---

Mr. Marshall-Andrews: I have been listening to my hon. Friend with considerable admiration and respect. Will she apply her deep knowledge of the matters about which she speaks to clause 1, and especially the provisions in paragraphs (a) to (o) of subsection (3), which set out in detail the restrictions that could be put on people through a non-derogation order? Does she agree that they bear an extraordinary and chilling resemblance to the pass laws in South Africa?

Barbara Follett: I wish that I did not have to agree with my hon. and learned Friend, but the provisions do bear an extraordinary resemblance to those laws. We must beware of going down that road. Again, I say that this country is not South Africa, but we have an example to set.

My first husband was put under house arrest because the apartheid state believed that he was a threat to its security. He probably was; he was campaigning to give black people the right to vote and join trade unions. Given the structure of the South African state, he probably was threatening it because it believed that only whites could vote and join trade unions. House arrest hampered him, but did not stop him, which was probably why, just before his five-year order was due to expire, he was shot dead in front of our two young daughters in their bedroom. I tried to comfort them in the days that followed by telling them that we were going to go to Britain, where people were not detained without trial or put under house arrest. When one tries to tell a 13-year-old and a nine-year-old that not all parts of the world are as bad as others, one looks for examples, and we in Britain were that example. I am glad that I am here today so that my now 40-year-old and 36-year-old daughters can hear that we are still fighting to uphold that.

I understand that control orders are necessary in some circumstances, which is why, like my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson), I supported the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001. However, that Act was a stop-gap measure. It is due to be reviewed in five years and is subject to continual review. The Bill, however, is not a stop-gap measure. It will embed an undemocratic principle in our law. It will remove rights that are guaranteed under the Magna Carta, which says that no free man—I add the word "woman" to that—shall be
 
23 Feb 2005 : Column 402
 
arrested or detained except by the lawful judgment of his or her peers. If that was good enough for 1215, surely it is good enough for 2005.

I ask the Home Secretary to think again, please. He should get a judge to implement the orders and consider how to use intelligence evidence in court. He should consider putting a time period on the Bill and review it in five years, rather than committing us to it for ever. Above all, he should take time and care. These principles are the very basis of our democracy and our party. If we destroy them, it destroys us.

5.53 pm

Mr. Douglas Hogg (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con): The House has listened with respect and great interest to the speech made by the hon. Member for Stevenage (Barbara Follett). She brings to the debate a knowledge of the affairs of South Africa while she was living there, and I have no doubt that that has influenced her judgment and what she said. Incidentally, although I shall return to this point later, I suspect that such knowledge influenced the view of Lord Hoffmann when he made his important speech in the Belmarsh judgment, which I commend to the House.

In one sense, this is an extraordinary debate. To start off with, the House proposes to give Ministers the power of administrative detention, which we have condemned in every other country where it is exercised: for example, Zimbabwe, Burma and Israel. We are proposing to abandon principles that have governed our constitution and legal practices at least since the days of the Stuart kings. We propose to do so in a debate that will last two days. Incidentally, there is one other curious aspect—we are addressing this matter in this way because of the judicial interpretation of the European convention on human rights, which was incorporated into British law to protect human rights in this country. Bizarrely, it is having a contrary effect.

Another extraordinary thing about this debate is the high degree of agreement between the Back Benches on both sides of the House. May I say to the Government that when there is such unity it behoves them to listen carefully to what has been said, notwithstanding their majority?

I am conscious that other Members want to speak. Furthermore, many of the points have been made with great eloquence. I shall therefore focus briefly on four issues: first, the principle of what is involved; secondly, whether there is a need; thirdly, the purported safeguards; and lastly, process.

First, on principle, at the most extreme we are talking about administrative detention—a form of indefinite imprisonment. In relation to the less extreme form of judicial control orders, we are talking about something less. None the less, as the hon. and learned Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews) said, it is a process that will destroy people's livelihoods because they will be denied the ability to work, to associate and to have access to their friends. All of that is at the say-so of a Minister. I find that wholly offensive. Ministers should not have those powers. On that point, I am wholly immovable.

Another question of principle arises as to whether such sanctions should be imposed otherwise than after a conviction for a substantive offence. My strong
 
23 Feb 2005 : Column 403
 
presumption is that such things should be done only after a conviction for a substantive offence. Yes, I will listen to the arguments, and it is possible that I could be moved on that point, but only were there to be a full judicial process. I shall return shortly to a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve).

The truth is that the powers that we are conferring on the Government are sought in a democratic state only in the direst and darkest days of war. That is not today, whatever other perils we face. Otherwise, they are the kind of powers that are usually sought by dictators to practise tyranny.

Secondly, on the question of need, I do not come blind to this debate. I have practised at the Bar—and still do so—for nearly 40 years, now almost exclusively at the criminal Bar. I also have some relevant experience in government. For two years, I was an Under-Secretary at the Home Office, with responsibility for the terrorism legislation then carried through, and I necessarily had some dealings with the security services. For five years, I was a Foreign Office Minister with a close relationship with the intelligence services and GCHQ, and was very familiar with the kind of considerations that underpin the anxieties now being expressed by the Government. I very much doubt whether there is a justification for what the Government are asking us to do.

To start with—this is a bizarre fact—we are considering the Bill not because the security services have told us that there is a security need, but because the House of Lords, in the Belmarsh judgment, told us that we could not make a distinction between citizens and non-citizens, and that is a very different matter.

Mr. Dalyell: On the security services, how is it possible to establish the universal agreement of all security services that such and such should be true?

Mr. Hogg: I do not believe that it is possible. The Father of the House makes a serious point. What is more, the security services seldom express themselves in really robust ways. We have only to consider the Butler committee report—I shall not go into great detail—to find that when the security services assessed the existence or otherwise of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, they qualified that assessment to a high degree, so I think that the Father of the House is right.

I return to the question of need. My right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) has advanced other approaches—for example, the creation of alternative offences, whether it is possible to admit classes of evidence not presently admitted and to safeguard that evidence, and whether perhaps there should be some form of special court. I would contemplate, though I find it difficult to believe that I would accept, that maybe some limited form of control order made by a judge, falling short of house arrest, might be acceptable. I shrink from that but I am prepared to consider it.

There are these alternatives, but there is another alternative that we should not overlook, and that is surveillance. My right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden and I spent a long time in the Foreign Office, and we know quite a lot about surveillance methods. I had responsibility—the House
 
23 Feb 2005 : Column 404
 
will forgive me if I do not go into too much detail—for ensuring that individual citizens were safe. We relied on surveillance to achieve that. Surveillance can be extremely effective and I doubt whether there is a need for the draconian measures that are proposed.

David Davis: Will my right hon. and learned Friend confirm what I believe is his experience and mine, that when major surveillance is mounted on targets, one of the side effects is that it generates vast quantities of evidence that can be used in court?

---