Justice and Security Bill [Lords]

Nigel Evans Excerpts

Monday 4th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. I ask Members to show some time restraint, because, as they can see, a lot of Members want to speak to the amendment.

[Dr Huppert]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw). Although I am not sure that we agree on everything, I think we do on some things. There have been some interesting discussions between Front and Back Benchers.

I want to focus on some of the amendments. I am pleased to see the recommendations of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which I used to have the pleasure of serving on. I pushed a number of those proposals during the Bill’s Committee stage and we had interesting debates and votes on a range of things. I do not plan to go through every single aspect, because we rehearsed them thoroughly. I am delighted to see that a number of the amendments that I tabled and supported in Committee have come back.

I hope that the Minister will clarify the position on habeas corpus. Indeed, I would be happy to take an intervention from him, because it is a very important issue. I was happy with his clear answer of no. If he can stick to that, it would be fantastic; if not, we should be clear.

I welcome some of the Government’s good amendments. One that has not really been mentioned—it was tabled in the Lords and accepted by the Government—is that which changes “must” to “may”, allowing discretion to the judge, rather than the Minister. That is very welcome and has made a significant improvement. I am pleased that the Government have stuck to it.

I am also pleased that the Government have agreed to amendments on equality of arms to achieve true symmetry. They were recommended by the JCHR and I spoke to them at great length in the Bill Committee. We lost the vote, but I am glad that the Government have now come around to them. Symmetry is important, because one can think of a number of examples where an ex-employee of MI6 may not be able to raise publicly a document that is important to a case that they may wish to bring. In such circumstances, they may wish to have a CMP themselves so that the document can be debated without putting other things at risk. Such cases may be relatively rare, but ensuring pure symmetrical equality is absolutely the right thing to do.

I am also pleased to see reinstated, at least in the text of the Bill, the role of public interest immunity. There is a debate about whether it goes far enough and about what it does, but including it in the Bill is extremely good. I share the view of those who think that PII is not a perfect process. I do not like the secrecy involved, and there is certainly not a great case for it—we have seen, for example, some of the concerns in the Litvinenko case.

There is an issue with regard to last resort. I would like to see closed proceedings as a last resort. I do not think that this is entirely about openness; it is also about fairness and the principle that both sides should have the chance to see the same evidence. I think that it would be accepted everywhere that a CMP can never quite get to that point, because one person is not able to see everything. That is not a great situation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. May I re-emphasise the time constraint?

[Caroline Lucas]

I am pleased to speak in favour of my amendments 1 to 7, and I hope to press amendment 1 to the vote. As colleagues will know, they are designed to get rid of part 2 in its entirety. That part would allow Ministers to use secret courts in a wide range of cases, for example any in which they could claim that national security was involved.

Let us look at some examples of when secret courts could be used, such as the cases of the bereaved families of soldiers bringing negligence claims against the Ministry of Defence. Debi Allbutt, whose husband was killed in a so-called friendly fire hit on his Challenger tank in Iraq, has said:

“I really don’t think people in the country realise how dangerous this new law will be for justice. I think anyone in my position deserves to know the truth about how their husband, a brave soldier fighting for his country, lost his life.”

Let us think of cases involving victims of torture or rendition in which the Government have been involved, who are seeking redress. They would also be affected, including such people as Khadija al-Saadi, who was 12 years old when she was rendered by MI6 to Gaddafi’s Libya along with her mother, three younger siblings and Gaddafi-opposing father. In a letter published by the prisoners’ human rights group Reprieve, she has said:

“I wrote to Ken Clarke when I heard about the secret courts plan, but he would not say that he would not seek to try my case in secret. I still feel this would have been unnecessary, unfair, and unworthy of the UK. I hope the inquiry will be as open and as fair as the phone hacking inquiry.

Secret courts could also be used in actions against the Government over corruption in arms deals. On Second Reading, Ministers refused to rule out the possibility of that in some cases:

“if there was embarrassment over arms sales to a particular country, where those sold arms had been used to deny the human rights of many others, against the policies and wishes of this country, and there was a desire not to make that too public”.—[Official Report, 18 December 2012; Vol. 555, c. 722.]

A case of corruption in arms deals is therefore another that would not be held in open court.

Habeas corpus claims are at risk, too. Claims under the centuries-old safeguard against illegal detention, which forces the authorities either to charge or release a prisoner, are generally considered civil actions, so secret courts could mean people being imprisoned without knowing why. That was exactly what the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire), said in the Public Bill Committee—that the Bill would cover habeas corpus claims. My new clause 2 would address that.

The question this evening is whether we really want to allow the Government to ensure that everything from state involvement in torture to the neglect of British soldiers could be hidden from public view. After a decade that has seen our intelligence agencies become involved in unprecedented complicity in wrongdoing, we should ask how we can prevent that from ever happening again, not how to remove the safeguards that allow us to hold the state and its agencies to account. That is especially true when, as the high-profile case of Binyam Mohamed has amply illustrated, the security agencies have shown that they are prepared to mislead the judiciary, and given that judges tend to defer to Ministers when faced with arguments about national security.