Justice and Security Bill [Lords]
Debate between Malcolm Rifkind and David Davis(11 years, 8 months ago)
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Sir Malcolm Rifkind
As a Minister who signed a PII certificate in the Matrix Churchill case and was vindicated by the Scott inquiry for having done so, may I say, yes, of course, some things can be permitted through PII? As my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister said, the real issues that would damage national security cannot be considered either by the judge or by anyone else. My right hon. and learned Friend perhaps does not appreciate that even when closed procedures may be approved by the court, once special advocates have been appointed, if the special advocates, having had access to the secret material, put forward a convincing case to the judge that some of that need not continue to be held under closed procedures but can be held in open court, the judge, if so persuaded, is perfectly free to do so. The special advocates themselves, unlike their clients, can put forward that argument, and have done so in immigration cases, and that point has not been mentioned in this debate so far.
Justice and Security Bill [Lords]
Debate between Malcolm Rifkind and David Davis(11 years, 11 months ago)
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Mr Davis
A defence lawyer has the role of challenging the evidence, but I will come back to the right hon. Gentleman’s point later.
The Bill is, in the words of Lord David Pannick, a leading barrister—indeed, he is the Government’s leading barrister of choice—“unnecessary, unfair and unbalanced”. He said it is unnecessary because we already have the public interest immunity system.
Sir Malcolm Rifkind
My right hon. Friend has chosen to quote Lord Pannick, but in the debate in the House of Lords on 11 July, he also said:
“I recognise that there may well be a need in some exceptional cases for a…closed material procedure, but…this should be a last rather than a first resort.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 11 July 2012; Vol. 738, c. 1176.]
Mr Davis
If my right hon. and learned Friend will forgive me, I have run out of injury time.
If a case involves sensitive information, the Secretary of State asks the judge’s permission to keep documents away from the court. The judge examines the evidence and makes a decision that balances national security with the interests of justice. Under the PII system, evidence can be shown in an edited form, and witnesses, whether spies or special forces or whoever, can speak from behind screens. Suspects can be given the gist of the case against them, and the court can sit in open session or in camera. All those operations are possible under the PII system, which has served British justice well for decades, not just against the current threat of terrorism, but against the Soviet threat, which in many ways was much more professional, and the previous Irish terrorist threat. The proof of the PII system is that no Government, including this one, can point to a single court judgment that has undermined national security—not one judgment.