Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Bill

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 5th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

I hope I will be able to respond to the hon. Gentleman during my speech, underlining some of the safeguards—the importance of oversight, which we attach equally to this Bill, and the operation of a criminal conduct authorisation, as contemplated by the Bill. I hope he will also have noted the specific reference to the Human Rights Act in the Bill, in order to underline some of the important points he makes about convention rights.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

The Minister has reeled off an impressive number of statistics, which justify the use of CHIS operations. How many or what proportion of the operations were undertaken by the Food Standards Agency, which will also come under the ambit of this Bill?

[James Brokenshire]

The right hon. Gentleman is drawing me on to talk about some of those wider bodies. I will address that later in my speech, but I point out that the FSA is required to deal with issues associated with misrepresented food—food that may be harmful for human consumption. Therefore the issues of proportionality and necessity are bound within the frame of the Bill, and limit the activities that would be reasonable for such agencies to act upon. Perhaps I can come back to that a little later in my contribution.

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[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy), who made a characteristically thoughtful, measured and knowledgeable contribution to the debate. It is a debate that I am very proud to be part of, because I think the House has approached this subject tonight in exactly the right way. I suspect that we have probably done that because of how the Minister opened the debate. I am also grateful to see him still in his place. He sets a good example that others in Government might do well to follow.

I am, however, a little bit weary when I consider this Bill, because it looks like almost yet another Bill into which so many other things have been ladled, so that at the end of the day, after it has been through the other place, the Government might get what they want. The right hon. Member for York Outer also has a history as a Government business manager and has no doubt been in meetings where he is given instructions to go and defend the indefensible, so that the Government can then concede the indefensible and might then be left with what is defensible. I have to say, it is a tactic that is just a little bit tired and lacks subtlety and nuance. I suggest that this is a good point at which the Government might seek to do things differently.

Considering the importance of the matter, my real frustration with this Bill is that it is a colossal missed opportunity. We all know the importance of putting these things on a statutory footing, and it is a significant advance that we should be doing so. However, that we should do so in such a haphazard way, and which compares so badly with other jurisdictions, such as Canada, which has undertaken the same business in recent years, puts a duty on this House to engage with the Minister and to seek to improve the Bill at later stages.

The House will be aware that I tabled a reasoned amendment, which was not selected. I did that because of the serious concerns I have about the Bill. In the normal course of things, when a reasoned amendment is not selected, one considers whether it would be appropriate to divide the House. On balance, I am persuaded that that is not the right thing to do, but it is important that we should have the opportunity at later stages to give substantial consideration to three particular areas. First, there is the inadequacy of the authorisation, and on that I can do no better than to quote the words of Lord Macdonald, the former Director of Public Prosecutions, from his article in The Times this morning. He says:

“There is no comfort in allowing senior figures in the police or the intelligence agencies the power to sanction lawbreaking, without the need to first obtain independent warrants from judges or some other authority. Under this bill it will be easier for a police officer to commit a serious crime than to tap a phone or search a shed.”

The second area that causes me serious concern is the total lack of any limitation on the offences that would be covered. We are back in familiar territory here. This is not dissimilar to the territory we were covering when we considered the Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill. Why would it not, for example, include torture? I would say to the Government’s business managers that if, in Committee, this House were to introduce a limitation on murder, sexual offences and torture, the Bill would be virtually bomb-proof when it got to the other place.

Thirdly, there is the question of the scope. The Minister referred, with quite disarming elan, to the “10 other public authorities” that are covered in the Bill. I referred earlier to the Food Standards Agency, and others have referred to the Environment Agency and the Gambling Commission. This is a matter of concern because, as the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) said, including these organisations in the same breath as the police and military intelligence and other serious operators in this field is seeking to do too much. In fact, it would undermine the substance of the work of the more serious bodies.

I am afraid that the answers we have had from the Minister are somewhat lacking in conviction. The idea that the protections or limitations can be found in the Human Rights Act and that they are necessary, because to have them on the face of the Bill would somehow give a checklist to the bad guys that they could use to test and to imperil agents in the field, is, if we consider it in its entirety, somewhat lacking in conviction. The Minister seems to be suggesting that serious organised criminals can get legal advice or will look for themselves to the face of this Bill, but that they will not look to the face of the Human Rights Act. If these limitations are there, they are there for all to see, regardless of where they are. I would also be more persuaded if it had not until fairly recently been the policy of the Conservatives to repeal the Human Rights Act. If we were to see them return to that position, I wonder what protections would be left.

The other point about the protection coming from the Human Rights Act is the one that was made by the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) in an intervention on the Minister. The reliance on the Human Rights Act stands in stark contrast to the position taken by the Government in their submissions to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, where they were adamant that, where an agent is authorised to commit severe abuses such as torture, the Human Rights Act does not apply because—I quote from the Government pleadings—

“the state, in tasking the CHIS…is not the instigator of that activity and cannot be treated as somehow responsible for it…it would be unreal to hold the state responsible.”

It seems to me that the Government are pleading one case here tonight and a quite different and contradictory case in the IPT.

These are all matters to which we can return in Committee. I think we must, and judging by what we have heard from Government Back Benchers today, we almost certainly will. This is an important matter, which it is good to have put on a statutory footing, but the way in which the Government are doing it is cack-handed. It requires this House to do its job and to improve the Bill before it today.

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[Sir Robert Neill]

I understand the spirit in which my right hon. Friend makes that point. I suspect that many of those fears could be set at nought if we can do this sensibly. The point is that without either having an obligation to comply with the ECHR on the face of the Bill and certain most grave offences being excluded in the Bill, or, on the other hand, greater clarity on the timeliness and the way in which that will work, there are still issues that we need to deal with.

[Mr Carmichael]

Is not another factor that comes into play after necessity and proportionality human nature? It is human nature for people who work all the time in these specific areas—whether that is customs and excise, the Gambling Commission or food standards—to persuade themselves that the thing that they are doing is the most important thing, and they see the whole world differently. The most zealous enforcers of anything that I have ever come across were television licensing enforcement officers. I can say only that I take some small comfort from the fact that they are not on the face of this Bill.

[Sir Robert Neill]

To my shame, I was once instructed to prosecute a list of television licence enforcements in the Epping magistrates court, when it still existed—a most inappropriate waste of court time, I have to say, thereafter. However, the point is well made.

Everybody supports where we want to go, but a bit of tightening up in Committee would not be awry on all those matters. We have to reassure the law-abiding citizen about, not a deliberate mission creep—not anything done by mala fides—but the over-zealousness of the public official, and that, so often, is actually where things are eroded in our public life. It is about the person who genuinely believes that he or she is doing the right thing, but who does things in an over-zealous way and encroaches, time and again, upon the protections that are necessarily there. That is what I want the Minister and the Solicitor General to take away.

We all want this Bill to go through swiftly, but it would do no harm to reflect a little, improve it and, above all, have faith in the process that we have set in statute with the independent complaints commissioner. For heaven’s sake, if people such as Brian Leveson and Adrian Fulford are not to be relied upon, why not bring them in at the very earliest point in the process, rather than having them retrospectively sweep up and pass judgment? I trust them and I think the public trust them more than almost anybody, and I suspect that that would support morally and effectively the agents that we have to employ under these very difficult circumstances.