House of Lords
(11 years, 6 months ago)
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Rwanda
(11 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Chidgey
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the Amnesty International report Rwanda: shrouded in secrecy.
The Senior Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government & Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Warsi)
My Lords, the UK shares the concerns raised in this Amnesty International report. Our high commissioner in Kigali has raised illegal detentions and key concerns in the report with the Rwandan Government on a number of occasions. He has also regularly requested access to detention centres and, in September, was granted access to the Gikondo transit centre, a facility that has been mentioned in other international human rights reports on illegal detentions.
Lord Chidgey
I thank my noble friend for that response. She will be aware that the Amnesty report documents illegal detention and torture over more than two years while, over the past two days, the Rwandan military has been backing the M23 in its incursions. They have overrun the city of Goma in the Congo. Surely both of these events are serious breaches of a memorandum of understanding that Rwanda signed with the UK just this September, committing it to:
“The principles of good governance … respect for human rights”,
and,
“The promotion of peace and stability in the Great Lakes region”.
In the absence of any signs of compliance with the memorandum of understanding, can my noble friend tell us whether, during our Minister for Africa’s visit to the region—he is there now—we will curb Rwanda’s aid programme forthwith?
Baroness Warsi
My noble friend raised a number of issues, some of which relate to reports that were clearly leaked. It would be inappropriate for me to comment specifically on a leaked report but I can confirm that this Government take those concerns extremely seriously. That is why, among other reasons, the Minister for Africa is in the region. My noble friend will be aware of the United Nations Security Council presidential statement, which was issued only yesterday and deals with specific concerns about the M23 in Goma. I am sure he will also accept that our aid programme in Rwanda is, specifically, to deal with poverty in a country where almost 45% of Rwandans remain in extreme poverty. Real progress has been made since the genocide of 1994 in building Rwanda’s economy. I am sure he will accept that our support to the poorest in that economy is part of that.
Lord Alton of Liverpool
Does the noble Baroness not recall that in September, in reply to a Written Question that I tabled, her noble friend Lady Northover confirmed that some £344 million is being provided in bilateral aid to Rwanda between 2011 and 2015? In that same reply, she said that Rwanda,
“must adhere to strict partnership principles”,—[Official Report, 24/9/12; col. WA284.]
and that the Secretary of State was still considering whether those expectations were being met. Given what the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, just said about the fall of Goma—there are now 80,000 displaced people and refugees in that area—and what Ban Ki-Moon has said about using aid for leverage, will the Minister say whether we are reconsidering our decision to restore aid in that vast degree to Rwanda and who is arming and paying for the arms of the M23 rebels?
Baroness Warsi
I cannot comment on the last question that the noble Lord raised but, in relation to aid, in 2012-13 we have committed £75 million, of which £29 million is general budget support. The noble Lord will be aware that in July of this year, because of certain concerns that were raised, a £16 million tranche of general budget funding was not given over until September and, at that point, £8 million was given over as general budget support but £8 million was redirected to education and food. The next tranche is due in December and my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for International Development is looking at all these matters.
Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead
My Lords, does the Minister have a view on how the Security Council could accept yesterday that M23 is getting external support but then perversely claim that it lacks evidence? Does she agree that it need look no further than the new, well documented evidence provided by Human Rights Watch on Rwanda’s provision of, for instance, logistical support and sophisticated weaponry to M23?
Baroness Warsi
We were heavily involved in that presidential statement at the United Nations Security Council yesterday. It was important that we raised our concerns, and we raised them. As the noble Baroness will note from that report, the support given to M23 is not entirely clear. Reference was made to it by the United Nations group of experts’ report via a leaked report. It would be inappropriate for me to comment on that leak, but these are matters that we continuously discuss with Rwanda.
The Lord Bishop of Bath and Wells
My Lords, Rwanda: Shrouded in Secrecy paints a bleak picture of arbitrary arrest and torture inside Rwanda. What steps are the Government taking to urge the Rwandan Government to investigate all cases of unlawful detention, enforced disappearance, torture and other ill treatment by the military and to ensure that those responsible are brought to justice?
Baroness Warsi
I can assure the right reverend Prelate that human rights are an important component of the development work we do in Rwanda. The UK recognises that there are serious concerns about human rights in Rwanda, particularly about political rights and freedom of expression, as well as the concerns detailed in the Amnesty International report. We raise these concerns consistently in our discussions with the Rwandan Government at the highest level, and we will continue to do so.
Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale
My Lords, do the Government acknowledge that in addition to the aid provided to Rwanda, this country is also one of the largest aid contributors to Uganda and is increasing its aid year after year to the Democratic Republic of Congo? That puts the United Kingdom in a unique position with our role in the Security Council and in the European Union to insist that the talks happening today in Kampala produce a long-term regional solution that involves all the countries of the region accepting their responsibility for the situation, not just at the moment in Goma, but the continuing violence over recent years. A regional solution that delivers peace not just for people in North Kivu, but for the rest of the region as well, is essential.
Baroness Warsi
The noble Lord raises important points. He will be aware that the Minister for Africa is visiting Uganda, Rwanda and the DRC. We have strong relationships in the region, not just through our aid programmes, and it is important that we use them to further stability in the region. The noble Lord may not be aware that aid to the Ugandan Government has been temporarily suspended as a result of evidence emerging from an ongoing forensic audit of the Prime Minister’s office.
Lord Avebury
Considering that with 20,000 armed men and a budget of $1.4 million MONUSCO has been unable to protect the civilians of Goma from the aggression of M23, does the Minister think that it is time to consider more than just reviewing the mandate of MONUSCO? Has she seen the French proposals to give MONUSCO an aggressive capability? Will she discuss that with it to see whether we could support it in the Security Council accordingly?
Baroness Warsi
The MONUSCO mandate, as the noble Lord is aware, is specifically to protect civilians. They do not have, as he says, a more aggressive mandate at this stage but I will take what he has said on board and feed it back.
Health: Mental Health
(11 years, 6 months ago)
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Baroness Sherlock
To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the remarks by Earl Howe on 8 February (HL Deb, col. 273), what action they have taken to ensure mental health is treated on a par with other National Health Service services.
Baroness Sherlock
My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. In doing so, I declare an interest as a director and former chair of Chapel Street community health.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Earl Howe)
My Lords, the Health and Social Care Act 2012 creates equal status for mental and physical health; the new mandate to the NHS Commissioning Board tasks it with delivering this goal. One of the eight objectives of the mandate is,
“putting mental health on an equal footing with physical health–this means everyone who needs mental health services having timely access to the best available treatment”.
The NHS will be expected to demonstrate progress by March 2015.
Baroness Sherlock
I thank the Minister for that Answer. The NHS constitution gives a patient the right to drugs and treatment recommended by NICE for use in the NHS where clinically appropriate. “Recommended” means that they have passed NICE’s technological appraisal. For mental health, the problem with talking therapies is that they are not appraised because they are not technological. Will the Minister reassure the House that “parity of esteem” will mean that the NHS constitution will give someone the right to any therapy or treatment recommended by NICE for use in the NHS, even if it has not passed the technology appraisal, provided that there is good evidence for its efficacy—for example, CBT for schizophrenia?
Earl Howe
My Lords, as the noble Baroness made clear, the NHS constitution sets out that patients have the right to drugs and treatments that have been recommended by NICE for use in the NHS if their doctor says that they are clinically appropriate for them; that includes talking therapies for certain problems. The mandate to the NHS Commissioning Board is clear about everyone who needs mental health services having timely access to the best available treatment. The NHS will be expected to demonstrate progress in achieving that by 2015, as I mentioned. For many patients, there are few better therapies than talking therapies. Given that the board must deliver those outcomes, the rest follows.
Lord Alderdice
My Lords, I will press the Minister further on this. In his response to my debate on mental health on 8 October, he undertook to write on a number of issues. True to his word, as we have come to expect, he wrote a long, substantial, constructive and positive letter in which he discussed psychological therapies being available for disturbed people. I want to pick up on what the noble Baroness has said about schizophrenic disorders. There is a tendency for people with the schizophrenias simply to be given medication and social management. There are psychological treatments—family therapy and others—that are appropriate. Can my noble friend ensure that those who suffer from the schizophrenias will also receive appropriate psychological therapies and not simply be abandoned to medication and social management?
