Justice and Security Bill [Lords]
Debate between David Winnick and Paul Goggins(11 years, 9 months ago)
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Paul Goggins
I shall try to be brief, as I know that other Members wish to speak. It is a pleasure to follow my colleague, the Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee, the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind). I am sure that it was music to the Minister’s ears to hear a speech from his own Benches in support of the Bill. I know that he welcomes the fact that there have been a number of speeches from the Opposition Benches, of which this is another, that are broadly in support of the Bill.
There are two fundamental arguments in favour of the direction that the Government are taking. The first is the need to deal with the present inability of the security and intelligence agencies to defend themselves against civil claims. That point has been debated over the past few hours. My right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) did the House a great service by reminding us that we are talking not about bits of paper, but about human sources of intelligence. We are talking about human beings, and the agencies have a fundamental responsibility to protect the lives of those people. Even in the course of protecting their own interests, they can do nothing to undermine the safety and security of those people. Those are vital obligations to human beings, not to scraps of paper with information written on them. The idea that any serious judge would grant closed material proceedings in relation to intelligence that might prove embarrassing or slightly awkward for an agency is preposterous. This is all about highly sensitive intelligence, about sources and about methods.
The second element that makes the legislation imperative is the need to make the agencies themselves more accountable. I do not want to see a PII one-way street that allows an agency to hide material completely or to settle out of court. If intelligence exists that there has been wrongdoing in the agencies, I want that evidence to be considered by the judge and to be weighed in the balance when conclusions are reached.
Reflecting on the debates on these matters, I believe that it should be possible to close the gap between the Front Benches on the ability of the judge to choose the appropriate route to take. I think I heard the Minister say earlier that, even at this late stage, he was prepared to go away and give further consideration to that issue. If there are further opportunities to do so, I hope that he and my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) will reach consensus on this point. The Minister has come some way towards that by tabling amendment 47, and that is helpful. The court must now be satisfied that the Secretary of State has considered whether to make an application for PII, and that goes some way in the right direction. I encourage him and my right hon. Friend to try to close what remains of the gap between them. As far as I am concerned, the last resort should be the PII. I cannot agree with the hierarchy set out by the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis). I want less secrecy and there is less secrecy through closed material proceedings.
On the Wiley test and the substantive difference that clearly still exists between the two Front Benches, I urge further and fresh consideration, if that is possible. I am not a lawyer, as may be evident to anyone who has ever heard me speak on these matters, but if the decision is whether the material should be in or out, then a test of open justice is a fair test, and that is the test that applies in PII. However, if the decision is about closed material proceedings, then, frankly, that is a decision about whether the material is fully in or not fully in. If a judge can see it but others cannot, and if the merits of a particular piece of intelligence can be weighed by the judge, clearly that is a more difficult and complex judgment. It therefore does not surprise me, as a non-lawyer, to know that a different test from the Wiley test may need to be applied.
Amendment 30, tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting, sets the bar too high, but I encourage further consideration wherever possible. There are various stages to the closed material procedure. There has to be consideration on whether to enter the process in the first place, and on whether the process should end. Therefore, there has to be an appropriate test and further thought on it, but I think that my right hon. Friend sets the bar too high.
Mr Winnick
My right hon. Friend talked about a consensus in this House. I hope there will be the maximum amount of opposition to the proposals. Does he dismiss out of hand the number of people—distinguished lawyers who cannot be lumped together as hopeless liberals and so on—who believe that the proposals, which will no doubt be carried, erode the rule of law? We should be very concerned about what is happening.
Paul Goggins
My hon. Friend knows me well enough to know that I do not dismiss critics of the Bill. I listen to them carefully; I just happen to disagree with them. The same applies to my hon. Friend: I listen carefully to what he says on this issue. Sometimes we agree and sometimes we disagree, and I sense that we will disagree on this. I am making a plea for further attempts to achieve consensus, but I am making it clear that if there is no consensus then I think that my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting is setting the bar too high.
