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8.24 pm
Mr. Kevin McNamara (Kingston upon Hull, North): I beg to move,
- That this House declines to give a Second Reading to a Bill which will not be subject to proper Parliamentary scrutiny, and whose powers may prove to be counterproductive and contrary to the European Convention on Human Rights.
I was flattered that my hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) quoted so extensively from my speeches when the Act first went through. I am proud that
he has read my words and found them comforting. I recall that my hon. Friend fought the 1983 general election on a manifesto that supported full restoration of trade union rights, withdrawal from the European Economic Community, unilateral nuclear disarmament and nationalisation of industries that had been denationalised. Doubtless his speeches during the campaign while that was Labour party policy reflected those views.
I understand that there is a possibility that my hon. Friend has changed his mind on those matters. He may have done so for a variety of reasons, such as that he would not be sitting on the Front Bench if he had not. However, I do not challenge his good faith in changing his opinions, because we should be able to realise that we have made mistakes. The mistake that I made was not listening to my friend Tom Litterick, who was then a Member of the House, when the original legislation was going through and he said that we were reacting in panic. He said that we were prepared to do almost anything to protect the Irish population and stop Irish people from being attacked in factories and on the streets, having their windows put in, being thrown through the doors of clubs and being subject to abuse as a terrified British population sought scapegoats in the place of the people who had perpetrated that terrible crime in Birmingham. As a result, all people were being tarred with that odour--if one can be tarred with an odour.
People can take courses of action and change their minds. I have changed my mind about the prevention of terrorism Act for the reasons that I have given over the years. I believe that the balance in this legislation has gone the wrong way. It has been counter-productive. That was shown by the great trawls of the Irish population in London in the 1970s and early 1980s. People were picked up just because they were Irish, taken away, questioned and released without charge. I know how it alienated a whole generation of people who came to this country to be law abiding. They wanted to be good citizens and to work. They wanted to make a way for themselves and their families. It alienated them from the forces of law and order because they thought that they were being unfairly treated and singled out.
I believe that two powers that were contained in that legislation, exclusion orders and the power to detain a person without access to a magistrate for up to seven days, were wrong. I still believe that they are wrong. I have changed my mind.
I have changed my mind also about the Birmingham Six. On one occasion when I was arguing in favour of not renewing the Act, I said--I freely admit this--that the Birmingham Six had been caught by ordinary police methods. That was before all the horrible evidence about how they had been treated came to light. However, where people have been caught, they have generally been caught not by virtue of those powers, but by normal good police work. As that is so, we must look carefully at the sort of powers that we are giving.
I now leave my "Apologia pro Vita Sua"--and, in retrospect, one for my hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn too--and turn to the reasoned amendment. We have already dealt with at length, so I shall not repeat to the House, the arguments about the time provided to discuss the Bill and the manner in which it has been introduced. Those arguments stand on the record.
However, I shall take up one point--the claim that less time was given for discussing amendments when the original Act was passed than has been allowed with this Bill. That is not the case. Less time was in fact taken up, but there was no limit on the time that could have been used--whereas here there is a specific and direct time limit for dealing with matters connected with the Bill.
My second point arises from the issue that I raised before--the danger of alienating a generation. My hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn says that the proposed powers are very different from the sus laws. Indeed, judging by the way in which he describes the sus laws, that is correct; nobody doubts it. However, the phrase "the sus laws" has come to have a meaning different from the precise meaning that my hon. Friend used. It was associated with the arbitrary stopping and searching of people.
Clause 1 asks us to support the arbitrary power to stop and search people in a designated area, without giving any reason. My hon. Friend says that the police--because we can all trust the police--would not dispose of their people in an arbitrary fashion to behave in that way. I wish that that were true. I am sure that it would be true when the original decision was taken, but it would not apply to the individual bobby on the beat who took part in the searches.
We know from the cases that come up in the London metropolitan area how such powers have been used. My hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) has already drawn the attention of the House to the disproportionate number of black people in cars who are stopped within the cordons that already exist--a point that my hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn has already accepted.
Mr. Straw:
I am following my hon. Friend's argument with some care. If his arguments about section 13B are so strong, they must also have applied to section 13A, which raises exactly the same issues with respect to the occupants of vehicles. So could my hon. Friend explain why, when the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 was before the House under the usual procedures--its passage took not one day but four months--he raised no objections on any occasion to section 13A?
Mr. McNamara:
The answer is simple: examples have now been given by my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North of the way in which section 13A has been used and abused.
Mr. Straw:
There is no evidence whatever that section 13A has been abused. The figures that I gave, and those to which my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) referred, relate to powers contained within ordinary criminal justice legislation, which give the police the power to stop and search people on reasonable suspicion. I have not been made aware--nor, I believe, has my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North--of any evidence of abuse of that power. Indeed, it has been used on only one occasion--following the Canary wharf bomb on 9 February.
Mr. McNamara:
I take my hon. Friend's point, but let me carefully explain that we do have evidence that where there has been reasonable suspicion, most people who
Secondly, and more important, young people are the ones who will be stopped--perhaps coming back from a dance or out with their girlfriends or boyfriends--and be subjected to a search. We know from our experience in Northern Ireland that those stop-and-search powers have had an alienating effect on the attitudes of young people from both communities and in both areas to the forces of law and order.
We are creating exactly the same phenomenon that followed the trawls that took place under the terms of the original legislation. We are therefore in a dangerous position. Regardless of the operational reason for the exercise, the ordinary bobby on the street, acting with such powers, may use them to pick up specific people for other reasons. When the Home Secretary was asked yesterday about whether, if evidence of other crimes were found, it would be used, he said yes. Given the proposed powers, the temptation for the police to go in that direction is well understood, and I believe that it would be followed.
Mr. Alun Michael (Cardiff, South and Penarth):
I think that my hon. Friend is getting confused. He has referred to people being stopped not under the powers in the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 but under those in other legislation. So far as I am aware, the powers in the 1994 Act were seen as reassuring, rather than the reverse, by people in London. My hon. Friend alleged that young people would be stopped and subjected to searches, but there is no suggestion that that has happened as a result of section 13A, which was added to the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act 1989. On what basis does he make that suggestion? He seems to have plucked it out of the air.
Mr. McNamara:
On the basis of what has happened in Northern Ireland. My hon. Friend should be aware of that. Under the stop-and-search powers in Northern Ireland, it is young people who have been stopped.
Mr. Michael:
My hon. Friend has confirmed that he is getting confused. When we debated what is now the 1994 Act, we raised precisely those issues. I asked during our debates on that Act how we could be reassured that those powers would not be used disproportionately on people from ethnic minorities and on young people. We were given reassurance, and protections were built in. The provisions before us today share the protections and provisions of the 1994 Act, precisely because we raised those issues.
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