Earl Howe
My Lords, my noble friend makes an important point, and I can reassure him on that. I know that he is concerned that IAPT services may be displacing other psychological therapies. In fact, having looked into this, I can tell him that data from the NHS finance mapping exercise shows that IAPT services are not displacing other therapies; I have figures here to prove that. Spending on non-IAPT psychological therapies has reduced very slightly, by just over 5%, but the overall picture is one of a dramatic expansion in the availability and range of psychological therapies.
Lord Patel
My Lords, as the mover of the amendment that put equality of mental and psychical health in legislation, I am pleased that the Government did not contest it again—albeit that it was won by a Division. I am also pleased that mental health is to be treated equally in the mandate.
Lord Patel
I am coming to the question which is important. Having put it in the mandate, would it not now be right for the department to ask the Commissioning Board to produce a framework outcome for mental health so it can assess progress in treatment equality for mental health?
Earl Howe
My Lords, we expect the equal priority for mental and physical health to be reflected in all relevant aspects of the NHS’s work. There can be no single measure of parity. As I said earlier, we expect the board to be able to demonstrate measureable progress towards parity by 2015. However, there are some specific areas where we expect progress; for example, relevant measures from the NHS outcomes framework, including reducing excess mortality of people with severe mental illness; delivering the IAPT programme in full and extending it further; addressing unacceptable delays, and significantly improving access and waiting times; and working with others to support vulnerable and troubled families. Those are very detailed objectives for the board, all of which bear upon the key question of parity between mental and physical health.
Lord Patel of Bradford
Given the real terms drop in mental health funding last year, which was even greater for older people’s mental health services—an area which has many challenges ahead for us; will the Minister tell us how the Government will ensure consistency and parity in local commissioning strategies, as clinical commissioning groups can obviously choose to prioritise or exclude what they want to have in those strategies? How will the Government deliver the Prime Minister’s dementia target?
Earl Howe
My Lords, the way in which mental health services are commissioned locally is of paramount importance. One of the features of the reforms is to bring together local authorities and the health service to plan services in a much more integrated way. Clinical commissioning groups will ignore the imperative of mental health at their peril, because they will be charged—under the commissioning outcomes framework, which the board will set—to deliver meaningful progress on all the indicators, including mental health indicators. It is an absolute necessity that good commissioning takes place at a local level.
Baroness Meacher
My Lords, the Minister is well aware that only a third of people whose lives are being ravaged by depression and anxiety are receiving treatment. He rightly pointed out that the commissioning board has a responsibility here, but I understand that it does not regard this as one of its priorities. Will the Minister give a very clear signal to the commissioning board that Ministers regard the equal treatment of mental and physical illnesses as important, and that parity must be achieved?
Young People: Staying Put Scheme
(11 years, 6 months ago)
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The Earl of Listowel
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to roll out the Staying Put scheme across England and Wales.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Hill of Oareford)
My Lords, the Government are encouraging all local authorities to expand staying-put arrangements so that more young people can stay with their former foster carers until age 21, particularly when these young people are in further or higher education. My honourable friend Edward Timpson, the Children’s Minister, has recently written to all directors of children’s services, urging them to ensure that care leavers always live in safe, suitable accommodation, including staying-put arrangements.
The Earl of Listowel
I thank the Minister for his reply. Does he share my concern that these young people, in particular, need enduring and reliable relationships in their lives because of their poor start? Does he also share my concern at the recent findings from the deputy Children’s Commissioner about the sexual exploitation of young people leaving care? Does that not highlight the urgency with which the Government should pursue their current activity in encouraging local authorities to spread this practice as far, and as soon, as possible?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I agree with the noble Earl on both points. Any help that he and others can give in raising the salience of the issue with local authorities would be very welcome. As I said, my honourable friend has written to all of them, and he will be monitoring the situation. I am glad that in the past year the number of young people in staying-put arrangements has increased—admittedly from a low base—by more than a third, so there has been some progress. However, we all need to keep the spotlight on it.
Baroness Brinton
Is the Minister aware of the bizarre anomaly that care leavers who are not in education, employment and training are eligible for a personal adviser only until they are 21 years old, while those who are in education, employment and training are eligible for support from a personal adviser until the age of 25? In light of this, will the Government consider extending the offer of personal advisers for NEET care leavers until they are 25?
