National Security Bill

Debate between Robert Buckland and Lord Beamish

Report stage
Wednesday 16th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Sir Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I will not be able to emulate the admirable record of my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Sir Charles Walker), but I will do my best to be as succinct as possible. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis), who is right when he says that we have to strike a balance here: we need to protect our way of life but not protect ourselves out of the very values that we seek to defend—or, in other words, diminish the very rights that we want to protect. That is at the heart of all the national security legislation that I and others in this House have dealt with over the years. I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Minister for Security for our conversations about these issues.

I cannot conceal my disappointment at the non-selection of new clause 8, in the name of the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones), which was signed by me and others. It is inevitable that this issue will be revisited in the other place. There are two issues that arise from it that are of general application to the Bill and to the future reform of the Official Secrets Act, which has to come. The first is the potential creation of a public interest defence, which in my view is an essential substitute to the rather random guessing game that we have at the moment, with jury trials—however well directed the juries might be—ending up with verdicts that, to many of us, seem perverse.

The second relates to the recommendation to create a statutory commission to allow people to raise their concerns—to whistleblow, if you like—through an approved process. The Law Commission’s report of September 2020 made those very clear and cogent recommendations and I commend them strongly to my right hon. Friend the Minister. I think they go hand in hand. The time is here for the Government to start addressing these issues and to adopt those recommendations. To quote my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne in another context: if not now, when?

[Mr Kevan Jones]

There are many things in the Bill that I support, but I think it is a missed opportunity. It has been a messy process in Committee, as has been said, as a result of the number of Ministers we have had dealing with it, the late inclusion of things like the foreign agents registration scheme and the completely missed opportunity to reform the Official Secrets Act 1989. The new Minister is very good, but he is a bit like a friendly old bank manager: he listens to you, he agrees with you and he is sympathetic, but you do not get the loan at the end of the day. The point is, however, that this Bill will be changed radically in the other place, because we have not had the proper amount of time to do it.

I want to refer to clause 27, which has been spoken to by the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) and my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis). I was on the Intelligence and Security Committee when we were discussing detention and rendition, and some of the things that went on then did not make for pretty reading. We do not want to go back to those days. Things were changed in the consolidated guidance and the principles were brought forward. One of the sops for the Committee—a phrase that everyone kept using—was that there could be a chilling effect on the security services. Everyone kept asking what the chilling effect would be.

A commitment was given to allow the ISC to have classified information on this, and the Chairman of the ISC wanted that before today because it would have given us an opportunity to say whether we were satisfied. Unfortunately, that was turned down, but we have had the initial information and I and other members of the Committee are not yet satisfied that there is justification for this. We have asked for more information, which we are going to receive, but it would have been handy to have it before today. Unless there is good cause, frankly I think it will be interesting to see how this can be justified.

Referring to something that the right hon. and learned Member for South Swindon (Sir Robert Buckland) said, I am disappointed that my new clause 8 was not selected. This is one of those things in the Bill that will come back. The equivalent new clause was selected in Committee only because the hon. Member for North Wiltshire (James Gray) and my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali) in the Chair agreed to it, so I was not surprised that the Clerks knocked it out of selection, but it will not go away. My fear is that a great opportunity to modernise our national security landscape is being completely missed. I do not think we will see a Bill on public interest or reforming the 1989 Act, but it desperately needs to be done.

Streatham Incident

Debate between Robert Buckland and Lord Beamish

Monday 3rd February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Robert Buckland]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to remind us of the powers of Parliament in that respect, and, indeed, of the role of the Law Officers in giving consent to legislation that has retrospective effect. I remind the House that this is all about the administration of sentences, rather than their actual length or type. That is why I judge it appropriate in these unprecedented circumstances to introduce this legislation. I will discuss the details of the matters he raises with him when the legislation is introduced.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

I have no problem in supporting stopping early release, but the Secretary of State is aware that there are individuals who, no matter how much rehabilitation we do, will come out still dangerous. When, in the last Parliament, the Intelligence and Security Committee took evidence on the Westminster Bridge attack, the security services raised with the Committee concern about 38, I think, individuals who would be released in the next two years and considered as dangerous. Was this individual one of them? I suspect that he was if he was being followed by an MI5 team. What are we going to do in terms of protecting the public from these individuals, because they will come out anyway after a certain period, early release or not? If the Government did know about this individual beforehand, why did they not intercede beforehand, because I know that the Security Service has real, serious concerns about these people on quite short sentences?

[Robert Buckland]

I pay tribute to the work of the right. hon. Gentleman on that Committee. He will know that it would be invidious of me to descend into the particular circumstances of this individual case, as the investigation is ongoing, but he raises a valid point about the monitoring of offenders post sentence and post licence. That is why I am looking very carefully to see what can be done in the provisions of the new counter-terrorism Bill to extend the purchase of the licence system to elongate licences so that we have that formal system as part of the sentence. The right hon. Gentleman also echoes the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire) on whether more can be done with regard to a particular regime that could be applied. These are difficult questions, but I am sure that he and I will engage upon them in the weeks ahead.

