Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Bill

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Tuesday 7th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

In my right hon. Friend’s years in the Home Office, in which he must have been involved in many discussions about anti-terrorism legislation, how much consideration was given to the implementation of the criminal law in open court rather than the creation of a series of special courts, special measures and all the suspicion that surrounds them?

[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.

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[Paul Goggins]

The hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) was saying that international terrorists would rush off and use it and reveal all their sources and contacts to the authorities monitoring the measure. I shall make the point again: I do not think that the provisions as set out reflect the sophistication with which international terrorists operate.

My third difficulty relates not to the Bill but to a wider issue that is significant to the powers in the Bill—the whole business of rules on the disclosure of evidence. I welcome the fact that under the Bill there will still be closed hearings which can continue as before under control orders. That is needed, because if a judge is going to review the material or hear an appeal from a particular individual, he must consider the information available to the Home Secretary when she made the initial application. If some, if not all, of that information has to be protected, that must be done in a closed hearing. Special advocates will still be needed. The gist of the case must be provided to the individual.

As we recognise, however, the AF judgment makes it increasingly difficult to protect what in the interests of public safety and national security must remain secret information. That issue caused problems for the previous Government, and it has caused problems for this Government. It has ramifications for our relations with international partners with whom we share important information and intelligence. I applaud the fact that the Government are seeking to address that problem and deal with it in the Green Paper. May I tell all Front Benchers that we should do everything we can to resolve the issue, because if we do not do so the TPIM system will simply not work, as there will be an ever stronger demand that information that should remain secret is revealed in open court to the individual concerned? It is important that we resolve that issue so that we know what can be disclosed and what can be protected.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I thank my right hon. Friend for giving way again. Does he not accept that there is a major concern about anti-terrorism legislation with special courts and special advocates, and in which information is withheld from the defendant? The barrister acting on behalf of the defendant is not allowed to reveal to them the nature of the evidence or the case against them. Therein lies a road to something very, very dangerous in a democracy that prides itself on open prosecutions and open justice, and thereby a much wider acceptance of the judicial system and the rule of law.

[Paul Goggins]

My hon. Friend again makes his point with great care. Of course, these are exceptional powers that should be used sparingly. We have all this apparatus in relation to control orders to ensure that the suspect’s interests can be protected. That is why we have special advocates who can consider the information and argue on behalf of the suspect. [Interruption.] Does the hon. Member for Cambridge wish to intervene?

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[Tom Brake]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention, which is a very sound one. I hope, and I am sure that the Minister will confirm this when he responds, that because counter-terrorism legislation is so essential, the Government will want to keep it under review, and that if, in future years, there is a need to adjust the measures, appropriate adjustments will be made.

What are the other objections to TPIMs? There is the question of whether there is any difference between reasonable belief and reasonable suspicion. It is my view that the Bill presents a higher evidential hurdle. The courts are aware of that, and they know the difference between those two. That difference is significant.

I acknowledge that TPIMs maintain a system of Executive-imposed measures that do not lie comfortably inside the judicial system. The Bill imposes measures that restrict freedom and human rights. As hon. Members know, those measures include but are not limited to overnight curfews, restrictions on travel, exclusion from certain places and buildings, and restrictions on electronic devices. It has been argued by the Opposition and by Liberty that these measures simply reflect the most offensive aspects of the control order system, but I do not think that that is the case. Clearly, in relation to relocation, internal exile, which the Soviet Union would have been very comfortable with, has gone.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Does the hon. Gentleman not have some concerns about the successive non-debate of this issue by Parliament and the fact that a defendant with a two-year TPIM might never know why it was imposed and never have the evidence given to them? All they know is that they have a barrister who does know but is not allowed to tell them and that the judge knows but is not allowed to tell the barrister. Therefore, a circle of secrecy surrounds something that has a major impact on a person’s life, is career-changing, and so on. Is that really right in a liberal democracy?

[Tom Brake]

The hon. Gentleman might not be surprised to know that I agree with much of what he says. If my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) has an opportunity to speak, he might echo that very same point. That is why the Bill is clearly an improvement on what is in place now, but has scope for further improvement. I am sure that we will return to that in this place and perhaps in the other place.

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[Tom Brake]

I am aware that there have been cases where that has been the outcome.

I am sure that the Minister will want to pick up that matter when he replies. I also hope that this will give him an opportunity to update us on intercept evidence. I understand the difficulties in balancing the operational requirements with the legal requirements and in balancing the scale of benefits with the associated costs, but I hope that he will update the House.

