Terrorist Asset-Freezing etc. Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Pannick and Baroness Falkner of Margravine

Wednesday 6th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pannick]

Noble Lords are very familiar with the problems—the unfairness and the practical difficulties—that are caused by special advocate procedures. Clause 23(4) is acceptable only if the person concerned has a right to see at least the essence of the material that is relied on in the case against him, as the Appellate Committee decided in the control order context in the AF case.

The Minister said earlier that fairness depends on its context. I ask him to state clearly on behalf of the Government whether they accept that in this context—the freezing of assets—fairness requires that the individual concerned be personally told the essence of the case against him. I cannot see how it could possibly be fair to freeze a person’s assets on a permanent basis, causing all the disruption and damage to their personal life that the Supreme Court explained in the recent case, without that person being told at least the essence of the case against them and having a fair opportunity to answer it. The Appellate Committee in AF made it very clear that the special advocate procedure is wholly inadequate to ensure fairness in that respect, so I hope that the Minister will confirm to the Committee that the Government accept that the AF principles apply in this context.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine]

I speak to this amendment on the basis that I was a member of the Joint Committee on Human Rights in the previous Session. I recall that my noble friend the Minister said in his opening remarks some hours ago that he did not want to draw an analogy in the provisions of the Bill with control orders. However, I respectfully suggest that if he looked at the 16th report in 2010 of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, on counterterrorism policy and human rights, which concerned the annual renewal of control orders legislation, he would find that significant aspects of the problems that will arise from Clause 23(4)—not least those of the AF case, referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick—are covered in the report of the committee, which was excoriating. It is a sadness that the previous Government took no account of it whatever.

I do not want to take up too much time at this point in the evening, but let me briefly summarise for my noble friend the three issues that the report raised about special advocates. Those issues were:

“(1) Lack of access to independent expertise and evidence … (2) Ability to test Government objections to disclosure of closed case”,

and, finally,

“Limits on ability to communicate with controlled person”,

after seeing the closed material. The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, has first-hand experience of this, but let me also just read one paragraph from page 21 of that report, which I think expresses quite succinctly what part of the problem is. The report says:

“The special advocates have no means of gainsaying the Government’s assessment that disclosure would cause harm to the public interest, and Government assessments about what can and cannot be disclosed are effectively unchallengeable and almost always upheld by the court. Courts inevitably ‘accord great weight to views on matters of national security expressed by the agencies who are particularly charged with protecting national security’”.

As well as highlighting the deleterious effect of late disclosure, the report touches on international comparisons and finds that no other country uses special advocates in quite the way as we do by denying the defendant—in this case, the designated person—so many rights to which a defendant would normally be entitled under human rights law.

If the Minister is not prepared, at this hour of the night, to concede that there may be some really problematic issues in retaining subsection (4), perhaps he might consider returning to the issue on Report after further consideration.