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Mr. Rupert Allason (Torbay): I hope that we will not involve such sinister organisations as the Church of England.
I invite the right hon. Gentleman to speculate on the role of an intelligence officer who participates in a surveillance operation with a colleague who is a police
officer. It is a golden recipe for muddle and confusion. Those two officers, who will be conducting a joint operation, will be subject to quite different codes of discipline. One is fairly overt, with the police officer being subject to the police complaints procedure, but the other protects the intelligence officer with a great panoply of secrecy, with the tribunal and the commissioner as the very last resort.
Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that that is a recipe for great mischief? Would it not be better for both officers to be subject to precisely the same discipline while part of a police joint operation? Should they not both be subject to the police complaints procedure?
Mr. Beith:
I would have preferred just that solution. Indeed, the position described by the hon. Gentleman is dealt with not only in this new clause, but in amendment No. 1, which deals with the different warranting procedures that should apply in an eavesdropping operation. We will deal with that amendment later. The hon. Gentleman implied a transfer of personnel, which is not the route chosen by the Government in the Bill. In principle, I would have preferred that, although it removes the ability to switch resources between the various activities in which the Security Service is involved.
There is a dilemma. If we are not careful, we will create a situation in which anyone will be able to find out whether the Security Service has been involved in an operation against him--simply by submitting a complaint and waiting for the appropriate leaflets to arrive. That may be a slow process and the complainant may not find out what he wants to know for 12 months or so--but when he gets the leaflets, he will know.
The complainant will receive information and he will be invited to consider whether he wishes to use the complaints machinery of any of several organisations.I do not think that that is a good solution. It would have been better to give the Police Complaints Authority some responsibility for satisfying itself on that point. After all, it could inquire whether the Security Service was involved, pursue the complaint and then go back to the complainant--as it would with any genuine complaint--and say that not only did no police officer act improperly but that it was satisfied that no officer of any other agency was involved. The complainant would not then need to go elsewhere, because the PCA would have been able to establish that fact and relay it to the complainant, without providing an easy route by which a complainant could find out whether the Security Service was involved.
I do not think that some aspects of this matter have been sufficiently thought through. I do not have total confidence in the form that I have chosen, although, having listened to the debate, I genuinely believe that it is better than the leaflet procedure. I invite the Minister to consider it further before the Bill gets to the other place. Perhaps there could be further discussion with the PCA and the Security Service Tribunal and commissioner to find a way to ensure that there is no hole into which matters could fall and that the whole thing does not simply become a device through which a damaging disclosure could occur.
At the same time, the public need to be sure that they will not be led a dance and that, if there is a proper complaint, it will be directed to wherever it can best be properly investigated. At the end of the day, the public
need to be satisfied that, in so far as the complaints bodies are effective, the complaint has been examined and found to be either justified or not justified. We are not yet at that point. I wonder if the Minister can tell me--perhaps in an intervention--whether he is prepared to examine the implications of that. It is an important issue, and I will happily give way to him if he is prepared to deal with it. We have not yet reached a satisfactory conclusion.
Mr. Maclean:
I may not have described a solution in such a manner that the right hon. Gentleman has been convinced, but I cannot see any alternative to it. It may be that those in the other place will find refinements to add to it, but we shall have to consider those when we see the proposed amendments. The only solution that the right hon. Gentleman suggested, which he himself then rejected, would mean transferring resources to the police service and giving Security Service personnel the offices and duties of a constable so that they would be subject to the police complaints machinery. That would entail the loss of the current tremendous flexibility. That is the only alternative of which I can think; we have rejected it, as has the right hon. Gentleman.
Mr. Beith:
That alternative was suggested by thehon. Member for Torbay (Mr. Allason), or it was implicit in the criticism that he made, and I have considered it. However, there are other arguments against taking that course. I have suggested to the Minister--formally in the new clause and less formally in what I have been telling him--that permitting the Police Complaints Authority to have a role in ensuring that a complaint is processed right the way through will ensure that the involvement of Security Service personnel will not serve as a route by which members of the public are simply fobbed off and not provided with the certainty that their complaints are being dealt with.
That would ensure that members of the public were not left in the position in which a hint was dropped to them that it might be worth complaining to the Security Service or some other, unspecified body, and the public would at least have some assurance that there was a body with the power and capacity to check whether that really was the case and to direct the complaint appropriately.
I do not think that the Minister has responded satisfactorily to my argument. That matter remains a serious problem in the Bill, and I shall therefore press the new clause.
Mr. Allason:
I invite my right hon. Friend the Minister to examine one loophole in the existing arrangement. If there is a joint operation and an individual makes a complaint to the Security Service Tribunal, it is possible that, under the current legislation, had that individual been the subject of a Security Service file that existed before December 1989, neither the tribunal nor the commissioner could investigate the complaint.
There could, therefore, be circumstances in which an individual feels that he has a legitimate complaint and the complaint cannot be directed to the police complaints procedure. The complaint should properly be directed towards the Security Service commissioner or the tribunal, but, because that person had become the subject of a Security Service file before the passage of the Security Service Act 1989, the Security Service Tribunal would of course decline to conduct an investigation.
The loophole has consistently been in operation. Many people can put different interpretations on the fact that the tribunal and the commissioner have not upheld a single complaint since 1989 and have not disclosed the number of complaints which have been made to them, but I am concerned that the loophole will disadvantage a great many people.
The potential for muddle between both disciplines in a joint operation is considerable. I should remind the House of the events that took place in Northern Ireland when there was precisely such an overlap. It occurred at the beginning of the Stalker affair, when there was a Security Service surveillance operation on a barn in which some suspects were shot dead by the RUC. The House will recall that John Stalker was invited to investigate the matter and it was discovered that, in a clandestine surveillance operation, the Security Service had taped all the events that took place on the day of the shooting, including conversations between the RUC officers involved.
Thereafter, the tapes of those recordings went missing. John Stalker became very aggravated about what took place and Colin Sampson subsequently conducted an inquiry and recommended that two security officers should be prosecuted for perverting the course of justice. The House will also recall that, quite properly, the decision was taken that it was not in the public interest to proceed with those prosecutions.
The reason why I cite that case is that it is a classic example of overlap and confusion between two services and two disciplines in separate organisations, operating in extremely difficult circumstances. Indeed, one can scarcely imagine more difficult circumstances. We may be able to debate such issues in a calm and relaxed atmosphere, but while attempting to execute a warrant for the interference of property, adrenalin runs very high.
Dr. Godman:
I am grateful to the Minister for his response to my question. If the proposed leaflet was discussed in Committee, did his officials discuss it with Scottish chief constables?
I am concerned that, while investigating cases such as those I mentioned, about traffic in arms between Scotland and Northern Ireland, an intelligence officer may make inquiries of the employers of suspected persons. In a case of mistaken identity, an innocent employee's job prospects may suffer severely, although I pray to heaven that such cases are very rare. A person could face losing his employment, especially if the case were publicised as much as the recent gaoling of the loyalist paramilitary.
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