On inquests, I am sorry that the Minister did not take an intervention from me earlier. I would be delighted to take an intervention from him at any stage in the next couple of minutes. I am grateful to Members who supported my amendment 70, which would make closed material proceedings available for inquests as well as civil proceedings. We just need an explanation from the Minister on why the Bill proposes CMPs for civil cases, but does not propose them for inquests. That was in the original plan. He knows that senior members of the Government and senior judges think it is nonsense and inconsistent to have one and not the other.
Assisted Suicide
Debate between David Winnick and Paul Goggins
Mr Winnick
That is the very opposite of my view. As I said, I have supported every move to support the disabled in every conceivable way. It is an advance for the House of Commons that we have disabled Members and that we do not just represent disabled people who happen to be constituents. One of my colleagues is confined to a wheelchair and it is right and proper that she should be here. There is an idea that, in some way, those of us who want a change in the law would wish to harm the disabled, but the very opposite is the truth. However, I take the point that to the extent that disabled people—or, at least, the organisations that speak on their behalf—have concerns about any change in the law, people such as me, who want a change in the legislation, should certainly bear that very much in mind.
Paul Goggins (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)
On five separate occasions my hon. Friend has talked about changing the law and about his desire to do so. Will he confirm, for the sake of everybody in the House this afternoon, that support for the motion is not support for a change in the law, but an acknowledgment that the Director of Public Prosecutions has done his job?
Protection of Freedoms Bill
Debate between David Winnick and Paul Goggins(13 years, 2 months ago)
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Paul Goggins
My hon. Friend knows enough about this matter to know that we cannot draw simple comparisons between our system and other systems. Other systems sometimes appear to hold suspects for shorter periods when in fact they are held for longer periods. We have a system that reflects our own judicial culture but also recognises the fact that we face enormous threats and challenges from terrorists in this country, perhaps particularly in this city. We have had to work our way through this, but if he missed the earlier part of my speech, he will not have heard me say that I have had pause to reflect and that I have changed my mind. I think that 14 days should be the maximum in most circumstances, apart from the exceptional circumstances that I am referring to.
Paul Goggins
I shall give way one more time, but then I want to bring my remarks to a conclusion.
Mr Winnick
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. I accept that he is a convert to 14 days, although I suspect that if we were debating 42 days, he would not necessarily be up on his feet protesting. On the point about the Attorney-General, are we really to believe—this is not a reflection on the Attorney-General in any Government—that if the Home Secretary told the Attorney-General, in the usual way that these things are done, that it was necessary to increase the 14 days in exceptional circumstances, the Attorney-General would say to the Home Secretary, “No”? It is unrealistic.
Paul Goggins
I do not accept that it is unrealistic. It would depend on the individual judgment of the Attorney-General linked to the judgment of the Home Secretary, who would have been briefed by the Security Service and others. On its own, it is not a total safeguard, but it is one among several, and I shall briefly go through the others. The Secretary of State would have to give a statement to both Houses as soon as possible. There would have to be a review by the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation of any case in which a suspect was detained for more than 14 days. There would have to be an annual report by the Home Secretary listing any orders that had been made; that report would have to be debated and voted on in six weeks. Finally, the Director of Public Prosecutions would have to give his personal authorisation to any application to the High Court for a further warrant for detention. We know that that already happens in practice, but it should be on the face of the legislation. Members of the Joint Committee will be pleased that the Minister has tonight confirmed that he will introduce legislation to make the order-making power available during the Dissolution of Parliament, and that he has acknowledged the importance of an independent review of each case and of the personal authorisation of the Director of Public Prosecutions.
The Minister is a reasonable man who genuinely seeks to strike the right balance, but I believe that he has landed in the wrong place on this issue. His preferred route of primary legislation is too risky: time might be against him, and a subsequent trial might be prejudiced. This measure is exceptional, and we all hope that it will never have to be used, but if it is required, it is important that it be absolutely reliable and available as soon as possible.
