Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Bill

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Monday 5th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood]

I am afraid that I have to give the hon. Gentleman exactly the same answer that the Minister gave, which is that obviously one Parliament cannot constrain another. I imagine that most new Governments would want to look carefully and responsibly at what are exceptional measures. We have all stated on many occasions that in an ideal world we would not need these powers. The risk is developing all the time and I would hope that any Government would keep these matters under continual review, rather than just saying that they will do it every five years. I think that that clearly sets out our position.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I am interested in my hon. Friend’s answer. Does she not think that we should move in the direction of using criminal law in all cases, rather than going down this endless route of special legislation? I have been in this House long enough to have voted against most of these pieces of legislation, starting with the renewal of the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act 1974. I did so because it departed from the criminal law and essentially involved the executive powers of Ministers, which I am sure she will agree is a dangerous thing.

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[Dr Huppert]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. That speaks volumes about how ineffective control orders and the whole panoply of tools used by the previous Government were. It also highlights why the points about the extra resources needed by the police do not really matter. If there are 1,600 or 2,000 or 3,000 people of great interest to the security services, I hope that the services are occasionally looking at them; otherwise, their interest cannot be very great. If those people are actually dangerous, resources should be available, as the extra resources to deal with a relatively small handful of people are a drop in the ocean.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman’s point about control orders, but will the TPIMs regime be any better?

[Dr Huppert]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his excellent question. My short answer is yes; my longer answer is: by a bit. This is not the solution that I would most like to see, but it is a step in the right direction. I wish that we could go further, and perhaps the other place will be more able to achieve that than we are here. Perhaps the more enlightened Labour peers will take the hon. Gentleman’s perspective on this matter, rather than that taken by those on his Front Bench.

I move now to the subject of this group of amendments, which deal with sunset clauses. I argued in Committee that there were four reasons for having such clauses. One relates to debating the issue in question every year; another is about having a vote every year. As we have said, that method has not turned out to be very effective. It has been very much a token gesture. Although it is nice to see it in place, it has not really delivered. We still have the ability to debate this matter at any time, if some other change takes place. particularly in the light of the Government’s new approach to Back-Bench debates, Similarly, the Government could get rid of TPIMs at any time, as could any future Government. Five years is a maximum, not a minimum. The annual review has simply not been an effective tool, which is a great shame. It does not work very well, and Parliament should look at how effective it is at doing things like that.

The Government think that the review provisions are a really good thing. I would like to see them happening seriously and in detail, but the level of review that has happened under this Government cannot happen every year. It did not do so in the past, to that level. There was a quick look, and a quick renewal. That is not what we want. We want to look underneath what is happening, rather than simply taking the easy option.

I have asked the Minister and the shadow Minister whether, if either of them is in the next Government, they will ensure that a proper review is carried out. If I am in the next Government, I will do my very best to ensure that that happens—[Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] I am delighted to hear that that has support on both sides of the House; we will have to see what happens. I would do my best to ensure that there was a review that moved us closer to the position that I would like—namely, a lower-risk solution that was also better for civil liberties.

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[Jeremy Corbyn]

I welcome the inquiry that is to be undertaken by my right hon. Friend’s Committee. May I ask him also to consider the fact that the country has had renewable emergency anti-terrorism legislation for 37 years, that the legislation has always been renewed six-monthly, annually or after whatever period has been specified, and that on each of those occasions we have moved further from the principles of absolute equality and transparency before the law and further towards a degree of Executive power? Does my right hon. Friend not think that it is time to turn the clock back in favour of openness and transparency, through the use of criminal law and criminal law alone?

[Keith Vaz]

I am sure that we shall touch on that subject. We are, of course, primarily concerned with the question of why people become radicals and what system makes them behave as they have behaved, but the way in which legislation is—in my hon. Friend's view—rushed through Parliament might well be one of our considerations.

I think it healthy for the House to have heard the comments of my hon. Friend, of the hon. Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller) and of the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr Field), who observed that when Parliament discusses these matters the measures concerned go through on the nod. I believe that the role of the Opposition—my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood) did a very good job in this regard—is to scrutinise and probe the Government, and that is exactly what happened when this Minister was the shadow Minister. Perhaps we regret not being more robust on issues of this kind when we are in opposition, but I hope that that will happen now. The five-year period for the review is probably too long; we need to consider it earlier and much more objectively, and that might be one of the issues that we can examine as the debate progresses.

I have three points to make. The first concerns the process that the Government appear to have adopted. I hope that the Minister will reassure me about something about which he did not manage to reassure me when I probed him earlier, namely the role of Lord Macdonald. I understand that Lord Macdonald was appointed by the Government to review legislation. As a former Director of Public Prosecutions and a distinguished lawyer, he is someone whom I think we ought to consult as we present new proposals. Has he seen the Bill, and, if so, what were his comments on it and on the changes that have been made in the last few days?

