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11.30 am
The mechanism requiring the Attorney-General to act as the guardian at the gate of prosecution--not as a Minister, but in his role as a Law Officer--is not perfect, but at least that addresses some of the important issues that have been raised by hon. Members. As I pointed out in Committee, there is a separate problem in Scotland because under Scots law all prosecutions are commenced under the name and authority of the Lord Advocate. In practice, however, the decision will be taken by a procurator fiscal. There is no assurance that the approval of the Lord Advocate would be required in cases that arise
as a consequence of the Bill. I do not have an answer to that, although the Minister acknowledged in Committee that I had attempted to discuss it. If the Minister is unwilling to accept the mechanism that I have offered today, I hope that he will acknowledge that a suitable mechanism needs to be found
As I said about amendment No. 1, the amendments are not perfect. They were drawn up following our debates in Committee on Tuesday and Wednesday and they had to be tabled on the very day the Committee reported so that they could be discussed today. I do not claim to have the capacity to table perfect amendments within such a short time. I hope that the Minister will accept, however, that my amendments represent an honest attempt to introduce a mechanism to address the problems that have been highlighted.
The clear intention of the Bill is to address a gap in the law that prevents prosecution in the United Kingdom of those who conspire to cause violence abroad. The very nature of the offences with which we are dealing means that difficult cases will arise, as my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea, East (Mr. Anderson) and I said in Committee. There are also cases of conspiracy to commit violence abroad, such as racial violence and acts of anti-semitism, which have nothing to do with freedom or the search for justice. Organised violence has been committed under the cloak of football and other international events.
The Bill may be used to target those who promote or pursue other serious organised criminal activities including drug trafficking, major fraud and disorder. The consequences of organised violence and trafficking in drugs, which is conducted as a result of international conspiracy, leads down to the streets of our constituencies--the cities, towns and villages of the United Kingdom. There are serious links between some of the activities that the Bill is intended to hit and the well-being of our constituents. I am sure that the Minister and the hon. Member for Eastbourne would agree that such activities should be our target, but we should not target or silence those involved in legitimate political activity while living in exile.
It is inevitable that decisions will have to be made on difficult cases. That is why we want the Attorney-General to exercise an oversight of prosecutions. Perhaps the Minister can offer an even better solution, because I acknowledge, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Hillhead, that our amendments are not perfect. They are designed, however, to strike a balance on the exercise of the powers in the Bill. We must be able to prosecute some of those who everyone agrees should be prosecuted--the elephants on the doorstep, as I described them earlier--but we must ensure that those powers are not used in a way unintended by Parliament. It is difficult to achieve a balance between pursuing those who undermine liberty and democracy and protecting those concepts in other cases. It is a great challenge to hon. Members to find that balance.
It is impossible to predict future cases that may cause concern, but I should like to remind the House of two examples that have already been cited in order to clarify what should and should not be the purposes of Parliament when it passes the Bill.
In Committee, I referred to the example of Mandela in similar terms to those used by my hon. Friend the Member for Hillhead today. During the apartheid years many
people in this country were involved in the anti-apartheid movement. We are proud to have been involved in activities in support of those who were seeking to overthrow the apartheid regime. As my hon. Friend said, the importance of that movement was underlined by President Mandela when he spoke so movingly to both Houses of Parliament last year.
There was a wide-ranging alliance of opponents to apartheid which included those who planned violence, those who condoned some acts of sabotage short of putting people in danger and those who advocated non-violent action. If I understand him correctly, the Minister confirmed earlier that it is not the Government's intention that the Bill should be used in a similar case to target those who neither advocated nor planned violence or were directly involved in it simply because they were associated with such a broad alliance. The purpose of the amendments is to question how we can ensure that the intentions of Parliament are not exceeded in the future.
Secondly, I should like to refer to Somaliland. I was a community worker in an area with one of the biggest Somali communities in the country so I was particularly aware of that country before coming to the House. Most British Somalis come from the former British Somaliland and most settled here after service in the British Army, Navy or merchant navy. Their service was enormously important during the second world war and as recently as the Falklands war and the Gulf war.
During the 1980s, the people of north-west Somalia, what was British Somaliland and is now known as the Republic of Somaliland, were the victims of an atrocious period of civil rights abuse, under the regime of the then President Siad Barre. It was described as a hidden war. It long predated the public war when the opposition to the regime of Siad Barre spread to the south and Mogadishu. The earlier hidden war, which affected the families and friends of British Somalis, was not in the public view because the television cameras were not present. I regret to say that the international community and Britain ignored the human rights abuses that were committed then.
The Somali National Movement defended the rights of the families and relatives of the British Somalis and was also engaged in a civil war against the Government of Somalia. Would people in the United Kingdom who sent money and medical supplies to the north of Somalia have been caught by the Bill? Is that the intention of the Bill? As I understand it, it clearly is not. It will help to clarify Parliament's intention if we can be clear on that point, and it will help if the Minister will agree that we require safeguards to ensure that the powers provided by the Bill are not used to hit those types of target.
The point has already been made by hon. Members on both sides the House--it was also made very strongly by Liberty in its briefing--that incitement is a particularly elastic concept. Would it be incitement for an opponent of the Iraqi regime to write a newspaper article in the UK calling for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein? We may not even have to consider the examples given by my hon. Friend the Member for Hillhead of those with even greater enthusiasm to realise that a line must be drawn.
I understand why the Bill has been drafted so widely, but it is important that there are mechanisms to ensure that those wide-ranging powers are used to serve the purpose intended by Parliament and not for others. That is why it
is important that the issues are put on the record. I hope that the Minister will express his strongest and clearest agreement with the principles on how the legislation should operate. Under the Pepper v. Hart ruling, a clear statement will be very helpful.
Hon. Members have given many examples of how the legislation could operate. My hon. Friend the Member for Hillhead made his point by referring to various countries. In Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea, East referred to the situation in Kashmir and to those in different parts of Africa. The two examples that I gave, however, demonstrate the difficult judgments that will have to be made under the Bill's provisions. Those provisions must be used with sensitivity.
Judgments will first have to be made at a senior level, where Parliament's intentions are understood and appreciated, rather than at a more administrative level. Conversely, we must limit the possibility of powers being used way beyond Parliament's intentions. I believe that the mechanism requiring review by the Attorney-General of the specific offence of terrorism will be of particular value in ensuring that the scrutiny which Parliament expects will occur.
Sir Russell Johnston:
I agree with everything that the hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Michael) has said. However, in my long years in the House, one thing that I have learnt is that Ministers' assurances that Parliament's intentions are this, that or the other become worthless after a Bill becomes law.
Mr. Michael:
I understand that point, which is why I mentioned the case of Pepper v. Hart, in which it was said that Parliament's intentions as expressed on the Floor of the House can be considered. I think that that is an important starting point in clarifying Parliament's intentions. However, I agree with the hon. Gentleman, which is why I think that we need a mechanism to ensure that the intentions expressed on the Floor of the House are considered at a specific point. In our amendments, we have suggested that it should be clear that the buck stops on the desk of the Attorney-General in interpreting Parliament's intention. Therefore, decisions cannot be taken by accident because--in Scotland, for example--they have been taken by the procurator fiscal or by someone in the Crown Prosecution Service, in which, even at the top levels, there may not be total confidence that they are taking the right judgment. That is why it is important that we have a mechanism.
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