Justice and Security Bill [Lords]

Richard Shepherd Excerpts

Monday 4th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

I will give shorter answers if I can. I will give way to a Member on my side of the House.

[Sir Richard Shepherd (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)]

My right hon. and learned Friend has come against the rock of the special advocates. They have looked at this business and rejected it universally. They are the ones who are supposed to carry these court cases through and they do not like the proposal. I do not like it and, as this debate progresses, I think we will find that many more Members of this House do not like it either.

[Mr Clarke]

I thought we were doing all right with this Bill until the special advocates came out with their remarkable evidence to the Joint Committee on Human Rights. I agree that that got me into a lot of trouble. I do not understand why they take that ferocious view. As I have demonstrated before with plenty of quotations, they do win cases. One would think that they are powerless, but they do succeed. The judges accord to special advocates much more power of persuasion than they seem to accord to themselves, because judges want to have a special advocate to help them test the evidence when they are reaching their conclusion.

Of course, special advocates act on behalf of the claimants, as do most of the people who make these objections. I am not accusing them, because their motives are the highest and most honourable, but they have got into a frame of mind where they think that anything that is not advantageous to the claimant must be bad. Even at the height of my enthusiasm for human rights and the rule of law, I cannot get myself into that position. Claimants should be obliged to prove their case and I believe that special advocates are the most effective means that we have of testing the Government’s case on behalf of claimants.

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[Hazel Blears]

As ever, my colleague on the Intelligence and Security Committee makes the point in straightforward, direct and proper terms. My understanding is that the Opposition accept that in a small number of cases it will be necessary to have closed material proceedings and that PII does not meet the case in every set of circumstances.

[Sir Richard Shepherd]

On the point that the right hon. Lady was making in respect of balance, there is another element that is not often discussed but which is surely central to our system of justice—the openness of it and the confidence, therefore, that the general public can have in due process. That is what this debate obscures. I grew up with Matrix Churchill, and I think the right hon. Lady’s time in Parliament coincided with that. Those are the worries that inform part of the anxiety about the Bill.

[Hazel Blears]

The hon. Gentleman, as ever, speaks with passion on these issues and I respect his point of view. I was a lawyer a long time ago and I understand how important it is to have open justice, but it is also important to get the balance right.

Amendment 30 is about the Wiley balance. I have some difficulty with the amendment because I feel that the Wiley balance is perfectly appropriate for PII, because it is used to decide whether to include or exclude material and whether or not there should be an open hearing. It strikes me that in relation to closed material proceedings there is a more complex and nuanced decision to make which contains different factors. I am keen that we get a balance and that we get the balance right, but I am convinced that the Wiley balance is one that we can simply transpose into the new legislation and that it will be effective.

Amendments 34 and 37 are about whether every other method has to be exhausted before we can get to a closed material proceeding. I am disappointed that there is not more agreement across the House on this. We all want to see whether cases can be dealt with in another way, because closed material proceedings should be the absolute minimum—an irreducible core, as I put it, of cases. I wonder whether the determination could be made by the Secretary of State, having considered whether PII would be suitable, and whether there could be some mechanism for the court to exercise a scrutiny function on whether the Secretary of State’s consideration had been more than cursory.

There will be concerns if the Secretary of State just ticks a box and says, “I’ve considered PII, in my bath”—as the hon. Member for Chichester said—rather than going through a proper process. I would like to see, whether or not we end up in ping-pong with the Lords, something in the Bill that says that the court has to take a proper look at the Secretary of State’s consideration of PII. That would not be exhaustive, but would have some substance to it. I ask the Minister to consider taking that into account.

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[Sir Malcolm Rifkind]

I want to make one other point, if I may.

The other element that critics of the Bill do not take into account is that much of the information we are talking about can relate to misunderstandings on the part of the terrorists or criminals, who sometimes do not realise when their conversations are being listened to or when their property has been entered under lawful warrants and information obtained. They do not realise how stupid some of the precautions are that they take to protect their evil plans. That kind of information cannot be released in court. The plaintiff might be an innocent person, but if the information is released in court, it becomes available to the whole world, including the terrorist organisations and criminals themselves.

[Sir Richard Shepherd]

I am moved by the impassioned nature of my right hon. and learned Friend’s response to this matter. He is quite right; this is a serious matter and no one doubts that. Is it not strange, however, that some of the information that we are accused of passing on comes from the American court system? We have been held accountable by American intelligence for that as though it were a fault on our part. If the Americans are able to maintain their tradition of an open court system, why should we not do so?

[Sir Malcolm Rifkind]

I know the case that my hon. Friend is referring to, but that is not really the point at issue. The point is that when intelligence agencies, including the British ones, share information with their friends and allies from other countries, they do so on the strict condition that that information will not enter the public domain without their permission. This is not so much a question of whether the information in a particular document might be harmful; it is a principle, and that principle must not be breached.

[Sir Richard Shepherd]

rose—

[Sir Malcolm Rifkind]

I am conscious of the time, and I want to make a few more points, if my hon. Friend will forgive me.

This point goes to the heart of what Lord Woolf, the former Lord Chief Justice, has said. The plaintiffs themselves will sometimes benefit from the arrangements, as well as the Government who are defending the case. I can think of current cases, some of which are controversial, in which information given to the judge about the activities of the intelligence agencies some years ago could well help the plaintiff as well as the Government.

Furthermore, if it was suggested that a particular closed material procedure had been drawn too widely to include information that did not need to be protected, the benefit of the special advocate system is that if the advocate was doing their job properly, they would raise the matter with the judge. If the judge was satisfied that the breadth of the closed material procedure needed to be reduced, the evidence in question could be heard in open court.