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Mr. Bennett: Will the Home Secretary give way?
Mr. Howard: I hope that the hon. Gentleman will forgive me if I do not. I must finish my speech.
Clause 6 provides that the Director of Public Prosecutions must consent to any prosecution for the offences created to enforce the powers given in clauses 1, 4 and 5. Clause 7 deals with the territorial extent of the new powers. Clause 3 extends to the whole of the United Kingdom. All the other provisions in the Bill apply only to Great Britain, since these powers are already available to the police and the security forces in Northern Ireland.
The measures in the Bill are sensible and practical. They are subject to clear and careful safeguards. I referred earlier to the concerns expressed yesterday by the hon. Member for Blackburn about the exercise of the new power to stop and search pedestrians. I have given him assurances that Parliament will receive regular reports on the operation of that power, and that its exercise will be monitored. I have considered whether putting this in the Bill would provide any additional safeguard, and I have concluded that that is not necessary. PACE code A will apply to new section 13B of the prevention of terrorism Act as it does to existing section 13A. I am glad to take this opportunity to reiterate the assurances that I gave yesterday.
Mr. Jack Straw (Blackburn):
In August 1994, the Provisional IRA gave notice that it had agreed to a ceasefire, and Sinn Fein gave notice that it had agreed to take part in a process leading to a negotiated peace in Ireland. Both Sinn Fein and the IRA left the impression that they were fully committed to a democratic approach to politics. On 9 February this year, the Provisional IRA ended the ceasefire, unilaterally and without notice.
It was a large bomb which announced the withdrawal of the Provisional IRA from the peace process--a grotesque reminder of the organisation's ambiguous approach to participation in that peace process and in democratic politics. A number of people were killed by the Canary wharf bomb; many more were injured or shocked, and millions of pounds of damage was done to homes and businesses. The people and the area have still not recovered from the deep trauma of that bombing. It was followed by the explosion of a bomb on a bus at the Aldwych--a bomb which happened to kill only the perpetrator of the proposed outrage, but which could easily have caused scores of injuries and deaths in central London.
We need to remember that the resumption of violence by the Provisional IRA, and that alone, prompted the introduction of the Bill and our support for it. Any additional powers, such as the powers contained in the Bill, are bound to cause some inconvenience to innocent members of the public, but we consider that that inconvenience is vastly outweighed by the need to secure public safety.
Mr. Nick Hawkins (Blackpool, South):
Given all that the hon. Gentleman has rightly said, and given his welcome bipartisan approach, does he not feel somewhat embarrassed by the nit-picking approach of many of his hon. Friends--particularly that of the hon. Member for Preston (Mrs. Wise), who said that, if stopped by a police officer and asked to agree to a search, she would refuse? In the light of recent events, is the hon. Gentleman not even more embarrassed by the fact that the hon. Member for Woolwich (Mr. Austin-Walker) agreed to appear on the platform at a Sinn Fein conference? Does he not feel that the party Whip should have been withdrawn from his hon. Friend, as many Conservative Members--including me--demanded?
Mr. Straw:
I am not embarrassed by the concerns of my colleagues.
Sir Ivan Lawrence (Burton):
Yes you are.
Mr. Straw:
With respect, I will speak for myself. I would tell the hon. and learned Gentleman if I were embarrassed by those concerns, but I am not in the least embarrassed. I recognise them, but I do not share them, and I hope to persuade some of my hon. Friends that they are misplaced. As for the question about my hon. Friend the Member for Woolwich (Mr. Austin-Walker), it has already been made very clear that the Labour party did not approve of his speaking on a Sinn Fein platform, and he has apologised for so doing.
Mr. Clive Soley (Hammersmith):
Just to make sure that hon. Members do not become too party political, may I remind Conservative Members that theirs was the party that talked to the IRA, and also flew the IRA around in RAF helicopters at public expense? The hon. Member for Blackpool, South (Mr. Hawkins) should be a little more careful about whom he accuses.
Mr. Straw:
My hon. Friend knows a good deal more about the details. He is absolutely right: we need to be very careful before trying to score partisan points in a debate such as this. Nevertheless, it is true that the British Government negotiated with the IRA for a long time before admitting it: indeed, while they were negotiating, they publicly denied it. We have never made too much of a point of the fact that--perhaps for good reasons--the House was misled about what was going on.
