Queen’s Speech

Lord Laird Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Laird (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, under the heading of home affairs I want to look at two issues that could affect the human rights of the citizens of the UK. Mention of human rights is included in the gracious Speech, and I wish to look at the activities that are under the heading of Prism.

I want to put on record that I am an admirer of the USA, coming as I do from the Ulster Scots community, which to date has provided 17 Presidents of the United States and many others who were responsible for the formation of that nation as a beacon of independent thinking and freedom. I raise this issue more in sorrow than in anger. My understanding is that Prism is a mass surveillance programme operated in many countries, including the UK. I also understand that it is no part of any scheme operated by the UK information-gathering agencies. Instead, the programme is run by nine major internet companies registered in the UK, which are wholly owned by US parent corporations. They have been required by the US Government to intercept and obtain information from their clients in every field of communications technology that they provide. The Government have known about this activity since 2013, according to the then Foreign Secretary, William Hague, in a letter of June that year. Interestingly, Sir Anthony May QC, the Interception of Communications Commissioner, told the PM in a report of 8 April 2014 that warrantless interception was a criminal offence. He also pointed out that the theft of data was a breach of Article 8 of the human rights convention of 1948.

Coming very close to home, data collected through Prism from your Lordships’ House is stored in the Irish Republic and the Netherlands, according to a letter to John Hemming, then an MP, from the Foreign Secretary on 2 September 2014. When I made inquiries into the Dublin storage, I was informed by someone who should know that the protection against Prism is internally described as being like two cans and a bit of string. Dublin is wide open to data theft.

In the parchment copy of the US Declaration of Independence of 1776, a document in which Ulster Scots people had a vital role, a paragraph goes thus:

“Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us”.

In the light of that paragraph, it is interesting to note that the American Senate is very much exercised in the processing of information gathered in the US, as witnessed by last Sunday’s special sitting when it stopped the practice at home. Members of the Intelligence and Security Committee have told inquirers that Prism is a US issue. However, if it is still in operation in the UK it is an issue for this Government. It is a criminal offence, according to Sir Anthony May QC. Who tells us that Prism runs in the UK? The Investigatory Powers Tribunal, which ruled in December last and in February in the Liberty case that data obtained by the National Security Agency via Prism in the UK, and supplied to GCHQ, were unlawfully obtained. I hope that in this Session HMG will take all necessary steps to regularise the position and to keep your Lordships’ House informed as much as possible.

I turn to another human rights issue. The Irish are a very likeable people, except when some of them are involved in politics. Unfortunately, they allow themselves to get carried away into the Celtic mist. We must be aware of their behaviour and make allowances in HMG’s decision-making. One such mist already seems to surround the area of human rights for those who live in the part of the United Kingdom called Northern Ireland. To some of us, it seems that busloads of so-called experts descend on our Province and offer us advice on human rights. If these experts were gardeners offering to work in my garden, I would take a common-sense approach by checking over their garden before I allowed them into mine. Let me apply that process to human rights, always bearing in mind that the Belfast agreement of 1998 has much to say on the topic and is often recited to us as an example.

The Belfast agreement of 10 April 1998, in the section under “Rights, Safeguards and Equality of Opportunity” on page 31 and in paragraph 3, lists steps by the Irish Government comparable to those for HMG. In this, the Irish Government pledged measures that will ensure at least an equivalent amount of protection of human rights as pertains in Northern Ireland. Let us take some simple, recent examples in the Republic that could affect family life. To this day, anyone seeking state funding to provide clothing for a child’s religious activities, or a couple who seek counselling about marriage, will receive state help, but only if they are, according to the law, of the majority community in religious terms. When it comes to buying a house, to this day the rights listed on page 23 of the Belfast agreement to freely choose one’s place of residence do not apply in the Republic. In areas of that state, property can be sold only to those with a qualification in the Irish language. This discriminates against non-Irish people such as me. The Irish Parliament agreed to pay for the compensation and expenses of children caught up in abuse by church organisations but only if it is the Roman Catholic Church.

I was a member of the Stormont Parliament, which was abolished in 1972 at the behest of the Irish. That Parliament operated under legislation set out in the Government of Ireland Act 1920. Under this, and rightly, if it legislated against anyone on the grounds of religion, the Bill was null and void under Section 5 of that Act. Administration by the Northern Ireland Parliament with the same purpose was null and void under Section 8. The Irish Parliament has no such restriction, however, yet they criticise the UK for its bad record on human rights. Recently the position would have become laughable if it was not so serious. The Irish are telling the world that the UK agreed a Human Rights Act as part of the Belfast agreement of April 1998. The Act referred to was put in place only in November 1998, so how could the UK give an undertaking to something that had not at that stage materialised? How can the Irish claim that Sinn Fein must have a say in changes to the Human Rights Act because they agreed to the Belfast agreement, when the Act was not in the agreement?

I will be most interested in the consultations on human rights outlined in the Queen’s Speech. A simple question will be: why does one part of any country require more human rights than another? I ask HMG to examine the human rights in the Irish Republic. After all, HMG underwrote the implementation of the agreement in the Republic as well as the UK—a point that is often forgotten—to appease the Irish Government.