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, I think that I am right in saying that the extension to the age of 25 for those who are in education was a fairly recent extension from the age of 21. I will take up the noble Baroness’s second point with my honourable friend Mr Timpson.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
My Lords, I am sure that none of us as parents would want to be forced to turn our son or daughter out of the house on the day of their 18th birthday but that is happening to thousands of young people in care. The Minister has effectively said, as the Government constantly say, that it is up to local authorities. However, this is a very special case because these young people are in the care of the state; the Government have ultimate responsibility for their well-being and cannot pass the buck to local authorities. Will the Government give young people in care the entitlement to stay in their placement after the age of 18, if it is in their interests to do so, and ensure that local authorities provide the support for that to happen? Will they further ensure that any planned changes to housing benefit and welfare reform being considered by the Government do not further disadvantage young people in care?
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, it is not a question of the Government seeking to pass the buck to local authorities. As the noble Baroness will know much better than me, that is where the statutory responsibility lies and where we think that it should be. Given those statutory duties, I am sure she will have seen the recent Section 251 returns around the funding that local authorities are putting into looked-after children—it has shown a small increase over the past year, which reflects the priority that is being attached to it—and the statutory framework that is in place.
On the noble Baroness’s second point about whatever changes may be made to the benefits system and seeking to make sure that the interests particularly of this most disadvantaged group of care leavers are taken into account, she is right that we need to make sure that those concerns are properly considered. I know that my colleagues will be doing that as policy is developed.
Lord Roberts of Llandudno
My Lords, I am delighted to see that Wales is included in this, as so many things are devolved to Wales. Will the Minister explain exactly how this scheme operates in Wales? Is it through the Assembly Government or directly from Whitehall?
Lord Hill of Oareford
The Welsh Government are responsible for their own arrangements but, in parallel, they are carrying out a consultation looking into precisely the same issues and whether it is appropriate to introduce their version of staying-put arrangements into Wales. That consultation is going on at the moment.
Lord Harris of Haringey
The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, has referred to the Children’s Commissioner’s report which came out today, in particular the dreadful findings about how many children in care have been sexually abused. Will the Minister tell the House the Government’s stance about that report, given that, apparently, people speaking on behalf of the Government to both the BBC Radio 4 “Today” programme and the Sun said that the report was overemotional and were trying to undermine its conclusions?
Lord Hill of Oareford
The Government’s stance is that the report from the deputy Children’s Commissioner is helpful for the Government to have. We will reflect on the findings that it makes in terms of its recommendations and its estimates about the extent of the problem. I think I am right in saying that the report recognises that making any precise estimate is by nature very difficult, but the more information we have the better. Even before this report, the Government have been seeking to improve the systems for getting accurate reporting from various local agencies and authorities to make sure that we have as accurate a picture as possible to make sure that we do not underestimate or overestimate the problem. Everyone is very aware of the salience of this issue and the important issues that that report gives rise to.
Bahrain
(11 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Avebury
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what representations they will make to the Government of Bahrain regarding the deprivation of citizenship imposed on 31 persons on 7 November 2012.
The Senior Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government & Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Warsi)
My Lords, we have told the Bahraini Government that revoking citizenship, which leaves individuals stateless, is a negative step and, ultimately, a barrier towards reconciliation. I understand that those affected have the right of appeal, but we regularly express our concerns about human rights abuses in Bahrain.
Lord Avebury
My Lords, I noticed that my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary had been cosying up to one of the hereditary oligarchs of a regime that regularly kills, tortures and arbitrarily imprisons any of its opponents, and has now taken to depriving them of their citizenship. Would my noble friend agree to meet me with brothers, Jalal and Jawad Fairooz, former MPs of the al-Wefaq Party, who were deprived of their citizenship and are now stranded in London without visible means of support, without any citizenship, and separated permanently—as far as I can see—from their families in Bahrain? Will she also bear in mind that, if you are going to have a dialogue that will solve the constitutional problems of Bahrain, it can be done only if you free the political prisoners who are the leaders of the opposition and who are at present incarcerated for very long periods in prison?
Baroness Warsi
My Lords, I understand that officials from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office are in touch with, and have had some contact with, the two specific cases to which my noble friend refers. I know that he has strong views in relation to this matter, but I would take exception to the description given to my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary. Indeed, earlier this week I myself met with Shaikh Khalid bin Ahmed al-Khalifa, who is the Foreign Minister, and indeed the individual to which my noble friend refers. It was a robust and frank exchange, and a conversation in which human rights were openly and frankly discussed.