Mesothelioma Bill [Lords]

Debate between Robert Buckland and Lord Beamish

Monday 2nd December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Jarrow (Mr Hepburn), who spoke with understandable passion. All of us who know something about industrial life in this country are aware that for too long we were literally in a state of ignorance. I think of industrial deafness, which affected members of my family, and of other respiratory diseases. In particular, I think of mesothelioma, and of the date of knowledge in law, which is deemed to be 1969. It is assumed for the purposes of liability that, until that date, employers, businesses and industries throughout the country—and the people who worked in those businesses, delivering productivity and profit for year after year—were labouring in a state of ignorance. That is a tragedy when we consider the individual stories of the workers and what they went through.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman’s point about the date of knowledge, but, as he knows, mesothelioma was originally identified in the Meriwether report of 1931. After the second world war, the Government wrote to the British shipowners’ confederation drawing attention to the dangers of asbestos. For all those years the fact that it is a danger to health was denied, although that was known to be the case.

[Mr Buckland]

I was coming to that point. Although for the purposes of liability knowledge of the dangers is defined as having started in 1969, we know that the debate had been going on for many years before that. It is a tragedy that the decision was not made for a generation. Thousands of workers, many of whom are no longer with us, were working in dangerous conditions.

I represent Swindon, a railway town which had the Great Western Railway at its heart, and had a railway works until 1986, and I have heard stories from many former railway workers who worked in and around asbestos every day of their working lives. Asbestos was being transported along the railway system, but it was also being used to line the boilers and pipes, and to insulate the heat generators which are an integral part of a locomotive. More than that, however, asbestos was being used to line all the carriages built at the Swindon works, and asbestos was used in sprays that were applied to surfaces within and without those carriages. It was very much part of the essence of working life in Swindon. For very many people whom I know exposure to asbestos has been a reality, and that means that many people are still carrying a latent disease—a latent disease that can manifest itself as late as 40 or even 50 years after exposure.

I am going to single out one person, not because he would have regarded himself as an exceptional man, but because he rose to become the mayor of our town and because he died this year from mesothelioma. Rex Barnett worked for British Rail from 1953 to 1961. It was while he was there that he was exposed to asbestos and went on to develop what was for many years a latent disease. He was diagnosed with pleural plaques back in the mid ’90s and then was one of the unfortunate people who went on to develop mesothelioma right at the end of his mayoral year in 2011. Rex battled on. He was an indefatigable character who in his mayoral year raised over £60,000 for local charities, an exceptional feat in itself. He battled on for another two years, but finally, sadly and tragically, succumbed this year. In his memory and the memory of thousands of other people who worked alongside him, this measure is a welcome one.

I pause now for a moment to think about the memorial garden we have in Queen’s park in Swindon to the victims of mesothelioma, which is marked by a very simple memorial, and which gives members of my community an opportunity to contemplate and consider the sacrifice— the unwitting sacrifice—that was made by those who were exposed for all that time to lethal amounts of asbestos.

In my early legal career I was trained in personal injury work, which included industrial compensation, and therefore have some, albeit limited, experience of dealing with claims relating to conditions such as mesothelioma. I think that perhaps we are in danger of oversimplifying the position when talking, perfectly naturally, about the need for a swift resolution to the claims made by victims of this disease and their families. There is a danger that seeking to resolve claims before death could lead to a significant under-settlement of claims, which would deprive dependants of the victims of a substantial proportion of the damages they could recover in a posthumous claim.

I think it is right to talk very briefly in this Second Reading debate about the wider position and principles, while recognising the fact that this Bill will deal with a relatively small cohort of people for whom traceability of employer or insurer has not been possible. The following important point has been raised with me by claimants’ solicitors, some of whom have years of experience in practice in Swindon. The regime that applies to posthumous claims for damages is still dramatically different in England and Wales from that which applies to those made during the lifetime of the claimant. For example, bereavement damages are not payable during the lifetime of claimants, claimants cannot recover for future funeral expenses during their lifetime, and living claimants cannot recover damages for services provided to dependants after death; that is recoverable only as a services dependency under the Fatal Accidents Act 1976. It is clear that under that Act income dependency claims will usually be significantly more for dependants than a lost years claim made under common law for a living claimant. It is clear that claims that are brought by widows after death will be about 20%—a fifth—more valuable than equivalent claims made during life. So the dilemma for mesothelioma sufferers going through all the pain and struggle they have to endure is: do they resolve their claims during their lifetime for what will be a lesser sum, or do they die with a claim unresolved?

It is interesting to note that the Scots have legislated to bring the rights of relatives before and after death into some alignment. That is one of way of dealing with this, but there are alternatives that could, and do, deliver a practical solution.