The Committee’s recommendation respects the Government’s view that 14 days should be the normal maximum; frankly, I think that that is the settled view of Members on both sides of the House. That would give greater certainty in the face of extraordinary challenges, threats and attacks. On behalf of the six members of the Committee, I am happy to commend our recommendations to the Minister, and I hope that, even now, he will give them further consideration.
Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Bill
Debate between David Winnick and Paul Goggins(13 years, 6 months ago)
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Paul Goggins
Considerable consideration was always given to those issues. As the Home Secretary said earlier, prosecutions should always be brought where possible. Those who engage in terrorist activity should feel the full force of the law and where possible—where the evidence is there—they should be convicted and go to prison for a very long time. The problem is that sometimes the evidence and information that the Home Secretary and other Ministers have is not enough to secure a prosecution because much of it is protected or secret information that could not, of itself, sustain a successful prosecution. That is the territory we are dealing with, but I assure my hon. Friend that that consideration was always at the foremost of Minister’s minds at that time.
Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)
I have the highest respect for the work that my right hon. Friend undertook during his time at the Home Office. I have tried to get a parliamentary answer to my question, but I did not get anywhere. I understand that no one who has been subject to a control order has later been charged with a terrorist offence. That seems rather odd and, if I may say so, rather disturbing.
Paul Goggins
My hon. Friend has well-known views on this issue and has expressed them frequently in the Chamber from both the Government and Opposition sides over the years. He forms his own conclusions but my conclusions about such individuals is that they are a small group of people for whom it is necessary to have some form of control outside the normal judicial process because of the risks that they pose. My hon. Friend has put forward his point of view on this before and he has strong views—I respect that.
Paul Goggins
The hon. Lady speaks with great authority on this issue and I agree with every word she says. These powers—whether the control order powers that have been in place up to now or the new powers that the Home Secretary is bringing forward—should be used absolutely exceptionally and we should always bear in mind the risk that the hon. Lady mentions that their use can become a rallying point and can assist in the radicalisation of people whom we are trying desperately to keep in the mainstream of society. That should always be kept in mind. These powers should not be used generally; they are very specific powers to be used in very specific circumstances.
Let me deal with the circumstances in which the powers should be used. We are talking about a small group of individuals who are suspected of involvement in terrorist activities and who are either foreign nationals who cannot be deported because of a ruling of the European Court of Human Rights or they are individuals who cannot be prosecuted successfully because, as I said earlier, the compelling information about them is secret intelligence that could not alone sustain a successful prosecution. Over the past six years, control orders have been the best—some have used the expression “least worst”—set of powers to deal with that group of people.
As I have said before, we should always seek to gain consensus in the House on the important issue of counter-terrorism. The formation of the new Government last year gave us all an opportunity to reflect on the previous decade and see whether changes were required that would bring greater consensus and get an even better balance between individual liberty and collective security. I have changed my mind about pre-charge detention, having previously voted for 28 days and, indeed, for 42 days. I agree that the normal maximum should now be 14 days, provided that in exceptional circumstances it can be extended to 28 days. I am currently serving on the Joint Committee that is considering the emergency legislation that the Government have brought forward on this, and I have changed my mind on this issue.
Paul Goggins
My hon. Friend is always very persuasive—one way or the other.
One area of policy on which I remain absolutely clear is the need to be able to control the activities of that small group of people who pose a serious threat and who cannot be deported or imprisoned, and I am pleased that the Government appear to have come to the same conclusion. We should seek consensus. There is much in the Bill that I can readily support. Conditions A to E, which are set out in clause 3, are welcome. They confirm the need for these TPIM notices to be focused on protection and prevention and they provide that the terrorism-related activity must be new activity. However, it is important that when a first application for a notice is made, that new activity can well predate the application.
