Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005 (Continuance in Force of Sections 1 to 9) Order 2011

Baroness Afshar Excerpts

Tuesday 8th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws]

My Lords, I will be brief. First, I suspect I am one of few people in the House who has been involved in some of these cases in the courts. I have seen them at close quarters.

Many noble Lords will also remember that I was one of those on the Labour Benches who strongly opposed the Labour Government introducing control orders. I opposed them then and ever since. I welcomed the fact that noble Lords on the other side of the House, whose faces are familiar, all went through the Lobbies with me opposing control orders. Now they are sitting in government and I want to remind them of the principled stand that they all took on control orders. It is easy, once in government, to hear poured into their ears the position taken by the security services that somehow this is the only way forward. With regard to the issue of dealing with persons suspected of links with terrorism where it would be difficult to bring them to trial, I have always advocated that surveillance, the use of intercept and so on can be done, but without interfering with liberty in the excessive way that control orders have meant. I am saddened and disappointed that the siren voices of the security services have persuaded the Government that something not very different from control orders should be the way forward. I am sure that I will be one of the people who take part in the debates when the legislation is presented to this House, and I will rigorously test some of the suggestions that have been made.

I strongly support what has been said by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, and indeed the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald: given the principled position that the Government are going to do away with control orders, and even if the position is that something else will come in of a lesser order but somewhat similar, it is quite wrong at this moment to keep the thing that they have criticised for so long with regard to the eight people currently subject to the level of suspicion that we have heard about. It cannot be right to continue that until the end of this year. At the very least, the Government should be reducing the constraints upon liberty to the standard that they are intending to introduce, and then that can be revisited in December. However, it cannot be right for them to continue with control orders when they so bitterly opposed their existence once they had been introduced by new Labour in government. I ask that, in the spirit not just of decency but of appropriateness, the cases that we have spoken about and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, mentioned be revisited.

I reiterate what my noble friend Lord Judd has said: one of the jewels in our crown, one of the great limbs of our democracy, is the way in which we interpret the rule of law. I am a proud champion of the common law. We have always believed that due process was vital before we in any way encroached upon the liberty of human beings. That is a proud tradition here and it is a sort of ceding to the terrorists if you abandon those values, which are so precious in our society. I strongly urge that we do not go down the road of introducing something similar, because it is a poison in the system. It is a way of saying that it was not just a temporary measure; somehow we have bought into this idea, and an alternative to the things that we have always believed in can now be introduced. I urge that we think again about that.

I was interested to hear that the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, said that there are alternatives, and I hope that in the months to come the Government will look again at what they are intending to do.

[Baroness Afshar]

My Lords, I add my thanks for the decision by the Minister to abandon forced relocation. However, I have been given to understand by Liberty that this weekend a young man with a young family was forcibly sent off. I want to highlight the law of unintended consequences: a young family is left behind that will be deprived of rights that this very same young man is going to have in the very near future. That means that a child will be raised apart from the care of the father of the household, but that child has committed no crime. My understanding was that the House has always agreed that the interests of children should be put first. It surprises me that at this stage we still are forcibly sending off young people who may or may not be guilty and punishing their family in the process.