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10.30 am
Fortuitously, that brings us to one of the main thrusts of my right hon. Friend's argument. He went on and on about something called NCIS, in which he seems to have enormous faith. I do not know much about that body. The more I hear of it, the more it sounds like a shadowy, sinister body of people. I do not know whether they are in uniform, what constraints are on them, or within which statutory framework they operate; but the more I hear of them the more worried I become.
I hear more and more about covert surveillance and people being picked up in car parks and whistled off here and there. My right hon. Friend seems to think that that is all good stuff. His period in the Home Office seems to have assured him that if such a body is prying into what is going on in citizens' lives and picking those individuals up and whisking them off into custody, we should all be reassured. I am not sure that I am. I would be even less reassured if I thought that if the new clause were accepted, that sinister group, which no doubt has the enormous resources that such groups always have these days, could pick up people who have not been convicted of any offence but are simply suspected or accused of doing something or being minded to do it. That is what my right hon. Friend seems to be saying.
That brings us to another crucial part of what is being suggested. From what my right hon. Friend has said, it appears that people will not necessarily have had to do something. This sinister body, NCIS, has simply to believe or have reason to believe that people are minded to, or are going to, commit an offence. That would be sufficient to whistle them off, deprive them of their liberty and put them through some harrowing court procedure.
Mr. Burns:
I am a little concerned about my right hon. Friend's use of the word "sinister". The work that NCIS does to advance the cause of law and order is tremendous. Will he be reassured by the fact that it was the Government in which he, my right hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Mr. Maclean) and I all served that set the body up, presumably through primary legislation which he supported at the time?
Mr. Forth:
The more I hear, the more I worry about what went on in the Home Office over the past 18 years or so. It is funny that I should say this, but if I had been a Back Bencher between 1988 and 1997, I might well not have supported a lot of this nonsense that I now learn that Government were enacting. I was constrained by collective responsibility and therefore obliged to support the legislation.
I am not at all certain whether I would have supported the creation of that body. In a gesture of friendship to my hon. Friend the Member for West Chelmsford, I will not use the epithet "sinister"--I will think of a more appropriate one in the next few minutes. However, it is a fact that I am unaware of what it does, as are most people, and yet there it is, working away quietly and secretly, allegedly on our behalf. Nevertheless, it appears to have wide powers.
My point, which is surely key to the new clause, is that my right hon. Friend seems to suggest that, having carried out its surveillance, gone to these car parks and done what it does there, all that NCIS needs to do is to satisfy itself that an individual member of society may be minded to
commit some act related to football. That will be sufficient for that person to be deprived of his or her liberty and whisked off to a judicial process in a court. I will refer to the other authorities mentioned in the new clause in a moment, as I accept that they have a role to play as well--this is a multi-stage process.
How quickly or even whether the individual would have access to a court is another matter, as is the question of whether they would be held in custody for an undefined period before they had access to the judicial process. I wonder whether my right hon. Friend has given that matter sufficient thought and whether he can provide any assurances that the individual, having been deprived of his or her liberties on more or less flimsy grounds, would at least have the reassurance of having the case considered promptly rather than having to wait, or what is worse, being incarcerated for any period of time. My right hon. Friend did not mention that and I do not know whether it is in his power, or even that of the Minister, to reassure me. At the least, there is an area of doubt about which we should be extremely concerned.
My right hon. Friend said that we should not be too worried and he listed some extremely important people who would be involved and whom he obviously thought we could trust implicitly. He mentioned chief constables and the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis as coming within the definition of relevant authorities in the new clause. It states:
I do not know where that person comes from, what his or her statutory authority is, or anything of the kind; nor do I know what constraints are on the director-general of the type that we are increasingly placing on chief constables--the new Greater London Assembly will have an important role in the part played by the police in Greater London, as the Minister well knows. Perhaps my right hon. Friend can reassure me.
Mr. Maclean:
I am sure that my right hon. Friend, with his new computer facility, will soon be surfing on hyperspace. Then, he will find all the NCIS press releases and information about Mr. Bryan Drew, the director-general of NCIS. Nevertheless, the important point is that NCIS now has the same statutory basis as an ordinary police authority under the Police Act 1997--another wonderfully libertarian piece of legislation that I had the pleasure to put through the House. That Act created a service authority too. Therefore, the director-general is in the same position as a chief constable, with an elected service authority to give the democratic accountability element.
Mr. Forth:
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, who has set my mind at ease, but only within the limited terms
We have established, and it has usefully been placed on the record, which demonstrates the value of this little debate, that the director-general of NCIS--we now even know his name--is, slightly reassuringly, subject to the same accountabilities and constraints as are placed on the other authorities. However, the director-general is not mentioned in my right hon. Friend's new clause. Therefore, if we mistakenly agree to it, which I hope we will not, I am not sure that merely because my right hon. Friend has said so the director-general would be included in subsection (2), which states:
Were the House to accept new clause 1, that point may have to be reconsidered in another place. I do not want to quibble on technicalities--we try to avoid that and debate, as I am doing, the substance of issues--but we have already found a flaw. We have flushed out what may be a serious lacuna in the drafting which would have to be corrected were we, mistakenly, to proceed with it.
The court access that may or may not be available in this encroachment on individual liberties must be considered. What if the relevant authority was not immediately available to make a judgment? The covert operations, following surveillance operations by NCIS, have swept people from the car park and whisked them off in a black van to some dank cell--but it is all right because a relevant authority will quickly consider the matter and decide whether to pass it to the courts. What if the relevant authority is not available?
Mr. Forth:
I want my right hon. Friend to listen. I think that he is going to reassure me again, but I want to put this on record. What if the chief constable or director-general of NCIS were at an important conference on civil liberties? What if they were abroad boasting about how Britain had a sacred regard for civil liberties? If they were, I hope that they would admit to what NCIS was getting up to. I suspect that my right hon. Friend is going to bail me out again.
Mr. Maclean:
It will be a source of deep regret to my right hon. Friend, but we no longer have any dank cells. They are too warm and cosy for his liking. The term "chief officers" should encompass deputy and assistant chief constables, all of whom are of Association of Chief Police Officers rank.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst):
Order. It is time for me to assist the House. The debate is going far too wide in dealing with the issues raised in new clause 1 on international banning orders. New clause 1 is about whether such orders should be extended to unconvicted persons.
"any chief officer of police".
However, he spoiled the whole thing because he swept into his definition someone called the director-general of NCIS. The difficulty is that it is one thing for us to give a proper role--a discretionary role or role of judgment--to chief constables and the Commissioner of the Metropolitan police, as we traditionally do and have done for many years in statute, but it is quite another to go a stage further and to give such a role to this shadowy figure, the director-general of NCIS, of whom I had not heard until now, although obviously I should have done.
"In this section, 'relevant authority' means any chief officer of police".
I suspect not. That may be one of the defects to which my right hon. Friend, with his typical candour, referred during his opening remarks on his new clause.
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