Terrorist Offenders (Restriction of Early Release) Bill

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

Committee stage & Report stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords & Report stage (Hansard) & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 24th February 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

I would rather make my own comments, because the noble Lord did not give way at the point at which I wished to intervene when he was talking about the two cases that are the reason behind this emergency legislation. He talked about the Streatham stabbings. What he failed to acknowledge was that the really dangerous terrorist was the one at Fishmongers’ Hall, who had feigned conversion and then turned on the very man who had been his mentor. That, in a nutshell, illustrates why it is important that we have this emergency legislation. I made it plain in my speech at Second Reading that this is only the beginning. We want substantial legislation; my noble friend has promised it and we must hold him to that promise. But we need to pass this tonight without further ado, and I very much hope that the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, who made an extremely good case with great eloquence, will feel able to withdraw his amendment.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, I associate myself with the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, and my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer. I have listened to this debate and heard no compelling reason why this amendment has not been adopted by the Government. In answer to the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, the difference between one aspect of the retrospection and the other is that one does not compromise public safety, pure and simple.

By accepting the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, nobody is let out, even with the administrative challenges of getting up a Parole Board under the appalling and savage cuts and debilitation to the system that I spoke about earlier, without Parole Board approval. That is the distinction between his amendment and the status quo ante, which is that people come out automatically, regardless of their risk, at the halfway point.

In answer to others, I have so much respect for the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, but his point was about people who are not even on the radar. That problem is ongoing and not dealt with by this Bill. Saying that people should be held for as long as possible is not an answer to the amendment in question now. By definition, those who are affected by this Bill are subject to finite sentences that are not always very long, because these are not by definition the most serious terrorist offenders, as the noble Lord understands. These are people who were subject to the regime that we have been examining because they were at the lower end of the scale. To quote once more the former Prime Minister, these people are coming out at some point, and there has to be some principle in the way that we engage with this.

[The Advocate-General for Scotland (Lord Keen of Elie) (Con)]

My Lords, we all understand the purpose of this amendment and of the other amendments in the group, albeit that I will come on to deal with the point that arises with regard to the second amendment if I may. But I begin by referring to one or two observations made by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson. He observed that when sentenced these persons were not regarded as dangerous by the court, but I cannot wholly accept that proposition. Their offences may not have been part of the extended determinate sentence regime at the time they were sentenced, but of course a number of terrorist offences were added to the extended determinate sentence regime only in 2019. It cannot be assumed that these people were regarded as non-dangerous at the time they were sentenced, so I cannot wholly accept that.

The second fact that I have to raise concerns the suggestion that those due for release in coming days are past the halfway or two-thirds point. I am advised that the prisoners due for release shortly are approaching the halfway release point in their sentences. That is simply the advice that I have been given. Therefore, there remains an issue over their release. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, said, “They can wait for the Parole Board to get its act together”, but I rather think that if that happened we would face a challenge under Article 5.4 of the convention, and therefore that is not a complete answer at all.

Indeed, the noble and learned Lord talked repeatedly about fundamental points. That leads me to fundamentally disagree with him on a primary point that he kept on making, which is that the legislation would change the sentence and that they should be sentenced by the court. The legislation does not change the sentence; they have been sentenced by the court. As I alluded to earlier, there is lengthy legal authority for the proposition that the court has regard to the appropriate sentence that should be imposed for the crime irrespective of what point there may be executive action for release during the period of that sentence. In other words, it does not distinguish between the custodial and non-custodial elements. That is why the provisions of the Bill are entirely Article 7 compliant apart from anything else.

I understand the concern that arises when we have to look at the presumption against retrospective operation of the law. One thing that the Bill does is to bring the earliest release point for the standard determinate sentence into line with the earliest release point for extended determinate sentences and therefore to produce, if nothing else, an element of consistency. We have been clear that terrorist offenders should serve time in custody that better reflects the seriousness of their offending, particularly in light of recent events, and the measures in the Bill are in keeping with that approach.

I repeat the point—albeit some noble Lords do not feel that there is much force in it—that applying these measures retrospectively will ensure that terrorist prisoners who are currently serving sentences are incapacitated for longer. There is a reason for that in light of what happened, for example, in November last year.

I want to raise one further point. As I read Amendment 2, it would apply not only to those serving fixed determinate sentences but would also reduce the release point for those who have been convicted and sentenced under the extended determinate sentence regime. I suspect that is an unintended consequence—it is not the primary grounds on which I resist the amendment. In light of this debate, I urge the noble Lord to withdraw this amendment.