Justice and Security Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Thomas of Gresford and Lord Williams of Elvel

Tuesday 19th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Thomas of Gresford]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a practising barrister. Indeed, I think I was involved in the first case in which public interest immunity procedures were developed following the case of Johnson in January 1993. I was then instructed by the CPS and the security services to prosecute a number of letter bombers who had distributed letter bombs to important and prominent people in north Wales.

I welcome the proposed reforms of the Intelligence and Security Committee, subject to the pertinent criticisms that I know my noble friend Lord Macdonald will advance and which we hope will lead to improvements in the provisions. I intend to confine myself to the second part of the Bill, which deals with CMPs. In a criminal trial, the judge does not decide the facts; he does not decide what happened. The jury hears the evidence presented to it, almost always in open court, and it must be both admissible and relevant.

If either the prosecution or the defence questions the admissibility or relevance of any evidence that the other seeks to adduce, there is an argument in the absence of the jury, and the judge gives a ruling. The judge in a criminal trial may be, and usually is, in possession of information, such as the previous convictions of the accused or evidence that he has ruled to be inadmissible or irrelevant, that the jury—the judges of the facts—never hear and which therefore play no part in its decision. The judge may also know of secret matters, which are never released, even to the defence, because the prosecution successfully claims public interest immunity from disclosure. In a criminal trial, the judge carries out a balancing test between the interests of justice and the interests of national security or other public interest. Crucially, in a criminal case the secret material plays no part in the jury’s decision because it does not know about it.

In the vast majority of civil trials, on the other hand, there is no jury. The judge decides the facts, and in applying the law gives a reasoned judgment in favour of one side or the other. Very often he will hear evidence that is prejudicial to one side or another which he deems to be inadmissible or irrelevant, and in these very common circumstances he is trained to ignore such evidence and to put it out of his mind altogether in coming to his conclusions. Invariably, in the course of giving a ruling or a judgment, he will openly and transparently say so.

Part 2 of this Bill is primarily concerned with actions brought by an individual against the state for damages for human rights violations such as torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, false imprisonment, illegal renditions, or complicity in such violations in other jurisdictions. This Bill proposes that the judge should hear secret material from one party, the state, which is withheld altogether from the other party, the claimant. In complete distinction from public interest immunity applications, whether in criminal or civil procedures at present, and rulings on inadmissible or irrelevant evidence, the secret material proposed in this Bill is not to be disregarded or put out of the judge’s mind. On the contrary, the state claims that the secret material should play a part, perhaps even a crucial and central part, in the judge’s ultimate decision on the case before him. Your Lordships will appreciate that this is therefore a very considerable step.

There is an obvious unfairness to the claimant, who cannot answer or test any allegations that may be contained in the secret material. In addition, it is against the public interest generally that the state should hide its case behind a cloak of secrecy and therefore potentially hide its misdeeds, or give the appearance that it is so doing.

It is argued, however, that the claimant can be protected through the closed material procedures that have been developed whereby the state brings an individual before the Special Immigration Appeals Commission in immigration and in other naturalisation and extradition matters. I must tell your Lordships that I opposed these procedures in June 1997, at the Second Reading of the SIAC Bill, on the basis that it was a straightforward breach of natural justice that proceedings should be held in the absence of the appellant or of any legal representative who is instructed by him. I questioned whether a special advocate appointed by the Attorney-General would ever be able to take the appellant’s instructions, to have confidentiality with his client, or to have the benefit of legal professional privilege. The model later adopted was that he most certainly would not have those standard requirements of a lawyer, which is repeated in this Bill.

The body of special advocates, security cleared and appointed by the law officers, and now with 15 years’ collective experience of the system in action, have unanimously opposed the extension of CMPs to civil proceedings of this nature. They rejected the argument set out in the Green Paper that:

“A judgment based on the full facts is more likely to secure justice than a judgment based only on a proportion of relevant material”.

It was rejected on the grounds on which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Kerr, in the Supreme Court in al-Rawi rejected it. The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, quoted his judgment, but I will not repeat it.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Kerr, pointed out that the right to know and the right to challenge the other side’s evidence is essential to the concept of a fair trial. The special advocates said that his reasoning reflected their experience as special advocates operating in existing CMPs. They added this important point:

“Our knowledge of the nature of closed material makes us doubt that most of it could be admissible as truth of its contents in civil proceedings, on an application of established rules of admissibility. Such documentary evidence”,

which they have seen,

“routinely contains information which may be second or third hand, and of which the primary source will usually be unidentified (and may be unknown) … It scarcely seems worth applying CMPs to civil proceedings if the evidence concerned will be largely inadmissible as evidence of the truth of its contents (or to which no weight can be attached)”.

In addition to the argument on principle, there is a practical side to this issue. Ninety-five per cent of civil litigation settles. When the pleadings that set out the issues clearly between the parties have been completed and all the documents have been disclosed, as there is an obligation to disclose all the documents relevant to a case, the lawyers on both sides will assess the risks of the litigation and generally can and do come to a compromise based on their assessment of risk in 95% of civil litigation. Settlement may not give both sides all that they want, but sometimes it arrives at satisfactory solutions that are beyond the scope of the trial judge, who can award only the remedies pleaded in the pleadings. One very relevant example of that is that a confidentiality agreement can be entered into on a settlement.

[Lord Williams of Elvel]

The noble Lord will be aware that members of the Armed Forces have come into our Gallery. As I understand it, this is not a military coup, but we should welcome them in attending our debate.

[Lord Thomas of Gresford]

I am most grateful for that intervention. Perhaps I may add my welcome and that of these Benches to all visitors, whatever they may be, who come to listen to our proceedings.