Lord Soley
We are all aware of the influence of Iran in this area, but how much have we discussed with the Bahraini authorities the difficulties that they face as a result of the two branches of Islam—Shia and Sunni—and involving that in the constitutional discussions that are taking place? It is very important, and there are ways of addressing it. Have they discussed it? I should declare an interest as the chairman of the Good Governance Foundation, which operates in the region.
Baroness Warsi
Certainly, we have these specific discussions regularly around freedom of religion. I spoke with the Foreign Minister when he was here this week specifically about that issue, and we had a lengthy conversation about the Shia-Sunni dynamic in Bahrain. We also spoke about historic coexistence between these two theologies within Islam. Indeed, we had a lengthy conversation about my own history when I explained to him that I was half-Sunni and half-Shia.
Lord Luce
While acknowledging the importance of the Question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, would the Minister give some credit to the Government of Bahrain for setting up last year a very distinguished international commission on human rights, which at the end of the year made over 170 recommendations, of which the Government have so far decided to implement 140? Should we not give some credit to the Government of Bahrain for that?
Baroness Warsi
The noble Lord makes an important point. Indeed, today is the anniversary of the publication of those first ambitions set out in the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry. He is right when he says that 143 of the 176 recommendations were accepted—and, indeed, a further 13 were partially accepted. Bahrain is trying to make progress on these matters, and we are supporting it in doing that.
Baroness Uddin
My Lords, given her recent discussion with the Foreign Minister, would the Minister tell the House what progress has been made, in her assessment, between the Bahrain Government and opposition parties? In asking this question I declare my interest as a member of the UK-Bahrain All-Party Parliamentary Group. Alongside the discussion that the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, is asking her to host, would she also engage with the all-party group?
Baroness Warsi
An amount of progress has been made, both politically and in relation to governance. Some underlying concerns, of course, need to be addressed before progress can be made politically. Much of that has been set out in the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry. I know that progress has been made on a special investigations unit, for example, which looks into the particular disturbances that led to the current concerns. Some progress has also been made in relation to constitutional amendments that will form the basis of reconciliation.
Baroness Falkner of Margravine
My Lords, does my noble friend accept that while some of the recommendations of the Bassiouni commission have indeed been accepted and enforced, the principal recommendation—which was about reconciliation and talks to resolve the differences between the two sides—rested on there being an opposition with whom to have talks about reconciliation? When so many members of that opposition might have been freed but then deprived of their citizenship and are, in other words, stateless, it is impossible to have discussions with them. What are the Government doing to speak directly to the Prime Minister, rather than the Foreign Minister, of Bahrain to ask that the revocation of these peoples’ citizenship be readdressed?
Baroness Warsi
We have discussions at all levels in relation to this matter, including with the Prime Minister. The specific issue regarding the revocation of citizenship has been raised and our concerns have been registered. There is a right of appeal. We are pressing the Bahraini Government to consider these matters seriously during that right of appeal.
Lord Triesman
My Lords, I share the concerns expressed in the central proposition of the previous question. There has been progress but, on the most fundamental issues, the progress is woeful. It is against a background of a grim record and, if anything, Bahrain’s record is getting worse, rather than better. We have called for a dialogue but, for reasons that I understand, that dialogue has been limited. I noted that, at the end of October, the United States Navy Fifth Fleet was anchored off Bahrain, not because I think it intended to intervene but as a show of support. Can the Minister tell us whether a co-operating force of the United Kingdom and the United States—a diplomatic force, not a military one—might, if it took a sufficiently firm and determined view, have more impact than all of us trying to do it separately?
Baroness Warsi
That is something that I will take back. However, I can assure the noble Lord on our bilateral relationship. Earlier this week we set up a joint working group and political and diplomatic reform and assistance with human rights are central to it. We hope that we can use that working group as the basis for some of these more serious discussions.
Partnerships (Prosecution) (Scotland) Bill [HL]
(11 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Wallace of Tankerness
That the Bill be referred to a Second Reading Committee.
Justice and Security Bill [HL]
(11 years, 6 months ago)
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18:17 - Division on Amendment 33 - Ayes: 273 / Noes: 173 - Amendment 33 agreed.
