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Mr. A. J. Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed): The Secretary of State must recognise that the circumstances would arise only in the case of a Crown employee whose ability to attend a tribunal or to be represented at it was removed because the Minister judged that it was a matter of national security. That would normally be only an employee of one of the agencies, or perhaps someone working in the Cabinet Office, for example, who had a similar national security involvement. It is because the Government have drafted this section of the Bill in terms of Crown servants rather than of agencies that it has such a wide theoretical application, but, in practice, a narrow one.
Mr. Byers: I understand that argument entirely. However, as I have said, the amendments would go
beyond the agencies with which the right hon. Gentleman is concerned. It may be that civil servants working in particularly sensitive areas would be affected. I accept that. However, I am not sure that they should be regarded in exactly the same way as the particular groups that I think the right hon. Member for Bridgwater and his colleagues are concerned about.
There is a safeguard. If the individual feels that he has been treated in an inappropriate way, he will be able to seek judicial review at the time that the direction is made. The direction will be made publicly and the individual will know that that is the case. On the other hand, the commissioners must apply the principles of judicial review retrospectively. Parliament has decided that that is appropriate where the act under review was carried out secretly for obvious reasons. That is not so in the case of a power of direction. For those reasons, amendmentsNos. 323(d) and (e) do not achieve the objective of the right hon. Member for Bridgwater and his colleagues. It goes beyond that and changes fundamentally the powers that commissioners would have to review the exercise of the power of direction being operated by a Minister. Therefore we feel that it is an inappropriate step to take, and I shall be asking the House to resist it.
I believe that the opportunity of seeking a judicial review is the appropriate way forward. Legal aid is available in particular circumstances for judicial review. People who felt that they had been adversely treated as a result of a power of direction being exercised by the Minister would have recourse to that course of action. I believe that to be appropriate. There would be great difficulties if we accepted these two amendments.
To conclude, I hope that the House will agree with the amendments starting with amendment No. 50. In relation to amendments (a) and (b), I give the House an assurance that, in drawing up the regulations, we would want to consult the Intelligence and Security Committee about the detail of the regulations. I hope that in supporting amendment (c), the House will recognise that we are putting in place a mechanism which we hope will overcome some of the reservations.
Mr. Allan Rogers (Rhondda):
Would it not be far better to have tabled amendments that would resolve all the issues now, rather than saying that the Government will do that in the future, through regulations and by other means? It would have been easy enough, if the Government had followed the recommendations made by the Intelligence and Security Committee in our annual report.
Mr. Byers:
I hope that, by drawing up the regulations in consultation with members of the Committee, on which my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Mr. Rogers) serves, we will be able to accommodate the concerns that have been expressed, which I accept. Let the House be clear about that.
An important point has been raised in amendments (a) and (b). Since the conversation that I had with the right hon. Member for Bridgwater yesterday, I have been looking for a way of facilitating matters. I believe that, by giving the assurance about how we will draw up the regulations, we might be able to meet the honestly expressed concerns of the Committee.
I must ask the House to resist amendments (d) and (e). They would go beyond the powers that we give to commissioners at present. There is the opportunity for the individual to seek judicial review. In the circumstances, that is the appropriate course of action to take.
Mr. Tom King (Bridgwater):
I am grateful to the Secretary of State for his initial response to the amendments. I am pleased that he has done us the courtesy of coming and responding to them himself. I am encouraged by that. I would otherwise be enormously disappointed by the response that we have so far received from the Government. I am encouraged because I believe that the Secretary of State is capable of listening to an argument and that if, on reflection, he considers it valid, he has the standing and the independence to accept the amendments. I proceed on that optimistic basis.
The Secretary of State will allow me, I hope, to point out that this is a remarkable occasion. We are not a Select Committee, although I understand why he slipped into that terminology. That is a tendentious area into which I shall not venture on this occasion. The composition of our Committee is remarkable. We are all parliamentarians. We probably have a majority in the Chamber at present--I warn the Secretary of State of the situation that he faces. He will note that we have considered the issues at great length and on an all-party basis.
I apologise to the Secretary of State for the fact that originally there was no concept of including such a provision in his Bill. He is being asked to include a recommendation that we made to the Prime Minister in our last annual report. After some impatience that a recommendation accepted by the Prime Minister had failed to make further progress, it was included as an amendment to the Bill at a very late stage in the Lords.
It is unfortunate for the Secretary of State that not only are we all parliamentarians with the capacity to move amendments to his Bill and his Lords amendments, but we then report the outcome--his response--to the Prime Minister. We are anxious to preserve his prospects and to comment favourably in our report, which we are currently drafting.
The House has never debated these issues. It has never heard anything about these matters. They were never part of the Bill. The Government have responded to calls for a necessary and sensible improvement to the law. I make no secret of the fact that that arises out of one particular case of a gentleman who has since taken his grievance beyond any reasonable length, to the extent of betraying a considerable number of people who worked in the intelligence services. His claims are full of errors because it is some time since he was in the Secret Intelligence Service.
However, the fact remains that that gentleman had a grievance. As a Committee, we sought to address what we considered a genuine grievance. He was denied what he thought were legitimate rights that would imply to other people other forms of employment.
I shall quote the paragraph that is the fons et origo of the proposal. It states:
"The Committee also believes that everything possible should be done to ensure that employees of the Agencies have the same rights as employees elsewhere. One of these is access to industrial tribunals. Under current procedures, industrial tribunals may hear cases involving national security, in camera and possibly with the Tribunal President sitting alone. However, if this is deemed not to be sufficient protection where vital national security matters may be involved, the Secretary of State can issue a certificate preventing an individual from having access to a tribunal."
That is what happened in that particular case. The Committee report continued:
"The Tribunals established under the Security Service Act 1989 and the Intelligence Services Act 1994 were not set up to handle complaints involving staff of the Agencies, and have made clear their view that they are not adequately equipped to do so."
Our recommendation was this:
"We believe that it ought to be possible to constitute a tribunal of members and staff qualified to serve a normal industrial tribunal, but of the necessary integrity and security clearance to handle such potentially sensitive material, and we so recommend."
The Prime Minister accepted that recommendationand eventually, after much discussion, the Employment Relations Bill was identified as the vehicle to which the amendment should be attached. Last week, rather late in the day, without the Committee having been consulted about the final form, which might have avoided some of the problems facing us, the amendments were tabled in the House of Lords.
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