The same applies to Lord Carlile, who gave evidence that was diametrically opposed to that of Lord Macdonald. He wants to keep control orders, but, as colleagues will recall, when he appeared before the Select Committee he proposed a three-tier structure that he felt could replace them. Will the Minister enlighten the House on the process that was adopted, and confirm that there has been widespread consultation with the very people—Lord Carlile and Lord Macdonald—whom the Government believed could contribute to the discussion?

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[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

I want to speak briefly in favour of new clause 7 on annual reviews, but only because it is the least worst option on the table. It is deeply concerning that, despite pre-election promises and having voted in the past against the massively controversial and now, I would argue, totally discredited control order regime, the coalition Government are trying to push through a Bill that in so many respects simply rebrands the very worst aspects of that failed regime. Despite the spin that was put out when the Bill was presented, it contains the same fundamental mechanism of detention. Restrictions on a terrorist suspect while further investigations continue will in many circumstances be reasonable and in the public interest, but what is so offensive about control orders and their close relatives, TPIMs, is that both are imposed by the Executive, not by a court. The continuation of a system of Government detention entirely outside the rule of law is neither effective nor just, and that is why I hope that, as the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) said, we can make these annual reviews more rigorous. Perhaps we can use them in the way I imagine people on control orders hope they will be used: for proper, rigorous scrutiny.

Today, I was in the same room as the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) and I, too, heard from somebody on a control order. I heard some shocking stories, and not just about that person waiting to sign in at a police station and being deemed to be two minutes late and therefore, supposedly, in breach of a control order. There were even more ridiculous accounts. People are being written to because they have not kept properly clean the flat in which they are supposed to be in internal detention. All kinds of ridiculous methods are being used to misuse the kind of tools being put before us today. That is why, at the very least, we need the option of an annual review.

Everyone agrees that public safety requires that terrorists be held in prison, but let us not forget that this regime is about terrorist suspects, some of whom will be entirely innocent—as, indeed, was the gentleman we spoke to today. So, when considering these matters, which are central both to our security and to our core democratic values, it is critical to remember that the concern is not whether we would like to see terrorists subject to punitive restrictions, but whether we want a system that allows innocent people to be treated outside the rule of law. It is not the action of a democratic state to hold someone without telling them what they are charged with. That is the definition of a living hell: to hold someone without telling them what the evidence against them is, leaving them with no opportunity to defend themselves. The many past miscarriages of justice should weigh heavily on our consideration of these matters.

I am disappointed that the amendments I co-signed with the hon. Member for Cambridge, on police bail, were not selected for debate. I realise that I cannot now debate them, but I would simply say that public safety is best assured when suspects are charged with a crime and, if found guilty, imprisoned, rather than left in the community to abscond—as a number of controlees have done—or, crucially, to act as an advertisement for extremism because the regime is so unjust and impacts not just upon them but on their families and communities. Police bail would have enabled us to get away from that and properly to investigate people who are suspected of a crime, rather than leaving them in this no-man’s land, which discredits us enormously as a country.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I had not planned to speak in this section of the debate, but I was moved to do so by the eloquence of many of the contributions to it. We are debating TPIMs versus control orders, and the House will have heard in my intervention on the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) that I do not see a whole lot of difference between their underlying principles. I do not welcome TPIMs any more than I welcome control orders. I voted against control orders in the last Parliament and will continue to do so in this Parliament—and against TPIMs—for much the same reasons as the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) has eloquently explained to the House.

We are getting into a debate about sunset clauses versus a review. I would prefer a sunset clause on the Bill; indeed, any special legislation should automatically have a very short sunset clause attached to it as a matter of course. We are passing major legislation that has a huge effect on the civil liberties of everybody. However, if we cannot have that—I do support the Opposition Front Benchers in this respect—we should at least have a 12-month review.

One has to remember the atmosphere in this House in which we considered the question of special legislation. The Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act 1974 was passed after the Birmingham pub bombings. They were appalling, they were disgraceful, and in that fevered atmosphere the House passed that Act, which it renewed at six-monthly intervals for a very long time. The only time when anti-terrorism legislation was passed in an atmosphere of relative calm was in 2000. All other such Acts were passed in respect of some awful event somewhere. At those times, the House met in a fevered atmosphere and said that it was important that, because of the nature of what had happened—be it 9/11, 7/7, Canary Wharf or any of a host of appalling incidents around the world or in this country—we had to pass the legislation because it would deal with the problem.

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[James Brokenshire]

May I just finish the point? We have published the consolidated guidance to intelligence personnel, including on the passing and receipt of intelligence relating to detainees. The Government took early and decisive action to set up the Gibson inquiry, precisely to examine whether Britain was implicated in the improper treatment of detainees so that we can better understand what happened and allow all involved closure.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I thank the Minister for giving way and I am grateful to him for allowing this point to be made. Is he concerned that the exchange of letters made by former Prime Minister Blair with a number of countries that allowed removal to those that had not signed the convention on torture should be ended? We should only ever remove people to a country that recognises the relevant sections of that convention and that would not carry out the death penalty against those people.