Select Committee on Home Affairs Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witness (Questions 75-79)

LORD CARLILE OF BERRIEW QC

14 FEBRUARY 2006

  Q75 Chairman: Lord Carlile, thank you very much indeed for joining us. As you know, this is the second evidence session in our inquiry into the detention powers. We decided to have the inquiry because of the extent of the parliamentary controversy about this issue of the Terrorism Bill and in the knowledge that the Government was likely to return to terrorism legislation in the next 18 months. Of course yesterday we had the Chancellor of the Exchequer backing an extension for the 28 days which is currently going through the system, so it is basically quite a live issue for the Committee and we are very grateful to you for joining us for this session to share your knowledge in this area. Can I start with a fairly general question. You have in the past criticised the level of public information which has been made available about the proposed extension of pre-charge detention and also the failure to explain exactly what the problem was that was being tackled. How do you think the issues could have been explained better both in terms of the problem to be tackled and the justification for the powers?

  Lord Carlile of Berriew: I will give you an example to start with, if I may. Recently I produced my first report on control orders. In an appendix to that report, I reproduced, and this was not opposed, but I reproduced the control order that is imposed on most of the "controllees", as I call them, and that enabled you, parliamentarians, and the public at large to see the extent of the restrictions placed on people who are subject to control orders, something which had not been in the public domain before. The extent of the restrictions could tell the public two things, possibly in the alternative, possibly conjunctively: that the people who are controlled are dangerous to the extent that those controls are required; and/or that the extent of the controls is so great that they come to the very limit of restrictions on human rights. Now, I think it is legitimate to have that debate from the proper level of public information as to what the restrictions are. I believe the same applies across the board on these issues. The Government should give the public as much information as they can without compromising public safety. I think this is one of the few things in the area of terrorism legislation that the Americans are better at than us. I hasten to add that I think that their legislation, the Patriot Act, for example, would never have got through the two Houses of this Parliament and it probably would have brought a government down, but, in terms of public information, they give much more.

  Q76  Chairman: That is a very helpful reply. You indicate that, in relation to control orders, more information could be made available to the public. What would you have liked to see the Government say about the nature of the problem that led to the call for increased pre-charge detention? What sort of information about the problem that was trying to be tackled could have been made available, in your view, and was not?

  Lord Carlile of Berriew: I would like the Government to say more about the nature of the terrorist threat. The information is actually available in the public domain; you just have to know where to go and look for it. I would prefer it if the Government made it a little more accessible and perhaps I can give you an example. If you look at what is generally called the "first generic judgment" of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission in what had become known as the `Belmarsh cases', you would see there a fairly encyclopaedic description by a judge, by a High Court judge, of the nature of al-Qaeda and its connected organisations at the time that judgment was given. Journalists on the whole, if those present will forgive me, are rather lazy and they like to have stories written for them, by and large, and do not like to look in rather dense resources, like the judgment of Mr Justice Collins there. I would like to see the Government simplify that kind of information because it is a very long judgment, by putting it in the public domain so that people understand the complexity and, therefore, often impenetrability of the terrorism threat.

  Q77  Chairman: Would it be too much to ask you, for the purposes of this Committee, to give two or three further details about the sorts of issues which you understand, the sort of factual issues which you understand which you suspect the public are not aware of or do not appreciate?

  Lord Carlile of Berriew: I could select, for example, as I mentioned earlier, the complexity of al-Qaeda which is not an organisation, as I understand it, in the same terms as, say, the Provisional IRA; rather, it is a loose co-fraternity of people with similar political and terrorism interests, so that would be one example and I think more should be said about that. Another example, and this is getting into a sensitive area, is the issue of the way in which imams are allowed to enter this country and take up posts in mosques around the country. There are some wonderful imams in this country, I have met a few of them, but very little has been done in the past to look in any detail, I believe, into the past history of imams who have gone into some cities. The good imams do not want the bad imams anyway. There is an issue here which needs to be discussed. I would give you two more examples very briefly. One is the radicalisation mainly of young men in universities. If you talk particularly to young female students in the larger, and perhaps more rackety universities, you will find that there is a degree of concern expressed about some societies in those universities from which women are usually excluded and where there might be Islamic radicalisation. The final example I would give is the issue of radicalisation in custodial settings. Richard Reed, the shoe-bomber, appears to be somebody who was radicalised in a custodial setting. I can only give you anecdotes on that, but I have received anecdotal evidence from governor grades that this is occurring and that it is a worry to them. I do not want to exaggerate the problem, but there certainly is an issue in that context.

  Q78  Chairman: That last point in fact is one that this Committee drew attention to in a report produced nearly a year ago now based on our study of what had been happening in France and the Netherlands, so the Committee is certainly familiar with that. If I understand what you say, Lord Carlile, when it comes to explaining the nature of the problem, what you are really talking about here is actually having a much higher level of public understanding about the nature of the terrorist threat as a whole, if that is right. What do you think could have been done in general to explain the case for increased detention more directly? Clearly one can understand the terrorist threat does not necessarily lead to the argument for increased pre-charge detention, so what could have been done by the Government to make that case more clearly?

  Lord Carlile of Berriew: The Government, I think, has learnt the lesson of what it did not do, but should have done, by announcing that the new Terrorism Bill, whenever it appears, the consolidating and amending Bill that Charles Clarke announced, will go to a scrutiny committee. I believe that a lot more would have been achieved if the current Bill, as was the original intention, but later withdrawn, had been placed before a scrutiny committee. As it happens, I chaired the joint scrutiny committee, and there was at least one person here who was a member of that committee, on the draft Mental Health Bill. The result of the evidential process of that committee has been positive in legislative terms in that we do not yet have a Mental Health Bill, so somebody is thinking about the findings that the Committee made. I believe that an evidential process would have been more successful than the political process and may, for example, have amended the views of highly respected parliamentarians, like Mr Winnick, if I may say so, who took an entirely understandable approach in parliamentary terms, in House of Commons terms, to the way the Bill was presented.

  Q79  Chairman: Mr Winnick will have his go in a moment.

  Lord Carlile of Berriew: I thought he might!


 
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