---

Mr. Clarke: I do not accept that accountability to the House is not an important constitutional principle. It is very important.

On the question of the judge, I will give the right hon. and learned Gentleman a word of clarification. I quote from the Bill that I shall introduce later today: the powers of the court on an appeal under this section include power to confirm the Secretary of State's decision,

"power to quash the order . . . power to quash one or more obligations imposed by the order . . . power to give directions to the Secretary of State for the revocation of the order or for the modification of the obligations it imposes".

Those are powerful powers for a judge to deal with and they are not simply a reserve for dealing with the situation.

My final point is that there is a gulf. It was marked on 11 September 2001 by the attack that al-Qaeda launched on the United States. The nature of international terrorism was transformed by that act and it led to a state of affairs that leads to a real and substantial threat to this country today. That real and substantial threat includes British citizens and not only citizens abroad. It is incumbent on me certainly, and I would argue on the whole House, to address that threat as robustly and effectively as we can, with the provisions for safeguards that are very much within the legislation carried through. The Law Lords' judgment is an important consideration in relation to the changes, but the fact is that the threat is evolving and constant, and it involves UK as well as non-UK citizens.

Mr. Robin Cook (Livingston) (Lab): Does my right hon. Friend accept that many of us understand the great difficulty of the decisions with which he wrestles? Will he in turn recognise that those of us with first-hand experience of dealing with secret intelligence have great difficulty in accepting that something suspected should be the basis for on which liberty is deprived? I therefore warmly welcome his saying that he does not currently require the powers of detention. That being the case, is not the obvious way forward for him to confine tomorrow's Bill to those measures that the police and security services have told him are sufficient for the
 
22 Feb 2005 : Column 163
 
present task and give us rather longer to find an agreed basis on which we can retain the principle that any decision to remove the liberty of the citizen should be taken in the first instance by the courts, not the Executive?

Mr. Clarke: I do think that the intelligence issues to which my right hon. Friend referred initially, particularly on weapons of mass destruction and the Iraq situation, have led to concerns about the security services and the quality of their intelligence on various issues. There can be no hiding that obvious point and I have said so previously to the House and to Select Committees. That does not, however, lead me to conclude that there are no security issues or that we can pretend that there is no threat whatsoever. That is why I will publish later today the issues papers to which I referred earlier. I think that he will agree that there is a real and substantial threat to this country from international terrorism and that it is necessary to address and deal with it. The correct thing to do is to put in place a legislative framework that recognises that and gives us the means to address it. That is what my proposals today are designed to do.

Mr. A. J. Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD): In considering how to deal with this difficult problem, does the Home Secretary recognise that it has never been the basis of the rule of law in this country that the Executive decide and are accountable to Parliament for which individuals are locked up on the ground of criminality? That power has been imported from immigration legislation, which was the original basis of the decisions on the Belmarsh detainees. We would look very carefully at whether the Home Secretary had fulfilled his responsibility entirely if he put before a judge a recommendation on which the judge made the decision.

Mr. Clarke: I recognise the role played by the right hon. Gentleman through his membership of the Intelligence and Security Committee. He has paid great attention to these issues, so I hope that he would agree that there is an issue of threat that needs to be addressed through legislation of this type. I accept, too, that accountability to Parliament is important, which is why a set of measures has been introduced indicating how that accountability will work.

Finally, I accept that there is a legitimate difference of opinion, which we have discussed before, about the relative roles of the judge and the Government Minister or the Home Secretary. That is not an unreasonable, wrong or ignoble difference, and we can debate it in Parliament just as it has been debated outside Parliament. The reason for my decision and my proposal is that the Home Secretary's Executive responsibility for the security of the country is a paramount issue and should be dealt with in that way. The right hon. Gentleman disagrees, and he is entitled to do so. Let us discuss that but, in doing so, we should not move away from the critical need for legislation of this type to address and provide controls over individuals who threaten our fundamental liberties.

Clare Short (Birmingham, Ladywood) (Lab): Does my right hon. Friend agree that the Butler report showed it was not the intelligence about Iraq that was unreliable so much as its political interpretation, which
 
22 Feb 2005 : Column 164
 
distorted it and led to misinformed decisions? Understandably, he has stressed more than once today his view that his duty is to protect people in this country, but does he accept that that makes him unfit to interpret the intelligence? That job must be given to someone with independence, such as a judge, so that they can interpret intelligence and will not be attacked for doing so, as the Home Secretary would be, if there were an event.

Mr. Clarke: I do not accept that interpretation of Lord Butler's report. I do not think that my right hon. Friend gave an accurate description of the report, so the premise on which she based her question is wrong.

Mr. William Cash (Stone) (Con): Does the Home Secretary accept that this is yet another chapter, after the Civil Contingencies Bill, the identity cards saga and so on, that shows how authoritarian the Government have become? Does he also accept that, with respect to the problem of the Strasbourg Court, whatever legislation emerges—and I strongly support the views of my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) that it could be introduced on a temporary basis—he could get round the difficulty that he described in relation to the European convention on human rights by prefacing it with the words "notwithstanding the Human Rights Act 1998". That would guarantee that our judges would have to give effect to that legislation as agreed by the political will of the House.

Mr. Clarke: I am glad that at least the hon. Gentleman recognises the importance of the House, just as I have sought to do in the legislation. The judgment last December was made by UK Law Lords and the British legal system and not by an overseas court in a different area. It stated that the legislation under which people are held is flawed in the two important respects that I outlined earlier. I hope that he agrees that we need to repair that flaw or problem and create a robust system of legislation rather than, as his Front-Bench team seeks to do, simply ignore it and hope that it will go away.

David Winnick (Walsall, North) (Lab): As someone who strongly opposed the Government policy on identity cards, I for one recognise that there is an acute terrorist danger facing this country after 9/11, Madrid and Istanbul, so it is necessary for the Home Secretary to act decisively to protect our country and people. Although I will support the measure that will be laid before the House for reasons that I have just given, I hope nevertheless that the judicial aspect will be reconsidered in Committee, because it is important. I do not go along with everyone who has made criticisms today, but the court plays an essential role, and I hope that my right hon. Friend will bear that in mind.

Mr. Clarke: I will very much bear that point in mind. I hope that, when my hon. Friend looks at the legislation in detail and sees the role proposed for the judiciary, he will acknowledge that I have done a great deal to meet the concern that he has raised both in the House and in private. I pay tribute to his hard-headedness. Speaking from his long experience in the House, he acknowledged the existence of terrorist organisations and the way in which they operate, which we need to address. He has
 
22 Feb 2005 : Column 165
 
always acknowledged, whatever the political divide, the state's obligation to defend itself against such organisations. That is what the Bill is about.

Lady Hermon (North Down) (UUP): I welcome the Home Secretary's hard-hitting statement and I hope to goodness that he has a quiet word with his parliamentary colleague, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland before the next statement this afternoon. The Home Secretary's statement made it clear that control orders will be applicable to all suspected terrorists, irrespective of nationality and the type of terrorism. This week, the Irish Justice Minister, no less, confirmed that Mr. Martin McGuinness and Mr. Gerry Adams are members of the IRA army council, so can the Home Secretary confirm that control orders are applicable to those gentlemen?

---