UK’s Withdrawal from the EU

Debate between Keir Starmer and Peter Kyle

Thursday 14th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Keir Starmer]

The policy we have adopted is clear about what the options are. What we are trying to do today is to put a hard stop to the running down of the clock. That will enable options to be considered in due course. I hope that will happen. When they are considered, we will take our position and we will see where the majority is in the House.

[Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)]

The backstop is taking up a lot of the discussion today because it is incredibly important. May I remind my right hon. and learned Friend that, in the debates leading up to the meaningful vote, concerns about trade were mentioned three times more than the backstop? Can I encourage him to move on now from the backstop and talk about all the other problems that Members across the House have with the deal?

[Keir Starmer]

I am grateful for that intervention. One of the central problems in all this is that the political declaration is 26 pages long, it is vague in the extreme and simply talks about a “spectrum” of outcomes. The main theme of the political declaration is that the extent of any checks at borders will depend on the degree of alignment; therefore, there is a spectrum of outcomes. I think that we all understood that within hours of the referendum. That is why there is all this pressure on the backstop—because the political declaration is so ill-defined.

Investigatory Powers Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Keir Starmer and Peter Kyle

Thursday 24th March 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Keir Starmer]

Q I know there is no such thing as a typical case because they are all shapes and sizes but, in the main, would you have expected a signed statement from somebody setting out the case for necessity and proportionality—why it was necessary—and drawing your attention to the relevant material?

Lord Reid: Yes. That would be the top introduction, but there may well be further papers behind it. In some cases, there may be papers behind it in some depth.

Charles Clarke: If the question is whether there would normally—I am trying to think whether there is any exception to this—be a recommendation by an official based on the data that existed, the answer is yes. I am trying to think whether there are any exceptions to that. I cannot think of any offhand.

[Peter Kyle]

Q One of the innovations of the Bill is the double lock. When you were Home Secretaries, most warrants would have been signed just by the Home Secretary. Will the knowledge of having judicial oversight and a second authorisation before the warrant comes in change the behaviour of the Home Secretary when approaching the decision?

Charles Clarke: I tend to doubt it. Speaking for myself and, I am sure, for John—actually, for all Home Secretaries I have ever discussed this with—we have all been exceptionally aware of the severity and seriousness of what we were looking at. I do not think that the idea that there was going to be a judicial review of what we were doing would have changed our behaviour significantly. There is quite a serious, in-principle issue about the role of the judge as opposed to the role of the Executive.

I saw you taking evidence from Lord Judge just now. I bumped into him as I was coming in. The question of the relationship between the judiciary and the Executive is a key point. I gave evidence on it to the House of Lords Constitution Committee in 2007 because I think it has all been changed by the Human Rights Act 1998. I think there has been insufficient consideration of the changing nature of the relations. In response to your particular point, Mr Kyle, I do not believe that there would have been a significant change in behaviour.

Lord Reid: I do not think there will be a change in behaviour from the point of view of the person who is ultimately accountable to Parliament for the decisions, which is the elected Member and appointed Minister. Probably even before RIPA, which I think Charles took through the House of Commons, there was an awareness that there were degrees of oversight and you were working within certain constraints and certainly with oversight.

I confess that where I would worry—you would perhaps say, “Well, he would, wouldn’t he? He was the Home Secretary.”—is in case the judicial oversight became a co-decision. I think that is a recipe, in some cases, for obstacles to the efficient operation of aspects that I mentioned earlier, for instance in a hostage situation. I know that allowances are being made for that.

I guess that the additional oversight—judicial oversight—that is in the Bill is a result of a number of factors. One is the concern—I do not know whether it is public concern; I do not think it is, but it is certainly published concern—over the Snowden revelations, the general distrust of politicians and the fact that there was a Liberal-Conservative coalition. All of this is compromise, is it not?

I have no in-principle objections to it, provided that the first decision is made by the person accountable for it, through Parliament, to the public and the role of judicial oversight is the judicial element of it.