Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Bill

Joanna Cherry Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments & Ping Pong & Ping Pong: House of Commons
Wednesday 27th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dr Lewis]

I have the advantage of having been present when my right hon. Friend made that very point on Second Reading, and therefore I was entirely prepared for that intervention. I will give a response that is perhaps slightly unorthodox, despite the emphasis put on the Human Rights Act by my right hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor General.

In my previous role as Chair of the Defence Committee, it became more and more obvious that the Human Rights Act, and the European convention on human rights, had had serious, and perhaps largely unanticipated, adverse consequences for the operations of our military. I suspect that if applied too literally, they would have equally adverse effects on the operations of our security and intelligence services. As the years go by, and as experience shows, I fully expect that there will have to be amendments to the Human Rights Act. I believe that although terrorists could indeed read it, they would take rather more seriously a categoric list of forbidden offences in the Bill than they would the rather generalised content of the Human Rights Act. I do not expect my right hon. Friend to be wholly satisfied with that, but it is my honest opinion.

Consequently, terrorist groups whose operations might have been compromised by technical means, rather than by human infiltration, would be likely to ask their genuine members to commit more and more forbidden offences, simply to prove their loyalty. The outcome would inevitably be an increase in murders and other serious offences on their lordships’ list, which would not have happened but for the incorporation in statute of such a collection of prohibited crimes.

As I said earlier, the ISC has had a comprehensive briefing from MI5, explaining how those authorisations are used in practice. We are convinced that the Security Service uses them appropriately and proportionately. We are also reassured that the measures in the Bill legalise only what is specified in each criminal conduct authorisation. That means that any other criminal behaviour not covered by the terms of a CCA may be subject to prosecution—a safeguard that will hopefully encourage the House to reject Lords amendment 2. This is one of those occasions when it is necessary—really necessary—to keep our enemies guessing.

[Joanna Cherry [V]]

I mean no disrespect to the Solicitor General when I say that, like others, I am sorry not to see the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire) on the Government Front Bench today. He is a thoroughly decent man. I wish him all the best, and I have been in touch to tell him that privately.

The Scottish National party will support the Lords amendments, but we do not support the Bill. We voted against it on Third Reading for reasons that I set out in some detail in Committee. We regard it as another milestone in the British Government’s retreat from support for such basic rule-of-law principles as equality before the law, and another milestone in the rolling back of human rights protections. That is not to say that we do not see the necessity for some legislation, given the ongoing court proceedings, but we do not think the balance is right in this legislation at all.