I referred to prosecutions in relation to surveillance evidence. It might be helpful to specify a time frame within which a prosecution must be brought. There may be some scope for moving on that in future debates.

I come now to a couple of subjects that I suspect will not necessarily boost my popularity in certain quarters, but having advocated the importance of voting rights for some prisoners my popularity might not be in the ascendant in any case. It is important to treat in a civilised way those who may wish to inflict death or injury on us in order to expose their barbaric nature. That is why we need clear safeguards for those who are extradited to the UK. If people have suffered torture abroad and are subsequently moved to the UK, on their arrival the UK Government have an important role in assessing any health or mental health implications that should be taken on board. There is also the ongoing issue with regard to the role of the control order review group, which the Government will ensure continues in operation under TPIMs, in reviewing the mental health of people subject to control orders and now to TPIMs. It has that role at present, but from the discussions that I have had with those who have been subject to control orders that have subsequently been quashed it does not seem to be working very effectively.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point about people who may have been subject to torture in other jurisdictions. This is a controversial issue, but does he agree that we should not deport people to a jurisdiction that has not signed the UN convention on torture, and that they should remain here until such time as that jurisdiction signs it, rather than the unfortunate arrangements that were made with a number of countries in the past?

[Tom Brake]

That is a difficult point to address. I know that there are concerns about how watertight memorandums of understanding are, if that is what the hon. Gentleman is referring to. It is a tough call. I am at risk of making policy on the hoof if I give an instant response. It is a difficult issue and the hon. Gentleman is right to raise it. Perhaps when the Minister responds he will say whether the UK Government are making progress in drawing up memorandums of understanding with other countries where we believe that the safeguards are sufficient to allow that.

There are some issues around how people subject to TPIMs are dealt with, and what sort of assessment is made, particularly of their mental health, and any torture that they may have experienced in the countries that they come from.

I will support the Government on Second Reading. The Bill is better than its predecessor. Its measures are more targeted, less damaging to individuals subject to TPIMs and more observant of human rights. But it is not perfect and can be improved, and I hope that it will be during its passage here and in the other place.

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[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I should first apologise to the House for missing the Home Secretary’s introductory speech, but I have been present for the rest of the debate. I welcome this opportunity to discuss anti-terrorism law. I think I am the only Member currently in the Chamber who has been here long enough to have voted against the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005, which was seen at the time as the low point in the attack on civil liberties. Oh that we were only discussing such an Act these days!

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Newark (Patrick Mercer), who spoke of the effect of internment in Ireland and other places. When a state decides to take away the liberties of large numbers of people, the consequences are felt for a very long time. He talked about what happened in Ireland in the 1970s and 1980s, but we can look back to the wholly irrational way in which British Jewish people were interned in 1940 at the start of the second world war. That was entirely counter-productive and an idiotic thing to do. There were also long-term effects on the attitudes of Japanese Americans to US society from the disgusting way in which they were put in concentration camps in California in 1942 because they were automatically assumed to be supporters of the Japanese in the war. If anyone had bothered to think about that, they might have asked why those people were living in the USA in the first place. The consequences of such actions go on for a very long time.

I am not suggesting that the Bill is equivalent to those measures, because it is not. It is much smaller and specifically targeted, but I have, nevertheless, some fundamental issues with it. Most states take unto themselves a power to override the judicial system in some way—most have some special security law or courts, or whatever. Without going into the whole history of this matter in Britain, the introduction of the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act 1974 was a response to the Birmingham pub bombings. The first person arrested under the Act was one of the Guildford Four, who spent 18 years proving his innocence and who was finally released as a result. That Act was repealed and replaced by the Terrorism Act 2000, which preceded the dreadful events of 2001.

I remember spending all night in the Chamber at that time discussing what we would do to beef up our counter-terrorism measures. At every stage, the argument was to go further away from open criminal courts and further in the direction of special courts and special measures, with lower levels of evidence gathering. We have now ended up with the obnoxious silent court mentality. The barrister probably knows the nature of the case against the individual whom he is supposed to represent, and the judge and the prosecution certainly know, but the defendant is not allowed to know and his barrister is not allowed to tell him. That is a dangerous road to go down. Anyone who has met someone who has been the subject of a control order or some kind of restriction will know that they are for ever changed by the experience. In some cases, they are subsequently prosecuted. In others, they are not: the control order is lifted, they disappear, and that is that. The corrosive effect on them, their families, their lives and their community is very serious, and we should be extremely careful about introducing legislation that gives courts the power effectively to act in secret, and the security services the power to present evidence that is heard in secret and used to punish people, when the security services are never publicly accountable for what they do. I understand that there are all kinds of dangers involved in all sorts of things, but if we legislate to allow an arm of the state to operate covertly with no public accountability for what it does, therein lies enormous danger.