A general time limit of two years is not unreasonable given the provisos that further notices can be made if there is new activity and that where a further notice is made, the older activity can be taken into account in addition to the new activity of which the Home Secretary has become aware. However, I caution her and her ministerial colleague against making that a general rule which can never be excepted. As I said about the maximum pre-charge detention period of 14 days, there might be exceptional circumstances. I hope that the Minister will be prepared, in Committee, to see whether some amendments can be framed to allow extensions beyond two years in specific and exceptional circumstances.
On making the powers permanent, I heard what my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) said about that reducing parliamentary oversight, but we could also see it as a positive development if Parliament can reach a consensus and settled view. Given the constant arguing and bickering on this issue year after year when we should be seeking consensus in the face of the terrible threats that terrorists bring, there is some merit in Parliament’s reaching a settled view. There is a balance to be struck.
I agree strongly with condition A, that the Secretary of State must have a reasonable belief
“that the individual is…involved in terrorism-related activity”.
That is a higher threshold than the reasonable suspicion threshold that has previously operated for control orders, but in reaching my conclusion I have referred to the opinion of Lord Carlile in his most recent report that the higher threshold of reasonable belief was, in practice, always achieved anyway for each control order that was taken out under the existing system. It is a standard that was already being met, and I see no problem in including that formally in legislation.
It is right, given that we have six years’ experience of operating control orders, to set out in more precise form the measures that can be imposed as part of the new TPIM notices. Schedule 1 includes a list of measures, including accommodation, travel, communications, association and so on. I urge the Minister to see whether there ought not to be a catch-all power, because there may be a condition that is not caught by schedule 1. It might be sensible to leave an opening so that the Home Secretary can impose such a condition if circumstances allow. It is not a power that I would expect to be used frequently, but if we do not have that power, and unusual circumstances occur, there is nothing we can do about it. Perhaps that is something that could be considered.
I have four serious difficulties with the Bill and in relation to other pertinent issues. The first was mentioned by my right hon. Friend—the overnight residence measure. She was right to point out that in schedule 1, which says that the Secretary of State may impose a requirement
“applicable overnight…for the individual to remain at a specified residence”,
there is no definition of “overnight”. It may be possible to go into that in Committee to see whether it is possible to include something a little clearer.
The really important issue is the specified residence itself. My right hon. Friend made a powerful argument in relation to that. Paragraph 1(3) says that the specified residence must be
“premises that are the individual’s own residence, or…other premises…that are situated in an appropriate locality or an agreed locality.”
An appropriate locality is one in which the individual has a pre-existing connection. In the case of CD, which my right hon. Friend mentioned, it would not be possible under the new legislation for the Home Secretary to impose the conditions that she rightly imposed on the control order governing that individual. If it is possible, I would welcome an explanation on that from the Minister in his winding-up speech.
Let us reflect on who CD is: a leading figure in a close group of Islamist extremists based in north London. That conspiracy of individuals was planning attacks and seeking to acquire weapons. He was a real threat, and the Home Secretary was quite right to take action, and to insist that he live in the west midlands. It is not just me who says so, as Mr Justice Simon supports her view. My right hon. Friend made it perfectly clear when reading from paragraph 53 of Mr Justice Simon’s judgment that the relocation obligation is a necessary and proportionate measure to protect the public from an immediate and real risk of a terrorism-related attack. The Bill as drafted would not allow the Home Secretary to force that individual to live outside London in the west midlands, and the people of London and elsewhere would be at much greater risk if she could not do so.
My second concern relates to electronic communication, which is dealt with in paragraph 7. Sub-paragraph (1) sounds quite tough, as the Secretary of State may impose
“restrictions on the individual’s possession or use of electronic communication devices”.
However, under sub-paragraph (3), each suspect may have
“a telephone operated by connection to a fixed line…a computer that provides access to the internet…a mobile telephone that does not provide access to the internet.”
To be honest, I am concerned that that demonstrates naivety about the sophisticated operations of international terrorists. They use multiple mobile phones, and will run rings round the measure, unless paragraph 7 is toughened up and made much more specific and much less confusing. There is a real job of work to be done by the Committee.