PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES - United Kingdom Parliament

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35 Debate on the Address 9 MAY 2012 Debate on the Address 36 [Mr David Davis] and the east African embassy bombings, and introduced a couple of measures: the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 and the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001, it took away many previous protections. Before RIPA, the agencies would approach British Telecom or Cable & Wireless and ask for the data, which were sometimes—not always—handed over voluntarily. The companies exercised some responsibility. In about two thirds of cases, the agencies got warrants, and the information had to be handed over. The central, though not the only issue is whether the databases are available to the agencies of the state without a warrant. They are currently available without a warrant. If we want to make such practices acceptable in a civilised, liberal state, we should have warrants first. Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD): As a Liberal Democrat, but also as the MP for Cheltenham, I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he agrees that it should be possible to strike a perfectly good balance between the absolute need to protect civil liberties and traditional British freedoms and apply the principles behind the existing legislation that he mentioned to new and fastdeveloping technologies to prevent our security services from falling behind. Mr Davis: Of course, but frankly, talk about falling behind is a bit of a red herring. The security services today can collect more data by several orders of magnitude than they could when I first became a Member of Parliament, simply because technology allows that. In 1987, one pretty much had to get a BT engineer to plug in a bug in the local exchange. People do not do that now—they could almost do it from my office through software. I could listen to all hon. Members at once— [Interruption.] Hon. Members’ conversations are too boring to bother with. Of course, the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) is right and there is a balance to strike. No one has ever been foolish enough to suggest that I favour helping terrorists, making it easier for them or harder for our agencies. However, we must act under judicial control and return to the prior warrant process that applied before RIPA for the systems to work. Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con): Will my right hon. Friend give way? Mr Davis: No, I am about to finish that part of my speech. The prior warrant process would ensure that we stop the great overuse of the new powers, which has happened dozens of times in the past decade. If we do not, the public reaction will be one of outrage, because the measure will affect not just a few people, but tens of millions of people, and they will not take it quietly. My last point is on a justice measure, but it is not a measure like the snooper’s charter, which will create a tsunami of reaction as it goes through the House—I am confident of that, because we already have 137,000 signatures on the online petition. Secret courts affect only tens and perhaps hundreds of people, but they bring against those people a serious injustice. I take the view—a very unfashionable one in modern politics, with too many polls and focus groups—that an injustice against one is an injustice against all, and the secret court proposals undoubtedly propose an injustice. I say that with complete confidence, but for a rather obscure reason. A secret court procedure is proposed, but we already have such procedures. They are called special immigration appeal courts—SIAC—and they have existed since 1997, when the Labour Government introduced them to deal with people they thought they could not deal with in open court. Of course, no hon. Member has ever been in one or seen one in operation. No hon. Member knows how they work, including all Ministers of this Government and the previous one. One group alone understands how those courts work: special advocates. There are 69 special advocates, of whom 32 have had detailed exposure to the proposed closed material procedure. The procedure involves the Executive—a Minister—saying to a court: “This information can be heard only in very close camera.” It cannot be heard in court as a whole in secret: the judge and the Government advocate of the argument can hear the evidence, but only the special advocate—a lawyer who cannot talk to the defendant or litigant in the case—can challenge it. Tony Baldry: We had a system of special advocates in courts in Northern Ireland for a very long time—a number of members of my chambers were special advocates in such circumstances—and I do not recall my right hon. Friend when we were in government ever complaining about those procedures, which we had to use in Northern Ireland given the particular circumstances there. Mr Davis: I am sorry to correct my hon. Friend’s memory, but I did complain. I actually appeared in a Diplock court as a witness, so I know exactly how they work from that point of view. The simple truth is not my view, but the view of the 32 special advocates who have had such experience. Virtually all of them signed a document that challenged the Government’s Green Paper, in quite robust terms. The special advocates said that closed material procedures “represent a departure both from the principle of natural justice and from the principle of open justice. They may leave a litigant having little clear idea of the case deployed against him, and ultimately they may prevent some litigants from knowing why they have won or lost. Furthermore, and crucially, because the SA appointed on his behalf is unable to take instructions in relation to that case, they may leave the SA with little realistic opportunity of responding effectively to that case. They also systematically exclude public, press and Parliamentary scrutiny of parts of our justice system…Our experience as SAs involved in statutory and non-statutory closed material procedures leaves us in no doubt that CMPs are inherently unfair; they do not ‘work effectively’, nor do they deliver real procedural fairness. The fact that such procedures may be operated so as to meet the minimum standards required by Article 6 of the ECHR, with such modification as has been required by the courts so as to reduce that inherent unfairness, does not and cannot make them objectively fair.” That is the view of the only people who understand this system. The secret courts measure is being held up as a proposal to improve our security. It would undermine and corrode our justice system, and it would not improve our security, because the other point made by special advocates is that the public interest immunity system as it now stands—again this is not properly understood by