The very least we can do is examine the Bill in great detail in Committee and, above all, ensure that the legislation is subject to regular parliamentary review. It is our duty as elected Members of a free Parliament in a free society to hold the Government, and the agencies of the Government and the state, to account. It is not good enough to pass this legislation saying that we will return to it and debate the issue again as and when a future Government feel it appropriate to introduce another form of counter-terrorism legislation. As well as the obvious parliamentary scrutiny through Select Committees, questions, Adjournment debates and all the other tools that are available to us to hold the Government to account, there ought to be a regular parliamentary debate and review of the whole arrangement on a six-monthly or yearly basis. The PTA was renewed on a six-monthly basis throughout its entire existence.

[Steve Baker]

I find myself agreeing with the vast majority of the hon. Gentleman’s remarks. Looking around the Chamber, I see that there is almost no one here. Does he agree that in the status quo, given the level of interest in this subject and the nature of the whipping system, regular parliamentary scrutiny of this matter would actually amount to very little?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I have always had an interesting relationship with the whipping system in Parliament. We are here as MPs to represent the constituents who have been good enough to send us here, and we are here to answer for ourselves. We must be prepared to ask these questions and to take part in these debates. Like the hon. Gentleman, I am extremely disappointed that there are so few Members here tonight. I suspect that it is because word has gone round, by text message from the Whips on both sides, that there is not going to be a vote. Most of our colleagues are probably either enjoying themselves on the Terrace or have gone home, when they should be in here debating this Bill. We could say the same for almost any piece of legislation that goes through the House.

I mentioned in an intervention the fundamental question of international jurisdiction. If someone comes to this country from a jurisdiction in which they have been tortured, irrationally imprisoned or abused, or if it is likely that they would suffer such a fate if they went back, we have a clear duty of protection to them under international law. Under the procedures of anti-terror legislation, someone who is suspected of terrorist activity or of harbouring plans for such activity can be detained virtually indefinitely under immigration law. Under the memorandums of understanding that were made between the previous Prime Minister but one, Tony Blair, and a number of Governments, such people can be returned to jurisdictions that have not signed the United Nations convention on torture.

I have a real problem with that. If we support the principles of international law and the international jurisdiction of conventions such as that one, we should carry them out to the fullest extent. We should not deport people to places where there is no protection of their rights under treaties that we have taken for ourselves. Just as when someone goes to prison, when an individual is accused of being a terrorist or of planning a terrorist activity, they do not stop being an individual and they do not lose all their rights. They do not stop being a citizen at that point.

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

I could not agree more with the hon. Gentleman’s point about our deportation of people to countries that could torture them. Does he agree that it is a serious omission in the Bill that the bail conditions imposed by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission will be able to remain at the levels set out in the control orders that are being lessened by the Bill? Should not that omission be corrected?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Indeed so; the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. That matter should be looked at in great detail in Committee. I hope that the Bill will be greatly changed in Committee and that we will hear about those changes on Report. I hope we will move away from the principle of control orders and the conditions that he rightly says are associated with them. I understand that Liberty, whose briefing on this matter I have neither read nor seen, for which I apologise, describes these measures as “low-fat” control orders that have been dressed up to resemble something that they are not.

I represent a mixed, inner-city community constituency, as do many other colleagues, and I am very proud to represent that area. The events of 2001, the invasion of Afghanistan, the invasion of Iraq, the Bush-led war on terror, the axis of evil speech and similar things have had an enormous effect on community relations. They have also generated a degree of Islamophobia within our society and continue to do so, which is a very serious matter. The anti-terrorism legislation and the arguments surrounding the Prevent strategy, like so many other things, play into that agenda.

My borough suffered on 7/7: more people from my borough died than from any other borough—it was a dreadful, awful, terrible day. I do not believe, however, that counter-terrorism legislation that goes around the principle of the use of the criminal law or goes around the norms of parliamentary democracy and open justice will stop those things happening again. That whole process does not make us more safe; ultimately, it puts our society at greater risk and makes it more vulnerable.

Although we are debating a change in the legislation and the Bill is presented as being the end of control orders, the reality is that we are being presented with a different form of control orders. I look forward to the Committee asserting itself when the details of the Bill are debated and improving it a great deal by removing the whole principle of control orders.

