| Previous Section | Back to Table of Contents | Lords Hansard Home Page |
Lord Phillips of Sudbury: Before the Minister sits down, I understand the intense difficulties of the
dilemmas that are being dealt with. If the Attorney-General were the special advocate, and knowing that the procedure allows the special advocate to go back to his client only having seen the evidence with the consent of SIAC, would he not then consider it to be his duty to obtain from his client, before he sees the evidence, an extremely long, detailed deposition of facts relating to all the possible contingencies which might give rise to the order being sought? Will the Attorney-General at least assure us that the procedures will permit that? One could be talking about four of five days' work to get a single statement from the person whose liberty is at stake.9.45 p.m.
Lord Goldsmith: I absolutely assure the noble Lord that before the material has been seen by the special advocate, he can spend as much time as he wishes with the appellant and take as much detailed information as he wishes. The commission holds the balance. I said in an earlier debate—I shall not return to this in detail—that the Secretary of State can be ordered to provide information to the applicant. The commission can hold the balance as to what the special advocate can reveal to the applicant or the questions that he can put. That is a level playing field and a fair balance between the two sets of interests.
Clause 29 [Duration of sections 21 to 23]:
Lord Goodhart moved Amendment No. 123A:
- Page 15, line 14, leave out Xsubject to the following provisions of this section"
The noble Lord said: In moving this amendment, I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 123B, 123C and 123D.
This is an important group of amendments. Without going into any detail, at Second Reading speaker after speaker condemned the Bill on the grounds that it was far too big, that it contained far too much material that was not directly—or even seriously indirectly—connected with terrorism and that it was being rushed through in a way that did not give time for proper consideration. I believe that all of those condemnations are true.
For that reason, my honourable friends in another place joined the Conservatives in another place and put forward a detailed proposal that would establish a sunset clause to cover all of the Bill except for Part 12, which is about overseas bribery. That was debated at the beginning of the Committee stage. The proposal was that the Bill should be reconsidered, by virtue of a sunset clause, within a time that varied according to the contentiousness of the part that was being considered. It was proposed that the sunset clause relating to Part 4 should come into operation 12 months after the Bill was passed; that the sunset clause relating to Parts 3, 5, 10, 11 and 13 should come into operation after two years; and that the sunset clause relating to all other parts of the Bill, with the exception of bits of Part 12, should come into operation after five years.
That proposal involved a real sunset clause, not simply a renewal of the Bill by means of a statutory instrument. It meant that the Bill would cease to have effect permanently unless, within the time specified in each of those cases, new primary legislation was passed to ensure that the Bill was dealt with—that the relevant part of the Bill was either dropped or dealt with again through the full parliamentary procedure.
We on these Benches believe that if the Bill is to go through in anything like its current form, it is essential that it should, at the appropriate time, receive the full consideration and involve the proper timescale that it currently lacks .
I shall obviously not go into any details. Unfortunately—because of the extreme speed with which the Bill was brought before your Lordships' House—we failed to table the necessary amendments to introduce a sunset clause for Parts 1, 2, 3 and 5, which were debated yesterday. Although they do not now appear in the current Marshalled List, we have put down sunset-clause amendments that can be debated on Monday and Tuesday. They will cover Parts 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 13.
In response to the debate in the House of Commons, the Government agreed to introduce one sunset clause and only one, in relation to Part 4. That appears in Clause 29 and provides for the initial effect of Part 4 to continue for 15 months. Thereafter it will be possible to renew that provision by statutory instrument for successive periods of not more than a year. At the end of five years a proper sunset clause will come into operation and if Part 4 is to continue, it will have to undergo the full parliamentary process before then.
We recognise and welcome that as a step in the right direction. However, it is only a step and in our view the step is not big enough. We believe that Clause 4 requires consideration much sooner. It introduces the wholly exceptional power to detain people without charge and without trial for an uncertain period of time because it depends on circumstances, in particular the willingness of a third country to accept the detainee who is outside the control of the Government.
We consider that it is quite inappropriate to say that this matter cannot be reconsidered fully through the proper parliamentary procedure until five years have elapsed. We believe that this procedure should be looked at as soon as possible so that we can consider, on a slightly more relaxed occasion, whether a remedy as draconian as this is still required in the light of the terrorist threat as it may appear in due course.
