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Mr. Beith: I thank the Minister for making that clear. He is dealing with precisely the situation that worries me. If somebody complains to a police force and is unaware that the Security Service is involved and it becomes clear
to the police that it was a Security Service matter, will the police tell the complainant that the Security Service is involved and direct him to the tribunal? What will the police response be and how will the complainant know what is happening to his complaint?
Mr. Maclean: As I understand the present position, the police will investigate. If the matter does not concern a police officer, the police will inform the person that there is no case to answer in the context of any of their people and will give the complainant the leaflet that I described, pointing him in the direction of other sources to which he can make a complaint.
Mr. Beith: This is a crucial issue. Does that mean that the police will disclose to the complainant, although they might not wish to do it, that the Security Service was involved in the operation? When they tell the complainant that a police officer was not involved, will they give him any idea at all of the person to whom he should complain?
Mr. Maclean: I understand that that would not be the usual procedure. It is difficult to deal with individual circumstances and hypothetical cases. In all operations, it is important to protect the integrity of the Security Service, but at the same time the police have a duty to use the complaints machinery. The solution that has been adopted of the Security Service designing new information leaflets for every police force in the country, one of which will be given to a complainant who has drawn a blank against a police officer, should be sufficient to ensure that nobody comes up against a brick wall. Currently, people have a right to complain to the Security Service Tribunal and they can complain to the Police Complaints Authority. Those two separate avenues will continue. Whether in the context of terrorism at the moment or of organised crime operations in future, any person with a complaint will still have the same two avenues.
Mr. Jack Straw (Blackburn): I am following the right hon. Gentleman's argument with care. I understand, as I think does the House, that it would not be consistent with practice for the name of a Security Service officer to be given to a complainant. I should like this to be clear. Is the Minister saying that, if there was a joint operation in the unusual circumstances that he describes and the police were satisfied that a complaint did not relate to their officers, information would be given to the complainant in the form of the leaflet, which palpably draws the attention of the complainant to the fact that the complaint, if it is to be directed at anybody, is to be directed at members, albeit unnamed, of the Security Service? That must be the implication of giving a complainant the leaflet that the Minister describes.
Mr. Maclean: The leaflet not only contains information on the Security Service Tribunal but deals with the tribunals that were established under the Interception of Communications Act 1985 and the Intelligence Services Act 1994. The complainant is given a comprehensive list of alternative avenues for possible complaint. The end result is that a complainant is not left without someone to complain to. He may not be happy with the outcome, just as some people are not happy with the Police Complaints Authority procedure or with
Security Service Tribunal procedures. Nevertheless, the aggrieved complainant will not fall through a net because of a joint operation.
Mr. Jim Cousins (Newcastle upon Tyne, Central): Does the Minister regard the police as having a duty to hand over the forms without explanation, or is there simply a possibility of them doing that? As he rightly says, such action would lead the complainant to a likely conclusion.
Mr. Maclean: I would regard that as a duty. If someone comes to the police with a complaint, they have a duty to investigate it unless it is totally frivolous or vexatious. If mechanisms such as the Security Service Tribunal and others have been set up, the police have a duty to pass on the relevant information to the complainant.
Mr. Corbett: This is a serious matter, and the Minister is taking it seriously. The new clause envisages that other agencies apart from the Security Service could be involved. What happens when a complainant thinks that the Security Service was involved in an incident, but finds out that it was in fact Customs and Excise? Will there be a leaflet listing that service as one of the options? Such a situation could arise in drugs cases, for example.
Mr. Maclean: The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point, and I shall certainly consider that possibility. The police may find it helpful to ensure that any complainant who is not their direct responsibility has sufficient information on all possible avenues. It may be that Customs and Excise is already producing a leaflet, but I shall certainly look into that. I see no harm in taking on board the hon. Gentleman's suggestion--if that has not already been done--as it fits in with the principle that I described. If the police are unable to go further because it was not one of their officers, they can issue sufficient leaflets to point complainants in the appropriate direction.
4.30 pm
The process that I have described is not dissimilar to the standard procedure for complaints against police officers. Complaints must be submitted in the first instance to the local police force. If it is the responsibility of the chief officer to investigate the complaint, he must decide with reference to statutory guidelines whether the complaint should be referred to the Police Complaints Authority for supervision of the investigation. Only then does the PCA become involved.
To sum up, the PCA and the Security Service Tribunal have extremely important roles to play, but they carry out their roles in different ways that are appropriate to the organisations that they oversee. The accountability arrangements for the Security Service inevitably have to take some account of the organisation's need for secrecy, while ensuring that members of the public are protected. Similarly, the unique powers granted to police officers require appropriate controls to ensure that they are not abused. I believe that the present methods for dealing with complaints are sufficient, and I do not believe that we should confuse the two by attempting to amalgamate
them. While I listened carefully to what the righthon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed said, I am afraid that I was not convinced by it.
Mr. Beith:
I am sorry that the Minister does not think that the new clause would be a good way of dealing with the problem, and I would submit that it does not do as he suggested. The new clause does not provide an alternative system of discipline, nor does it amalgamate the two procedures. It simply asserts that the existing procedures of the Police Complaints Authority are unaffected in so far as they relate to anything done by police officers under the Bill. I take it that he confirmed in his reply that that was the case, and that he feels that that part of the new clause may be unnecessary.
The new clause goes on to provide a mechanism by which the PCA would pass on complaints to be dealt with by the Security Service mechanisms if a matter turned out to involve a Security Service officer. A report would be produced so that the complainant could see that the complaint had been attended to. The new clause does not make it clear what the body then has to tell the complainant, and that leads us into a difficulty to which I shall come.
The Minister focused precisely on a situation about which I am more than a little concerned. The complainant, having assumed that the police were responsible--accidentally, or because of carelessness or excessive zeal--for disrupting his home, causing his suitability for employment to be put into question or physically interfering with him in some way during an operation makes a complaint to the police machinery. He may suspect that there has been Security Service involvement or he may not; but it turns out that Security Service personnel were involved, and the police reply to him that no police officer was found in the investigation to have been involved in what went wrong. "Here is a leaflet," they will say, "which may be of assistance to you."
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