Justice and Security Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Thomas of Gresford and Lord Reid of Cardowan

Wednesday 21st November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Reid of Cardowan]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness. I am sorry to start by correcting her, but the Labour Benches are not empty, nor bereft of any representative of the previous Government. As a former Home Secretary, I am one such representative. Unfortunately, the other Home Secretaries—Mr Clarke, Mr Straw, Mr Blunkett and Ms Smith—cannot be here because they are not Members of this House, which may account for their absence.

I may be a lone voice among the speakers, who all seem to have come from the Joint Committee on Human Rights, but I will say two things. First, on the moral question, I deprecate torture as much as anyone in this House. I deprecate it in the case of that have been mentioned. I also deprecate it in the case of the 62 British citizens who were tortured by being burnt to death in the Twin Towers and the 50-odd British citizens who were tortured to death by being blown up in the subway and on the buses in London. They had human rights as well, and the primary human right is the right to life. There is a moral obligation on government to take that into consideration.

I find that one of the astonishing things about these debates is that there is never any context about the nature of national security. It is paraded camouflaged in words such as murky, corrupt, and lapdog—the disparaging avalanche of comments against our security services. Politicians can take it. We are used to it from the Opposition, from people outside and from some of our errant Back-Benchers, but the intelligence services do not deserve that. Were it not for them, I can tell you, thousands of British citizens would have had their basic human right of life removed from them. In one incident in August 2006, 2,500 people would have been blown out of the skies over the Atlantic were it not for our intelligence services and, yes, their colleagues in the American intelligence services.

So let me just say a word to balance the quite proper legal points that have been made about national security. We have come through a dark time. I regret to say that we still live in a dark time, not just here but throughout the world—anyone who thinks that areas of Pakistan are not a conflict zone does not begin to understand that. There are two elements to the threat to the British people, as there always are in any threat. The first is intention and the second is capability. The real question that we should be asking is not whether this proposal arrives from the Government because they are corrupt, because they have been seduced by civil servants or because they are lapdogs of the Americans. We should be asking what particular set of circumstances regarding the threat to national security brings a measure like this on to the agenda. We should then analyse the two elements of threat: intention and capability. Let me to say a word on both. The intention of those who wish to inflict terrorism on the citizens of this country is now unconstrained. It is not limited, as it was with the IRA in terms of tactical questions. It is not limited by their concern for what the public might think. It is not limited in terms of the numbers that they wish to kill. Anyone who tried to kill 10,000 people in the Twin Towers would be happy to kill 10 million people. Indeed, not only are they not constrained in their intent by politics or ideology, they are driven in their ideological premise towards a massive massacre of people.

That on its own would be bad enough to weigh in the minds of today's Home Secretaries if it were not for the fact that the other element of threat, which is the ability to carry out the intent, is now unfortunately unconstrained as well. Those in the past who had a genocidal intent, such as the Nazis, were constrained by the technical ability to achieve their intention—in the Nazis case either by carbon monoxide or Zyklon B canisters. Biological, chemical and radiological weapons now mean that we live in a world where unconstrained intent to do damage is allied with the potential for unconstrained capability. That is the burden that sits on the shoulders of government Ministers nowadays, not whether they will fall out with the Americans or anyone else. It is in that context that we have to consider the unique circumstances that we have never had to face before because the means of mass destruction have not been available to small groups of non-state actors and, by and large, non-state actors have not had an unconstrained intent to murder in a wholesale fashion. It is those circumstances that make the protection of intelligence all the more important. Had it not been for that exchange of intelligence—in one case, across 29 countries—we would not have achieved the protection of our British citizens and their fundamental right to life.

[Lord Thomas of Gresford]

I am sure the noble Lord is not suggesting that those of us who oppose these clauses are in favour of terrorism. He must appreciate that we are not concerned with proposals that will make security information available to the public. All we are concerned about is, what is the response to an action that is brought by a claimant against the security services or any other government department? I appreciate the noble Lord’s sincerity but is he not a little off the point?

[Lord Reid of Cardowan]

There are three points there. First, of course I was not suggesting that there was any intent on the part of the noble Lord. However, I was explaining that there is a law of unintended consequences. You do not need an intention to make it easier for terrorists in order to embark on a course of action that ends up assisting in that. The second point relates to the Government’s response. As I understand it, the Government are saying that we currently have a system that does not give us justice because the requirement to protect national security information is such that they cannot take it to court, and therefore, whether or not it is just, someone is in receipt of benefits.

Justice and Security Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Thomas of Gresford and Lord Reid of Cardowan

Monday 23rd July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Reid of Cardowan]

On the noble Lord’s first point, I not only accept that but I recognised in my opening remarks that people here other than me had discharged that responsibility. I agree entirely with his second point. At heart, the struggle—not the only struggle but the major one—is a battle of values. It is an ideological battle. Certainly, it displays itself in acts of terrorism, bombs or death but at heart it is a clash of values. Therefore, everything we do has to be seen in that context. There is a propaganda weapon for those who oppose the very essence of our values if we conduct our affairs so that there is an obvious contradiction between the values we espouse and what we do. However, that has to sit alongside the fact that, on some occasions, these values have to be defended as a whole. That has meant that we have had to take abnormal measures on occasions. The key thing is accepting that they are abnormal and extraordinary, rather than trying to pretend that somehow they are just run of the mill or justifying them on the existing system. The second thing is to make the argument about why they are necessary. If one fails to make this argument, one will end up in the position indicated by the noble Lord, where what one does appears to contradict what one says.

[Lord Thomas of Gresford]

The noble Lord has not been able to be with us in our deliberations. However, does he appreciate that, thus far in the Bill, the Government have not suggested that there is any risk to security at all? Does he appreciate that the purpose of the provisions discussed until now concerns the fairness of trials? Security arises in what we are about to debate very shortly. Up to this point, security has not featured because it is not an issue on the provisions we have discussed.

[Lord Reid of Cardowan]

I thank the noble Lord for that remark. Again, I am not on the Front Bench so I am not making their arguments for them. I am making my argument. As far as the security situation is concerned, whatever is said by the Front Bench, for more than half of the past 10 years we have been either at “severe”—the second highest level—or “critical”, which is not only a likely but an imminent threat of terrorist attack. This demonstrates the fact that we are discussing not a normal security situation but a very difficult one—not least as we approach the Olympics.