This is a matter of such importance that we believe that it should be brought back 12 months from the time when this Bill is passed. That would mean that the Government would have to reintroduce legislation after the Summer Recess next year. It would be possible to deal with it, with full, proper and due consideration, more quickly than the present Bill because there would be only one part to deal with. If, in a year's time, the terrorist threat still requires such
a remedy, it will be possible, according to our proposal, to consider the matter before time expires some time in the middle of December next year.On Monday, when we consider other sunset clauses, we shall not return to this matter. At the moment we are considering the sunset clause on Part 4 only, but we firmly believe that we should return to the matter as soon as possible and, in our view, Xas soon as possible" means within the next 12 months. That is twice the length of time that my noble friend Lord Jenkins of Hillhead told us at Second Reading that he allowed for the Prevention of Terrorism Act for which he was responsible in 1974. We believe a year is enough time for such legislation and that we should reconsider Part 4 in a year's time. I beg to move.
Baroness Buscombe: Perhaps I may say, on behalf of Her Majesty's Opposition, that we have great sympathy with the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart. We have tabled a sunset clause amendment for what I hope will be a full debate on either Monday or, more likely, Tuesday of next week. We shall reserve our right to debate it then.
Lord Rooker: I have listened to the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart. With the best will in the world, it took a while for him to mention the fact that the sunset clause had been inserted. I took with a pinch of salt the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, the other day. He claimed that the Bill had arrived unamended from the other place, ignoring the fact that the sunset clause had been inserted. That was a major change. I suspect that if we had inserted a one-year sunset clause, noble Lords would have said, XYou have to do it every six months".
We have derogated from the European Convention on Human Rights, a convention to which this country has been signed up to under all governments, for 50 years. We have derogated for five years. That seems sensible to us. We accept the point about the importance and seriousness of this legislation and the effect on the liberty of individuals. We fully accept that we originally planned to bring it forward by order after five years. However, we have inserted a full sunset clause so that, if they have not been repealed earlier, the powers lapse on 10th November 2006.
As it stands, Clause 29 provides adequate parliamentary safeguards. As the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, reminded us, after 15 months we shall have the opportunity to consider an affirmative resolution. We shall have the report from the independent reviewer who will check what is happening on the key clauses. Thereafter, there will be annual renewal on the same basis for five years.
We must remember that terrorists do not work on a six-month timeframe. It is obvious from what we have read in public print that it took years to plan the events of September 11th. They have planned for events which we do not know about. That has probably already taken place. Frankly, to work in one-year timeframes for primary legislation is to send a signal that we are not taking international terrorism seriously. I have made it clear today, although no one
seems to have taken it on board, that we are genuinely concerned and apprised of the speed at which the legislation is going through the House. We want to meet the desires of Members of both Houses. Hence the proposal at which I hinted or which I floated for noble Lords' consideration earlier today. My remarks then covered the whole Bill, not just one part. They covered the whole Act of Parliament, which I hope the Bill will become.The designated derogation order has been approved for a life of five years. That is the benchmark we used for the sunset provision. There is the underlying fact that the threat we face has created that public emergency. We need to designate that before we can go for the order. Anyone who thinks that this is a fleeting emergency is not living in the real world. Parliament would not be taking the issues seriously—I think the public would see it that way—if every 12 months we were to introduce a brand new piece of legislation which had to go through all the processes in the normal, leisurely way. The implication is that there would not be emergency primary legislation each year but that it would go through the normal process. Such legislation may take six to seven months from introduction to Royal Assent. That would be quick for most Bills, but it would not be practical on this.
I accept that how the deadline is set is a matter of judgment. However, the derogation order from the ECHR is for five years. There will be further debates next week on sunset clauses on further important parts of the legislation. I shall be interested to hear the kind of case noble Lords make on Monday and Tuesday of next week.
10 p.m.
The Earl of Onslow: The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, said, quite rightly, that the gentlemen who flew aeroplanes into the side of the World Trade Center were absolutely awful and we needed to do something about it. I do not believe for one moment that had this Bill been an Act of Parliament on 1st January 2001 it would have made one iota of difference to what happened. If anybody can show me any evidence that this Bill would have stopped the events of September 11th I shall buy him a pint afterwards.
Legislate in haste and repent at leisure. We must have a sunset clause. If the noble Lord believes that it takes seven months to get a Bill through Parliament, so be it. If there is a 12 or 18-month sunset clause, the Government should start to plan the new legislation a year before so they can do it at a gentle pace before the old Act falls. But I remain to be convinced that this Bill would have made a blind bit of difference to the plans of someone in Afghanistan, Hamburg or wherever to attend a flying school in America and say that he wanted to learn how to fly and was not interested in either taking off or landing. I do not believe that this measure would have had any effect. Please, please, let us listen to the words of the noble Lords, Lord Thomas
of Gresford and Lord Goodhart. Above all, we must listen to the Front Bench on this side about proper sunset clauses.
| Next Section | Back to Table of Contents | Lords Hansard Home Page |