European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between George Howarth and Dominic Grieve

Committee: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 7th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Temporary Chair (Mr George Howarth)]

I say for the benefit of other Members that the right hon. and learned Gentleman has had a very long career—so long, in fact, that he is capable of recognising the difference between an intervention and a speech.

[Mr Grieve]

I am delighted to hear from my right hon. and learned Friend. I do not think it would necessarily be unhelpful—in fact, it would be very helpful—if the Government were in a position to amplify the Minister’s brief statement. However, I acknowledge—I think my right hon. and learned Friend knows this—that doing that by means of an amendment would be rather difficult. I know that Government draftsmen have extreme ingenuity and, indeed, that this issue might be taken up in the other place, but there are difficulties because there is a whole series of conditionalities. I certainly do not wish to fetter the Government in their ability to carry out the negotiation. It has always seemed to me that it would be a great error to do that, because we might undermine the ultimate outcome, to our own detriment. That has worried me throughout the process.

I do not want to take up more of the Committee’s time. Although I have had great difficulty over this matter today and in the days leading up to this debate, my inclination, for the reasons I have given, is to accept the assurance given by my right hon. Friend the Minister, which seems to me to be a constructive step forward. However, he has to face up to the fact that this issue will not go away. Even when we have enacted this Bill and triggered article 50, this will be a recurrent theme throughout the negotiating process that will come back much, much harder as we get closer to the outcome and as it becomes clearer, from all the leaks that will come from Brussels, what sort of deal or non-deal we will have, so the Government had better have a strategy. If their strategy is to avoid this House, I have to say to the Minister that they will fail miserably. I do not want that to happen. I want to guide this process as best I can, as a former Law Officer, towards a satisfactory conclusion.

Investigatory Powers Bill

Debate between George Howarth and Dominic Grieve

Report: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Monday 6th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Grieve]

I am grateful to the Minister, and I leave the matter there.

I turn now to amendments 19, 20 and 21, which deal with the renewal of warrants. They may appear somewhat complicated, but they deal with a very simple issue. Warrants for interception last for up to six months. Under clause 29, the warrant can be extended by a further six months at any time before the original warrant expires. That creates a loophole because it would theoretically allow for a warrant to be renewed immediately after it was issued, thereby permitting interception for 12 months. That is clearly not what the Bill intends. The Secretary of State might well argue—logically—that the commissioner would never approve such a renewal, and that she would not either, but this is nevertheless a loophole that can and should be closed, and these amendments would ensure that it is. I hope very much that the Government can accept them.

I should mention that the amendments in my name relate only to warrants for interception and bulk interception. I would be grateful if the Minister could assure the House that, if the Government accept my amendments, that acceptance will be extended to other consequential amendments of a like character, to ensure that the power cannot be abused elsewhere.

Amendment 16 relates to clause 45 and interception in accordance with overseas requests. The clause gives effect to the European Union’s convention on mutual assistance on criminal matters and permits an overseas authority to request the support of the United Kingdom in undertaking the interception of communications. Curiously, and probably accidentally, it does not repeat the protection that exists in the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, which ensures that requests can be made only where a person being intercepted will be outside the United Kingdom. That seems to us be another loophole that ought to be dealt with. Although the Government had indicated that it could be dealt with in secondary legislation, the Intelligence and Security Committee do not consider that to be satisfactory. It is far too important an issue to be left to secondary legislation; it should be dealt with in the Bill. If our amendment is accepted, the matter can be resolved without more ado.

Finally, may I touch on an issue that has been raised by the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) and others, namely economic wellbeing? When the Intelligence and Security Committee first came to consider the issue as a subset of national security in our initial evidence-taking sittings, we came to the conclusion that it ought to be possible to remove economic wellbeing as a criterion altogether. That is why we made the initial recommendation that economic wellbeing, so far as it is relevant to national security and relates to people outside the British islands, be removed from the Bill as grounds for interception. We took the view that it could all be safely contained in the subset of national security. After we published our report, the Government provided us, through the agencies, with additional evidence regarding their reasoning for including it as a separate ground. They also provided us with a number of examples of where it was being or might be used, which illustrated areas where it was useful to have it as a separate category.

[Mr George Howarth]

Although I am conscious that the right hon. and learned Gentleman will not, for obvious reasons, be able to go into detail on all of the examples that were given, one thing that can be avowed under this particular rubric is critical national infrastructure, which is an obvious area where the public and the state need to be protected.

[Mr Grieve]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. The consequence of damaging national infrastructure would be to cause a severe economic shock to the United Kingdom. At the end of the day, the most persuasive argument of the lot was that listing economic wellbeing separately added transparency as to the purposes for which an investigatory power was being sought. We came to the conclusion that it would probably assist the judicial commissioners in their consideration of the necessity and proportionality of the warrant, precisely because it highlighted that it fell within a category in which economic wellbeing was present; it was therefore in practice likely to be subject to very detailed scrutiny. For all those reasons, we did not table a further amendment on that point.

