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Dr. Norman A. Godman (Greenock and Port Glasgow): If Security Service officials, acting under the instructions of the chief constable, misbehave in some way, cannot a complaint be levelled against the chief constable, given that he is responsible for those officials?
Mr. Beith: Not in those circumstances. The Security Service officials will not act under the direction of a chief constable. They will act under the Director-General of the Security Service, carrying out a function that the National Criminal Intelligence Service has agreed can be carried out. It is hoped that under the proposed arrangements, NCIS will have alerted the chief constable of the area concerned, if it is feasible to do so and if it is not an operation that involves many force areas, with people moving about quickly. It will not, however, be directly under the direction of any chief constable of any region. That route to complaining and accountability will, as I understand the Bill, not be available.
Mr. Robin Corbett (Birmingham, Erdington): The right hon. Gentleman seems to suggest that Security Service personnel involved under the instruction of the police in these activities would act in similar ways to police officers. We were told by the Home Secretary and others in Committee that, in the battle against organised crime, those personnel would bring skills--in desk analysis, intelligence and all the rest of it--that were not widely available to the police. Does he envisage that a large number of Security Service personnel will be involved in what we might more properly describe as normal policing operations with regard to organised crime?
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Mr. Beith: No, but that does not mean that Security Service personnel will not be involved in situations that also involve police officers and that could give rise to a complaint. That could happen in a wide variety of circumstances. They include eavesdropping activity, in which both Security Service and police personnel were present, and similar activity undertaken as part of an inquiry agreed with the police but where the police were not present. There has been speculation in the press that,
in some circumstances, the Security Service might seek to destabilise some criminal conspiracy. People familiar with police complaints procedure have suggested to me that that could easily generate complaints to the Police Complaints Authority which would turn out to be more appropriate to the Security Service tribunal. Is there some risk that the complaint will fall between the two and will not be adequately investigated?
Under the Bill, Security Service personnel will not arrest people or undertake such normal police operations, but many sorts of complaint can arise from the other level of work in which they would be involved--even analysis. An individual might wish to complain if information were being gathered and put together in a way that, because of its incompetence and carelessness, was seriously damaging to him. That could lead to questions at his place of work and many problems when the operation became known, even though it was a mistake--the individual had nothing to do with it. At no level can we preclude the possibility of a complaint being made. At some levels complaints are likely to take place.
We must get this matter right. The Bill does not deal with it properly. I hope that the Government will give some careful thought to how the issues can be resolved, not least so that the Police Complaints Authority and the Security Service Tribunal have some guidance on how to approach the matter. The Bill's provisions may initially involve a small number of people, but it introduces a significant change from a system in which policing activity is undertaken only by accountable police forces, with a structure of discipline and accountability and a well-known procedure for complaints.
Into that world, especially in relation to organised crime, will come a small element of an organisation that, because of the nature of much of its work in fighting terrorism and foreign intelligence, must operate in secret. Some public protections surround that organisation too, but they are not the same and they were not designed to cover the circumstances that arise in dealing with crime and with the greater contact with the public that such activities against crime could bring about.
We cannot put such a Bill on the statute book without ensuring that there is proper accountability and a proper procedure for the public's complaints to be dealt with in a fair and efficient way. So far, that has not been done.
Mr. Alun Michael (Cardiff, South and Penarth):
I am sorry that I cannot agree with the suggestions of the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith). In proposing that the Bill should be set aside, he gave the reason why we supported the Bill in the first place. We believe that resources need to remain available for the fight against terrorism, but we all hope that peace will prevail.
Being able to move resources from terrorism to crime, and back again if circumstances so require, is just the way to create the necessary flexibility. We should certainly give out no signal that the resources to defeat terrorism will be moved away; nor should we give the slightest succour to those who hope that peace has ended by abandoning this Bill. We need to make sure that the lines between the usual work of MI5 and its work in support of the police are clearly drawn. Moving precipitately in either direction would be to risk the very dangers of which the right hon. Gentleman spoke.
We dealt with a number of serious issues in Committee, and it is fair to say that we made considerable progress there. There was agreement on the central role of the police in setting the tasks for the Security Service. Although a definition in law is difficult, we agreed that we were all in favour of using the Security Service to deal with serious and organised crime. The problem resembles that of the elephant: it is easy to recognise but difficult to define. Thirdly, we were very keen on putting systems in place to guarantee transparency and accountability.
It became clear in Committee that hon. Members shared a common will to make progress. In some debates, it was clear that we shared a common aspiration but experienced some difficulty in giving legislative form to the precise definitions that we wanted. Such flexibility led to the introduction of this piece of legislation in the first place. This place was shown at its best during our Committee debates; Members tried to come up with solutions, not problems. Sometimes the Opposition merely point out problems in Government legislation, and the Government content themselves with giving reasons why they will not accept our amendments. But this was an unusual case. We hope that some of the issues will be given further clarification today, on the record in Hansard; I am content to record the fact that our debates in Committee were healthy and positive.
With only minor modifications, the Minister accepted Labour's proposed mechanism to ensure that a chief officer of police sets the task, agrees the system and in effects acts as the guardian at the gate--an important step forward. So, too, is the understanding that the resources of the Security Service are to be used only in respect of what we would all recognise as serious, organised crime.
Another issue that we raised concerned accountability and how complaints should be dealt with. The Security Service has a separate system for dealing with complaints. It cannot by any stretch of the imagination be described as transparent in the way that the police complaints system can be. I hasten to add that I do not regard the police complaints system as wholly satisfactory. Like most constituency Members, I regard it with something of a jaundiced eye. Still, it is transparent and accountable, and this House is ultimately responsible for it.
I am not sure that the mechanism suggested in the new clause is the right one. In Committee, we suggested other ways of dealing with accountability procedures. They might be dealt with by the House at an appropriate stage, so that the Home Secretary and others concerned with these issues can learn from the experience, instead of having to judge everything in advance. It is certainly important to give members of the public who want a complaint investigated a way of having it investigated in a manner that is not obscure or closed to them.
I therefore hope that, in response to our debates, here and in Committee, the Minister will be willing to assure us that the Government intend to enable proper complaints to be properly investigated. I hope, too, that these matters will be kept under review, and that a means of keeping the House informed will be searched for and found.
Dr. Godman:
I promise to be brief. Unfortunately, I did not receive an invitation to serve on the Committee.
Mr. Michael:
We missed my hon. Friend.
Dr. Godman:
I am sure that I was deeply missed, especially by the Minister of State, the right hon. Member for Penrith and the Border (Mr. Maclean).
I have considerable sympathy for new clause 1. I have spoken to a couple of senior police officers about the need for assistance from MI5 in the pursuit of serious criminals. I regret to say that in the west of Scotland there are a few individuals who actively engage in trafficking arms to Northern Ireland. When I was a member of the review committee at Edinburgh prison at Saughton, I interviewed in a period of six months three men who were being assessed for parole and had been gaoled for running munitions to Northern Ireland. They had rightly received heavy sentences.
At a recent High Court hearing in Scotland, a prominent member of a loyalist paramilitary organisation, who will be known to some hon. Members, was rightly gaoled for 10 years for trafficking in arms. The Strathclyde police force job did an excellent job in tracking him and his henchmen down and bringing them to the High Court. The police officers to whom I have spoken would welcome any assistance from intelligence officers in tracking down criminals of that sort.
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