As I have said, we are satisfied that the powers in the Bill are proportionate to the threat. Let me make it clear, however--especially to my hon. Friends who are anxious about those powers--that, when we were asked to support the Bill, my hon. Friends the Members for Redcar (Ms Mowlam) and for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar) and I, along with colleagues, went to great lengths to examine the proposals, and to judge for ourselves whether the powers were necessary. We decided that,
given the history of the sus law--with which, as I explained during the debate on the timetable motion, I happen to be particularly familiar--and the anxiety about the disproportionate number of black people, for example, who are arrested under the ordinary stop-and-search powers, we would have to give careful consideration to the provision of any further search powers.
Mr. Jeremy Corbyn (Islington, North):
Is my hon. Friend aware that, in recent vehicle searches in London in connection with the PTA, a disproportionate number of cars with either black drivers or black occupants, or both, have been stopped? That suggests that the police target the black community to a disproportionate extent when they have the power to stop and search vehicles. Can my hon. Friend give any guarantee that the police will not do exactly the same with black pedestrians if the power in the Bill is given to them?
Mr. Straw:
I appreciate my hon. Friend's point. I recall that, according to a parliamentary answer given on, I believe, Friday of last week, some 60 per cent. of 160,000 people who were stopped by the police in the Greater London area last year--not under powers connected with the PTA, but under general powers to stop people on reasonable suspicion--were black or of Asian origin. That obviously gives cause for concern.
The police have their own explanation. They say that the same proportion of people are arrested following stops of black people as are arrested following other stops. I am very concerned about the issue, however, and feel that we should examine it carefully. Perhaps, in time, the Commission for Racial Equality should investigate it. We must ensure that every citizen is treated in exactly the same way, regardless of skin colour. I give my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) that thorough undertaking. One of the reasons why I raised with the Home Secretary, almost immediately, the need for explicit monitoring of the way in which this power is used--including ethnic monitoring--was my concern about the possibility that a disproportionate number of black people could be stopped and searched.
Mrs. Wise:
In view of Conservative comments, does my hon. Friend agree that a woman walking in an area that was familiar to her, unaware that it had suddenly become a designated area, would be entitled to be distinctly startled and suspicious if approached by a male police officer who wanted to carry out a rub-down search? Is it not reasonable for female Members to express some concern about that aspect of the proposals?
Mr. Straw:
I understand what my hon. Friend is saying. The point is raised in an amendment that I have tabled, along with some of my hon. Friends.
In his statement yesterday, the Home Secretary said that he expected the police to undertake such searches with--I think--circumspection and sensitivity. That will have to happen. It is essential for proper guidance to be given to the police about the circumstances in which the searches are conducted, and--as I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North--for them to be properly monitored.
As I said earlier, I believe that anyone who looks carefully at the nature of the additional powers conferred by clause 1 cannot fail to conclude that those powers do not involve any gratuitous erosion of the liberty of the subject. Although they are important, they do not differ in character from powers that were placed on the statute book in 1994. Let me point out to my hon. Friends that, when section 13A of the 1989 Act was discussed during the Committee stage of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994--in our debates on clause 62 of the Bill--although we raised a number of probing points, we did not challenge the principle behind section 13A; nor, as far as I am aware, did any of my hon. Friends raise any question about it on Report.
We supported the need for those powers relating to searches of vehicle occupants. If it is appropriate in the limited circumstances of the PTA for the occupant of a vehicle to be subject to an outer-body rub-down search, I do not fully understand the argument that that is not an erosion of civil liberties--so small an erosion of civil liberties that none of my hon. Friends raised any question about it when it came up in February 1994--but stopping a person who happens to be outside a vehicle in exactly similar circumstances and giving them an outer-body rub-down search is a major erosion of civil liberties. Frankly, that argument does not hold.
The second argument is whether there is any parallel between the power under section 13B and the old sus law. Although I went into that point in detail during the debate on the timetable motion, it is worth repeating one or two points about the sus law. The sus law was based on section 14 of the Vagrancy Act 1824, which made it an offence to be a suspected person loitering with intent to commit an arrestable offence. The offence was risible. The law enabled any pair of police officers not only to charge somebody but to convict them if they did not like the person's face or what they appeared to be doing.
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