Kevin Williams

Debate between George Howarth and Dominic Grieve

Wednesday 22nd February 2012 Westminster Hall

[The Attorney-General (Mr Dominic Grieve)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester (Stephen Mosley) on securing this debate and thank those right hon. and hon. Members who have spoken so eloquently about the tragedy that was Hillsborough.

Today’s debate has been prompted by the e-petition started by Mrs Anne Williams. She is the mother of Kevin Williams, whose short life was ended that day at Hillsborough. There is no hierarchy of victims; every loss was a tragedy for someone and I express my sympathy to all who lost loved ones on that day. Mrs Williams’s petition asked that her application for a fresh inquest into the death of her son be reconsidered. I have already indicated that I will do so.

It may assist people if I explain what I am being asked to do. After hearing what others have said this afternoon, I recognise that what follows may sound a little dry or legalistic. It is none the less necessary for me to say it, if what is being asked of me is to be understood.

The only way that a second inquest can be held into the death of Kevin Williams, or into the death of anyone else on that day, is if the High Court quashes the original inquest and orders a second inquest to be held. The Court will order a new inquest only if it is satisfied that the test that is set out in section 13 of the Coroners Act 1988 has been met. Essentially, that test is whether a new inquest is

“necessary or desirable in the interests of justice”.

That test implies a wide discretion and it is necessarily fact-sensitive. An inquest determines who the deceased was and how, when and where they came by their death, as was so rightly explained by my hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester. “How” is not simply the medical cause of death but may include the circumstances in which the death came about. What justice requires in any case is that there has been an effective inquiry into the death and that the conclusions reached are supported by the available evidence.

For example, if it can be shown that an inquest was flawed procedurally or that new evidence has come to light since the inquest was held, and if that flaw or new evidence potentially has a significant impact on the conclusions of the original inquest, then a fresh inquest may be

“necessary or desirable in the interests of justice”.

[Mr George Howarth]

In the definition of what is a “flaw”, will the Attorney-General consider—I do not ask him to commit himself—including the existence of what many of us believe was an arbitrary 3.15 pm cut-off point?

[The Attorney-General]

Perhaps the best way that I can put it to the right hon. Gentleman is to say that I fully understand the points that have been cogently made today that raised criticisms about the 3.15 pm cut-off point, but, as he will appreciate, at this stage of the proceedings, I have only heard the explanations that have been provided. However, I fully understand the force that lies behind the argument that is being put forward.

An application to the High Court can only be made by me or by another with my consent. My role is to consider the available evidence and to determine whether there are reasonable prospects of the Court ordering a new inquest. I act as a filter, as Parliament has required me to do, and I should make it clear that I perform that role entirely independently of anyone else in Government. I have given some thought to how I should set about this task and I will, of course, consider it further in the light of the points that have been made in this debate today.

Mrs Williams has made four previous applications to my predecessors in office—predecessors in the two major parties that have been in Government. On each occasion, the application was refused as the Attorney-General of the day did not consider there was any reasonable prospect of a court being satisfied that a fresh inquest was necessary. There are undoubtedly difficulties. The matter has already been considered by the divisional court in 1992, which looked at many of the issues that had been put forward as reasons for a new inquest. That court refused to quash the original inquest and indicated that it did not consider it at all likely that the court would reach a different view had it been considering an application made under section 13. There has also been the inquiry by Lord Justice Taylor, as he then was, and the later review by Lord Justice Stuart-Smith, whose findings argued against the need for a new inquest.

Later this year, the Hillsborough panel will release the information it has collected about the disaster and publish its report. For the first time, Mrs Williams and the other families of the deceased will have access to all—I stress all—relevant material, including the material held by my own office in respect of the discussions that took place with previous Attorneys-General. I am minded, therefore, to approach the case by awaiting the release of that material rather than simply by reviewing the material evidence that formed the basis of the applications already considered by my predecessors in office. This means that it will be necessary for me to delay reaching any conclusion until such time as the Hillsborough panel has released the collected material and there has been sufficient time for the families to be able to consider it carefully.

If I were to try to reach a decision sooner, I could ask to see the material that the panel holds now, but I will not do that for three reasons. First, I do not want to distract the panel or do anything to delay the completion of its work, which I hope will take place shortly. Secondly, I do not want to go behind the promise given, which I think important, that the families should see the material first. Thirdly, I want to give Mrs Williams, or indeed any other applicant, the time to consider the released material and make any representations that they may wish to make to me in respect of it.

I acknowledge that taking this course will affect the timing of my decision as to whether to make an application for a second inquest, and I am of course prepared to consider any representations that Mrs Williams or any other interested party—or, indeed, their Members of Parliament—may wish to make to me on timing.