Once we give away our powers to secret courts or give away accountability to secret services—I accept that only 48 control orders have been put in place—we are crossing a very big line. We should be very careful about doing that. Our job as Members of Parliament is to ask the awkward question; our job as MPs is to put very awkward questions to those employed by the state to look after law and order and protect us. Above all, our task is to ensure that our liberties are safe, our democracy is safe and that individuals will not be detained irrationally for a very long time on the basis of hearsay evidence that would simply not stand up in a criminal court. That is a bad thing for a democracy; it is a bad thing for us to do.

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[Jeremy Corbyn]

Will the Minister give way?

[James Brokenshire]

I apologise, but I will not as I have a lot to get through in the five minutes remaining to me.

We are committed to prosecuting or deporting terrorists wherever possible, and our starting point will always be that terrorists should be behind bars; the rule of law and getting people to face criminal prosecution before the courts is where we want to be. That is very much our preferred option and I would certainly like to assure all hon. Members of that. It is widely accepted across the House, however, that there are and will be for the foreseeable future a very small number of highly dangerous individuals whom we can neither successfully prosecute nor deport. No responsible Government could allow such individuals to go freely about their terrorist activity.

Other steps should be advanced and we need to take them forward. That is why the comment of my hon. Friend the Member for Newark about post-charge questioning is so relevant. That is why the Government intend to make the necessary PACE—Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984—code changes after a statutory consultation before the summer recess.

Points were made about plea bargaining, and the review of counter-terrorism powers said that further work would be undertaken to ensure that full use is made of the provisions in the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 to increase the evidence and intelligence dividend from defendants and prisoners in terrorism cases.

Intercept evidence was also raised. The lawful interception of communications plays a critical role in tackling serious crime and protecting the British public. Almost all the highest priority counter-terrorist operations and many other serious crime investigations involve the use of intercept. Hon. Members will be aware from the written ministerial statement of 26 January of the ongoing work of the advisory group of Privy Councillors. We will report back on their work in due course.

Mention was made of the special advocates and the disclosure of secret information. The Green Paper is being worked on and we are very cognisant of the issues relevant to it as well as of the many cases relating to it. My hon. Friend the Member for Bedford mentioned the role of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission and the use of secret information in that context. We are considering these issues and the key concerns that have been flagged up, and we will come forward with the Green Paper in due course. I should add the assurance that we will continue to make progress on the issue of deportation. The hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) and my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) mentioned the assurances required on that issue, and we take our international obligations extremely seriously when it comes to assessing the pertinent issues.

Let me quickly address the point made about safety and security by the right hon. Members for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears) and for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins). The Government believe that the package of TPIM restrictions strikes the right balance between protecting the public and protecting the rights of individuals who have not necessarily been charged with any offence. The director general of the Security Service has told the Home Secretary that he considers the changes as providing an acceptable balance between the needs of security and civil liberties, and that the overall package mitigates risk.

Difficult issues arise here, and we are very cognisant of them, while remaining focused on the need to deal with the small number of people who pose a real threat to our security, yet who despite our best efforts cannot be prosecuted. That is why I say, regrettably, that the measures in the Bill are required to deal with this continuing threat in a more targeted and more tightly defined way. That is what we believe is appropriate; that is what we believe is necessary; that is what I think best reflects the needs of this country in giving that continued assurance. This Bill gives effect to those objectives. I commend it to the House.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time.

terrorism prevention and investigation measures Bill (Programme)

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 83A(7)),

That the following provisions shall apply to the Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Bill:

Committal

1. The Bill shall be committed to a Public Bill Committee.

Proceedings in Public Bill Committee

2. Proceedings in the Public Bill Committee shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion on Tuesday 5 July.

3. The Public Bill Committee shall have leave to sit twice on the first day on which it meets.

Consideration and Third Reading

4. Proceedings on Consideration shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour before the moment of interruption on the day on which those proceedings are commenced.

5. Proceedings on Third Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the moment of interruption on that day.

6. Standing Order No. 83B (Programming committees) shall not apply to proceedings on Consideration and Third Reading.

7. Any other proceedings on the Bill (including any proceedings on consideration of Lords Amendments or on any further messages from the Lords) may be programmed.—(Jeremy Wright.)

Question agreed to.

terrorism prevention and investigation measures bill (money)

Queen’s recommendation signified.

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 52(1)(a)),

That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Bill, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of money provided by Parliament of—

(1) any expenditure incurred by a Minister of the Crown by virtue of the Act, and

(2) any increase attributable to the Act in the sums payable out of such money under any other Act.—(Jeremy Wright.)

Question agreed to.