Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill

Lord Faulks Excerpts

3rd reading
Tuesday 4th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Northern Ireland Office (Lord Caine) (Con)]

My Lords, I committed to tabling an amendment at Third Reading in response to widespread concerns raised by the House over the 2020 Supreme Court ruling concerning the validity of interim custody orders made under Troubles-era internment legislation. We debated these issues at length during the amending stages, and I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, and my noble friend Lord Godson for raising these matters and for the constructive manner in which they engaged on the amendments that I tabled late last week.

To be clear, it has always been the Government’s understanding that interim custody orders, made by Ministers of the Crown under powers conferred on the Secretary of State, were perfectly valid. To restore clarity around the legal position and ensure that no one is inappropriately advantaged by a different interpretation of the law on a technicality, I have tabled amendments that retrospectively validate all interim custody orders made under Article 4 of the Detention of Terrorists (Northern Ireland) Order 1972, as well as paragraph 11 of Schedule 1 to the Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Act 1973. This has the effect of confirming that a person’s detention under an interim custody order was not unlawful simply because it had been made by a junior Minister rather than by the Secretary of State personally, as was always the understanding of successive Governments.

The amendments would also prohibit certain types of legal proceedings, including civil cases, applications for compensation as a result of miscarriages of justice, and appeals against conviction which rely on the 2020 ruling from being brought or continued. To align with other prohibitions in the Bill, the continuation of pending claims and appeals in scope would be prohibited immediately from commencement.

There is a specific exemption in the Bill for certain types of ongoing criminal appeals, where leave to appeal has already been granted or where there has been a referral by the Criminal Cases Review Commission by the time of the Bill’s commencement. Importantly, this exception would not allow for the payment of compensation flowing from the reversal of such convictions. I make it clear that this amendment would not lead to convictions already reversed being reinstated. I hope the House will join me in welcoming the legal clarity that these amendments bring. I beg to move.

[Lord Faulks (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for tabling these amendments in response to amendments tabled by me and the noble Lord, Lord Godson, which were supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey. I thank the Minister and his officials very much for the constructive way in which they engaged with us to produce this complex amendment in response to our simpler but plainly inadequate amendment. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Butler, who is not in his place. He supported the amendment on the basis of the well-understood Carltona doctrine.

I have also been asked to mention the noble Lord, Lord Howell, who is in the interesting position of being the only living Minister who was in Northern Ireland at the time and directly involved with this and a number of other ICOs. I thank him and many other noble Lords for their help with these amendments. They will do a great deal to restore the Carltona principle to its proper place and it will put right a decision of the Supreme Court which was no doubt reached in good faith but which was, in retrospect, wrongly decided.

I have a couple of questions for the Minister, of which I have given him notice. The first is in relation to the commencement date for the two new clauses. They are described as coming into force two months after Royal Assent. I understand what he says about those extant criminal appeals. It seems that delaying this for two months risks there being some further appeals which will go forward on the rather unfortunate premise that the relevant ICOs were unlawfully entered into. Can he clarify that?

Secondly, the second proposed new clause contains an order-making power, for regulations under Section 55(2), which is consequential on the section and allows a Minister to amend this Act. They are subject to the affirmative procedure, but I am concerned, as the House always is, by powers of this scale. I seek an assurance from the Minister: although I know that the current Secretary of State will not be amending the Act to, in any way, take away with the left hand what it has given with the right, it would be useful to have on record the assurance that the Bill does not intend to amend its provisions in any substantial way, particularly those that are the subject of these amendments.

I welcome these amendments and thank the Government very much for their co-operation.

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

My Lords, I support the amendments, but mention has been made of the Supreme Court judgment in R v Adams [2020] UKSC 19, which caused the difficulties that these amendments are designed to address.

On 26 June, on Report, my noble friend Lord Faulks referred to Policy Exchange as having

“consistently and cogently argued that the decision flew in the face of the well-established Carltona doctrine”.

That has been explained as the doctrine that the powers of the Secretary of State may be exercised on their behalf by junior Ministers or officials. My noble friend Lord Butler of Brockwell expressed concern that the Carltona judgment

“has been thrown into doubt by this judgment”,

which he described as “this very extraordinary ruling”. The noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, said that he was

“astonished, frankly, that such a legal error could have been made”.—[Official Report, 26/6/23; cols. 502-6.]

The judgment of the five judges of the Supreme Court was given by the late Lord Kerr of Tonaghmore, a distinguished and much-respected jurist. In his judgment, Lord Kerr recognised the role and importance of the Carltona principle. His reasoning was that the principle did not apply in the Gerry Adams case, because of the specific wording of the relevant statutory provision, which expressly distinguished between the making of the detention order and the signing of the order. The statutory provision said that the order could be signed by the Secretary of State, a Minister of State or an Under-Secretary of State. Lord Kerr’s conclusion was that the distinction expressly drawn in the statutory provision between the making and the signing of the order necessarily meant that only the Secretary of State could make the order.

My point is that it is simply wrong to accuse Lord Kerr of ignoring the Carltona principle or throwing it into doubt. The judgment, whether or not you agree with it—different views are, of course, permissible—was based on an analysis of the express terms of the relevant statutory provision. I am concerned that this House should not unfairly impugn the reputation—the well-deserved, high reputation—of the late Lord Kerr.

If I understood the Minister’s opening remarks correctly, he said that the amendment restores the legal position, as it had been widely understood by Ministers, prior to the Supreme Court judgment. With respect, that is not quite right, because Lord Kerr’s judgment refers to the legal advice that was given to the Attorney-General in July 1974 by JBE Hutton QC, later Lord Hutton of Bresagh. Mr Hutton, as he then was, advised Ministers through the Attorney-General. I quote from paragraph 6 of the judgment of Lord Kerr that

“a court would probably hold that it would be a condition precedent to the making of an ICO that the Secretary of State should have considered the matter personally”.

I repeat: I support the amendment, but I hope it is appropriate to put those matters on record.