Settlement in civil proceedings, which generally happens, is threatened by these procedures. It is ironic that the motivation behind this Bill is that the Government dislike settlements. They demand a judgment, so they say, to clear the air and to banish suspicions of nefarious conduct on the part of government agencies. I reject the reputational damage argument advanced by my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace. That is why I interrupted and pointed out that you cannot say that allegations of torture have been answered when the judge delivers a judgment and says, “Well, I find against you but I can’t tell you why”. I cannot imagine what that does to clear the air.

What will the Government do in the pleadings? What will they say their case is? How do they propose to alter the disclosure rules to hold back documents which they are duty bound to disclose? How can the claimant’s lawyers begin to assess risk in order to consider proposals for settlement that may be advanced by the Government, or to make proposals themselves when that lawyer does not know whether or what secret material is before the judge? When the Government’s lawyers go behind the claimant’s back into the judge’s chambers, they are seeking judgment in their favour on their untested allegations against the claimant. What is more, by this means they can keep secret any embarrassments or nefarious conduct of their own. How does the claimant’s lawyer, in practice, advise his client to settle the case? You put settlements out when you adopt a procedure such as that suggested in Part 2 of this Bill. What then should be done?

The experience of the Diplock courts in Northern Ireland provides an acceptable answer. It became impossible, your Lordships will recall, to hold normal jury trials in terrorist cases in that jurisdiction due to intimidation and prejudice arising out of sectarian divisions in the Province. In Diplock trials, the judge sat alone and in criminal cases became the judge of fact as well as of law. He decided what had happened. Accordingly, a separate judge, a disclosure judge, heard applications, for example for the exclusion of inadmissible evidence and applications for public interest immunity. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Kerr, then Lord Chief Justice, in the case of McKeown in the Northern Irish Court of Appeal in 2004 described this different model of procedure in the Diplock system. He said:

“The system of non jury trial, involving as it does the judge as the tribunal of fact as well as the arbiter on legal issues, clearly calls for a different model than that which is suitable for trial by judge and jury … Since it is a non-jury trial, it would be plainly unsuitable for the judge who must decide on the accused’s guilt to see material that might be adverse to him. A ‘disclosure judge’ had to be assigned to examine the subject of the material that should be made available to the defence. The level of intervention by the disclosure judge depended on the nature of the issues that arose on the trial”.

So there, in Northern Ireland, we have experience of where, in criminal matters, the judge was the judge of fact and a separate judge dealt with disclosure and with the sensitive matters of public interest immunity. In my view, it is directly analogous and I shall be putting down amendments to the effect that applications to withhold sensitive material should be made to a designated judge, a disclosure judge, who will be quite separate from the trial judge. The disclosure judge would first of all carry out a public interest immunity exercise so as to identify what material, if any, would assist the claimant’s case or damage the Government’s case. In my view it is an utterly unsatisfactory feature of this Bill that the Secretary of State only has to “consider” whether he should make a PII application before launching into a CMP application. We shall endeavour to ensure that there shall be no CMP application unless it is preceded by a PII hearing. It should be for the court to consider whether the Government’s concerns could be met by the public interest immunity application without recourse to this very much more serious dent in principle of CMP procedures.

The disclosure judge carrying out a public interest immunity application would look at the sensitive material and hear submissions from both sides, including any special advocate appointed for the claimant. He might even, in proscribed circumstances and subject to safeguards, give permission to the special advocate to speak to the claimant. In his ruling on disclosure, the disclosure judge would exclude irrelevant and inadmissible evidence, such as hearsay, opinion and intercept. He could determine what should be disclosed and the form in which the disclosed evidence should be received in open trial before the trial judge who is to decide the facts of the case. He could use redacted documents or precautions to preserve the anonymity of the sources and secret techniques of the security services, and the other precautions that are currently available in PII cases. The point is that the claimant or another interested party, and the public, can be reassured that in the generality of cases, the trial judge—the judge of fact; the judge who produces the final judgment—has not seen anything more in secret from the Government than the claimant has seen and has not been prejudiced thereby. I stress “the public” because public confidence in justice and fairness underpins the whole justice system.

What would happen if the Government were unwilling to disclose secret material that the disclosure judge on a public interest immunity application ordered should be disclosed? In a criminal case at present, the prosecution ordered to disclose something may refuse to do so and may drop the case. In civil cases, as the Government complain, they may decide to settle the case and pay damages to the claimant without admission of liability. It is only in this situation, where the Government still seek to rely on secret material after the public interest immunity application has been heard and the PII possibilities have been explored, that CMP procedures would have any part to play. I concede that in rare and extreme instances, where the interests of justice are overwhelming, the disclosure judge should have the power to convey to the trial judge some fact or circumstance relevant to his determination of the case heard that could not be disclosed to the claimant. Although it is contrary to the principle for which I argue, I can conceive that, sparingly used, such a power would be a safeguard—a safety valve—that should satisfy the Government’s concerns. I bear in mind that matters that the Government wish to conceal might not necessarily be in their interests and might reveal facts that would assist the claimant, even though he does not know about them. I also bear in mind the safeguards in Clause 7(3), to which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, has spoken.

Your Lordships will be pleased to hear that I do not have time to comment on the Norwich Pharmacal issues, which will be developed by my noble friend Lord Lester. I agree with him and the Joint Committee on Human Rights that it is essential that the jurisdiction of the court should not be ousted in these cases, and that any ministerial certificate should be reviewable—not simply on procedural grounds but on the balance of the public interest.