine maiden speech, which showed the expertise that she will bring to the House’s deliberations. As I sat listening to these two fine maiden speeches, I turned my mind back to my own, which, if I bother to look it up, I imagine I will find a great disappointment—it certainly did not reach the soaring heights that we heard today.
I turn briefly to the Bill. As noble Lords will be aware, I was responsible for taking the temporary provisions Bill through this House in February. The Government acted in good faith in their implementation of the powers which they believed they were able to take under the United Nations Act 1946. However, the Supreme Court advised that, in its judgment, we were relying too much on the facilitating powers of that Act, hence our need to bring a temporary provisions Bill through this House. I thank noble Lords who participated in that debate for their very useful contributions to an expeditious conclusion which ensured that we had appropriate legislative protection in place and a clear commitment that we would bring a fuller Bill back to the House as soon as possible. I congratulate the Minister on bringing the Bill back in this Session and giving us the opportunity for this Second Reading debate.
Measures to prevent terrorist financing are at the heart of international efforts against terrorism. If you read yesterday’s and today’s Guardian you need no reminding of the continuing great threat that our country faces from terrorism. However, our responses must be proportionate and fair and, at the same time, robust and effective. This is a difficult balancing act—to strike a balance between public interest on the one hand and the rights and liberties of individuals on the other. I am most grateful to the Minister for depositing in the Library a schedule indicating the changes to the temporary Bill contained in this Bill. That is a very constructive step by the Minister; it shows that he approaches the Bill with an open and accommodating stance. I know the House will appreciate that.
I welcome several of the improvements that the new Government have made to the Bill, compared with the temporary Bill which I took through the House in February. Spousal and partner exclusion is a particularly good addition. I am also pleased to see the proposals for review and reporting, although I am sure that in Committee the House will test the Minister on the extent of the review and reporting procedures. Perhaps in winding up the Minister could give us a little more of a feel for the identity of the likely reviewer. How do we strike the right balance between a reviewer who is experienced and one who is independent? Is it the Treasury’s current proposal that an existing reviewer should perform that function, or that this presents an opportunity for the Government to bring a fresh view to this task?
The key issue in looking at the Bill has to do with the term “reasonable suspicion”. The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, talked about that both in February and today, as did the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, from the Cross Benches. I have reflected long and hard on our discussion of the temporary Bill on this point. I was much taken by the words of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, which were recited by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, both in the debate on the temporary Bill and today. They are so powerful that I will repeat them as well:
“To suspect something to be so is by no means to believe it to be so. It is to believe only that it may be so”.
As I think more about this, I find myself asking whether there is a better form of words that we should be using here, notwithstanding that I was party to a Government who persuaded the House to support the use of the term “reasonable suspicion” in the temporary Bill. The powers granted to HMT officials are very broad, very pervasive and have enormous consequences. I am not sure that reasonable suspicion is a sufficient test. The Minister will need to satisfy the House—perhaps today, definitely in Committee—that it is not better to use the word “believe”. The Government and the Minister will have to persuade the House that we would wish to grant these powers if the Government could not say that they believed that there was terrorist activity at hand or in prospect.
I am also persuaded that we need to look carefully at the limitations of judicial review in providing protection for those who find themselves in receipt of an order in respect of this Bill. I welcome the Home Office review of counterterrorism powers but I share with others, including the noble Lord, Lord Patten, a view that perhaps the time has come to merge and consolidate. Indeed, in the only political comment in the Minister’s opening remarks, he referred to a lack of coherence and co-ordination in the previous Government’s approach to terrorism. The defence there must be that the situation with terrorism has evolved so radically over the past 10 years that we constantly found ourselves—
Lord Patten
I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord for giving way, but he used my name. When the record is published tomorrow, I think we will see that I said the time was not right for consolidation, and that we should press ahead. I remember that my noble friend Lord Sassoon indicated assent from the Front Bench. Rather than seeking to consolidate now, at a later date it may be entirely suitable to have that certainty to which the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, referred. However, for the avoidance of doubt, I definitely did not say, “This is the Bill, now is the time, get on with it”.
Lord Myners
I am very grateful to the noble Lord for correcting me. He is, of course, absolutely correct. However, the sentiment that there is a patchwork of regulation and legislation is an entirely reasonable one to express. There is considerable merit in pulling all this together in a single piece of legislation at some point. However, if I take myself back to where I was before I accepted the intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Patten, I still argue that this situation will continue to evolve. We may never reach a steady state where we can put in place a single piece of comprehensive legislation which will cope with all possible contingencies and developments, including cyber crime, as the noble Lord, Lord Patten, mentioned, or piracy, as my noble friend mentioned.
I hope that we will not see any reduction in the availability of legal aid to those who find themselves having to defend an action taken under either the temporary Act or the new Bill. I would welcome an assurance from the noble Lord, Lord Sassoon, that there is no intention to reduce the legal aid available to those entitled to it in securing advice and pursuing their right to challenge actions taken under the temporary Act or this Bill.
I am sure that the general sentiment and thrust of the Bill will receive the warm support of the House. However, as they say, the devil is in the detail and, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Davidson of Glen Clova, said, the House will no doubt wish to pursue a number of issues in Committee.