Justice and Security Bill [Lords]

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Monday 4th March 2013 Commons Chamber

Having listened carefully to what was said by my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting and one or two others, I honestly cannot support amendment 30. I believe that, albeit unintentionally, it would have the effect of wrecking what I consider to be progress rather than the opposite. I find it difficult to do this—I do not do it regularly, and when I do, I do it with a heavy heart—but I am afraid that, on this occasion, I do not feel able to support my own Front Benchers.

[Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

I know that you are anxious to allow others to contribute, Mr Deputy Speaker, and I hope to encompass my remarks in two or three minutes. I also hope that the right hon. Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth) will forgive me, a reactionary, for being progressive, but occasionally that is what one has to do.

I think I could have made this point very simply to my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister in an intervention, but I was unable to catch his eye. The general tenor of his remarks was that this was an argument got up by lawyers, that he had tried to make more and more concessions, and that we were dancing on the head of a pin. I think that there is a fundamental point of principle that can be expressed very clearly by a Conservative. There has been a great deal of reportage this week about what the Conservative party stands for. In my view, it stands for a deep and abiding distrust of the state and its agencies, and a desire always to stand up for civil liberties. That is why our party was founded.

When the Minister leaves the House tonight, as he goes through the Members’ Entrance he will see on his right a small plaque which marks the site of the Court of Star Chamber. Why did Toryism develop in the 17th and 18th centuries? It was in retaliation against the powers of states encompassed in that secret court, whereby people could be tried without knowing the evidence against them. I know perfectly well that we are not talking about criminal cases now, but civil cases too are very important. Justice, in my view, is indivisible.

The principle of justice in this country as I understand it, and as maintained by the Conservative party for centuries, is that any citizen can go to a court of law as a litigant, and his case will be heard in public. He will give his evidence in public, the defendant will give his evidence in public, the plaintiff can cross-examine the defendant on that evidence, and the defendant will know the evidence that is adduced against him. That is a fundamental principle of our courts of law.

It is not good enough to say that the judges will be very careful, or that it will be just a matter of a few cases out of several thousand. Perceptions are important, and what does our country stand for, above all else? It stands for the principle that a defendant knows the evidence against him. It is not good enough that some judge, however careful, can cross-examine on the basis of that evidence, and it is not good enough that some special advocate can do the same, because the defendant alone knows his case, and he alone must be allowed to put it.

It is not good enough to say that the present system is unsatisfactory, and to talk about PIIs and all the rest of it. Of course a defendant can always choose not to adduce a particular piece of evidence, and of course the state can always decide that it would be dangerous, and inimical to its own interests, to reveal how it operates. We all know that, and the state may indeed lose the case, but that is its decision. This is something quite different. We are taking a fundamental step, and it is a dangerous step. That is why I will not support the Government tonight.

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

I will follow in the tradition of the progressives, and say that I opposed the Special Immigration Appeals Commission when it was introduced. My right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) referred to Kafkaesque language and said that we should not exaggerate, but I opposed SIAC then because I thought that it was Kafkaesque. I think that the idea of being tried for something and not being entirely sure what it is, and of not hearing the evidence and not being able to respond to it, is typical of Kafka. I warned then that if we were not careful, there would be an incremental creeping extension of that into other areas of law. That is what we saw with control orders, and we are seeing it again tonight.

I fear that within five years we will be back here debating certain areas of the criminal law, unless we draw a line in the sand tonight and say that enough is enough. I think that we are undermining the basis of British law—as the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) said, the fundamental civil liberties that were fought for over generations. When the Supreme Court considered the matter, it made it clear that there should be compelling grounds if we are to take this step, but the only compelling ground we have been told about today is that the Government might have to shell out a few millions pounds in compensation every now and again. That is not compelling grounds for undermining our civil liberties in this way.

There seems to be a bizarre reversal of the history of why we are here. We are not here today to debate how we protect our security services; we are here because the security services were exposed as being associated with other regimes involved in rendition, torture and other human rights abuses. Rather than discussing how we protect our security forces, which of course is fundamental, we should also be debating how we hold them to account. That does not mean closing the doors of the courts; it means opening them to greater scrutiny and accountability. I am concerned that we seem to be heading for a complete reversal of the debate taking place outside across the country.

People have been shocked by the stories they have heard. A constituent of mine, a young man I have known since he was a child, went to Pakistan to work in a hospital voluntarily because he is a doctor. He was picked up by the Pakistani authorities and tortured for six weeks. He was then interrogated by British intelligence officers, after torture. That is unacceptable. He is now in such a state that he does not even want to pursue a claim. He is fearful—