37 Debate on the Address 9 MAY 2012 Debate on the Address 38 Ministers—works perfectly well, and much better than what is proposed. Indeed, one special advocate has pointed out that this proposal is less good than that available to the terrorist suspects in Guantanamo Bay. That is how poor this procedure is. In fact, there are many other procedures abroad that would work better than this one. Sadly, this is not a measure that I will support in the coming months. The Government came in with a grand, important and liberal—both small “l” and big “l”—tradition to uphold. That tradition supported both freedom and justice in this country. These two measures—putting the Lords to one side, as that is a matter for argument—would, if we are not very careful, undermine that tradition and our reputation, and do nothing to improve the protection of Britain against terrorism. Indeed, just the reverse—they would make it worse. 4.31 pm Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP): I am pleased to follow the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis). He has eloquently set out the arguments on the balance between the need to protect national security and the need to protect individual freedoms. He mentioned internet surveillance and my party will look closely at the proposals and support whatever measures are necessary to protect national security, but we will also be conscious of the need to protect individual freedoms and privacies. That means not giving the Government any more powers than are absolutely and strictly necessary in the fight against terrorism, but if powers are thought to be absolutely necessary, we would be remiss if we did not proceed to implement them. At the outset, I join others in paying tribute to Her Majesty the Queen in her diamond jubilee year. We in Northern Ireland look forward to her coming to the Province later this summer, and I have no doubt that she will be welcomed as warmly as she has been on previous visits. I also wish to join the Prime Minister and other right hon. and hon. Members in paying tribute to the service in the two years of this Parliament of our brave servicemen and women in theatres of conflict abroad and in the work that they do to protect us all here in this country and in the fight against terrorism. I welcome several measures in the Queen’s Speech. The briefing that went on before the Gracious Speech referred to a greater focus on family-friendly measures. My party welcomes measures to support and strengthen families and family life, such as speedier adoption and help for parents of children with disabilities to cut through red tape. We will support such measures, because strong families are important and supporting them is key. The Government have been slow so far to implement tax allowance changes for married couples, which were in the Conservative manifesto and the coalition agreement. We look forward to their coming forward with proposals in that area in due course. We also welcome the banking reform Bill, which will split the retail and investment sides of businesses. That is overdue, it is good news for consumers and will help to protect them, and so will receive our support. There are issues with the speed of implementation—we would like the reforms to happen a little quicker—but we will come to that during the debate on the Bill. Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP): Banking reform is important for the United Kingdom as a whole but especially important for Northern Ireland. We have a dysfunctional banking system, because so many banks have been caught up with bad property loans and so on. Does my right hon. Friend agree with me and people in Northern Ireland that the Government need to focus more on how measures to ease banking will affect banks in Northern Ireland and ensure that we get our fair share of credit easing and so on? Mr Dodds: As Minister for Finance and Personnel in the Northern Ireland Executive, my hon. Friend deals with such issues on a daily basis, and he and his colleagues, including Arlene Foster, the enterprise Minister, and others are working hard to deal with them. He points, rightly, to the particular issues in Northern Ireland. Two of our banks are based in the Irish Republic. The property collapse in the Irish Republic and its eurozone problems are impacting strongly on the Northern Ireland economy. He is right, therefore, that particular attention needs to be given to how credit easing plays through to Northern Ireland, where we have peculiar circumstances that do not affect other parts of the UK. One reason we have been pushing strongly—we have received a reasonably warm response—on the need to reduce corporation tax in Northern Ireland is that we share a land frontier with the Irish Republic, which has a much lower rate of corporation tax. I look forward to an announcement on that and other issues in this Session and perhaps to legislation in the next Session. We welcome the emphasis on cutting business regulation. The Business Secretary’s remarks yesterday about the need to roll back the EU regulatory burden were also most welcome. We also support moves on executive pay. The recent revolts by shareholders in companies such as Aviva and Barclays brought cheer to hard-working families, but more needs to be done to empower shareholders through binding votes on pay at the top level. Such measures matter to people out there in the country, and they want action taken on them. That is where the focus needs to be. We welcome the fact that driving under the influence of drugs will become a specific offence with appropriate punishment. I have received communication on that issue, as other right hon. and hon. Members will have, and although this measure will be of little comfort to those who have already lost family members in tragic circumstances—we have heard some very brave people speaking in the media about this—it will, I hope, prevent more deaths and injuries on our roads in the future. Likewise, I welcome the much-needed groceries code adjudicator Bill. It will be warmly welcomed by farmers and other suppliers in my part of the world—not necessarily in my constituency, because at last count only three farmers were living within its boundaries, but in Northern Ireland, which is largely a rural area, it will be warmly welcomed. Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con): I, too, much support the groceries code adjudicator Bill. If there is no problem with how our big buyers and supermarkets use their muscle, they will have nothing to fear from the adjudicator. It will be a check and balance.
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