18:36 - Division on Amendment 35 - Ayes: 264 / Noes: 159 - Amendment 35 agreed.
18:50 - Division on Amendment 36 - Ayes: 247 / Noes: 160 - Amendment 36 agreed.
“Application for public interest immunity
(1) In any relevant civil proceedings in which the Secretary of State considers that—
(a) a party to the proceedings, whether or not the Secretary of State, would be required to disclose material in the course of the proceedings;(b) such disclosure would be damaging to the interests of national security; and(c) the interests of national security outweigh the public interest in the fair and open administration of justice,the Secretary of State must make an application for public interest immunity under this section.(2) An application for public interest immunity under this section must be made by the Secretary of State issuing a certificate relating to the individual documents in question and giving reasons why, in the Secretary of State’s view, disclosure of each relevant document would be damaging to the interests of national security.
(3) The court must, when deciding whether the material attracts public interest immunity on application under subsection (1), weigh the degree of harm to the interests of national security if the relevant material is disclosed against the public interests in the fair and open administration of justice.
(4) The court shall, in conducting the balancing exercise required under subsection (3), consider whether any of the following procedures may mitigate any harm claimed to the interests of national security so as to enable disclosure or partial disclosure of material subject to an application under this section—
(a) redaction;(b) orders for anonymity;(c) disclosure subject to confidentiality undertakings;(d) hearings in camera;(e) restrictions on reporting;(f) restrictions on access;(g) restrictions on the use of the material.(5) If, after conducting the process set out in subsections (3) and (4), the court concludes that the balance of the public interest lies in excluding any material, the court must uphold the application for public interest immunity made by the Secretary of State in relation to that material.
(6) Where any claim by the Secretary of State for public interest immunity is upheld the court must appoint a special advocate pursuant to section 8.”
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts
My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendments 32 and 44. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, for putting his name to these amendments.
We come now to Part 2 of the Bill, which is concerned with closed material procedures. They are a new development in UK civil courts and the proposal has not proved to be uncontroversial. We discussed the challenges of CMPs extensively in Committee in July. I am aware that noble Lords have tabled a number of amendments in this group, which will enable a wider discussion of this important issue, so I will cut to the chase. If in cutting to the chase as a non-lawyer I trespass on some legal niceties, I apologise in advance.
My concerns about closed material procedures can be grouped under two main, broad headings. The first is the issue of fairness. Can a trial in which the accused does not have an untrammelled ability to test fully the evidence against him, interacting as appropriate with the best legal advice, ever be fair? The issue of fairness is one that I shall return to and consider in more detail when we examine the role and duties of the special advocate and consider the rules of court.
My second general concern is what might be described as the danger of mission creep. It is on this that Amendments 31, 32 and 44 focus. Having heard from my noble and learned friend on the Front Bench, and having listened carefully to the powerful and informed speeches of the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, I accept that there may be cases where a closed material procedure is required. However, on all the evidence that I have read, it would be a rare event indeed. I have no doubt that my noble and learned friend on the Front Bench and the Government believe that the procedure would be used only very occasionally. However, times change, Ministers change, Governments change and, above all, circumstances change, and with those changes may come—not necessarily will come—new approaches. My concern is the risk that what begins as a rare event will over time morph into the default option.
I would like to see enshrined in the Bill a set of steps—hurdles, if you like—that the Government of the day will have to clear before they can resort to a CMP. The first is a requirement to go through the public interest immunity procedure, from which the judge can reach a balanced conclusion on whether the interests of national security require a closed court. Amendment 31 would insert a new clause at the beginning of Part 2 requiring a PII application to be made in any case where a CMP is envisaged. It would set up a series of requirements for making such an application. Amendment 32 lays down a further series of tests to be met in associated court proceedings. Amendment 44 would prohibit the use of CMPs where a claimant’s loss of liberty may result.
I will briefly outline one or two of the key provisions in the amendments. Subsection (1) in Amendment 31 would require the Secretary of State to make a PII application in any case where he considered that evidence would be disclosed that would damage national security, and where that concern outweighed the key public interest in open and natural justice being done. Subsection (2) would ensure that the Minister had to certify why disclosure of each document was withheld; it states that each certification will have to be considered individually by the court. This would enable the judge to balance the competing interests of national security and open justice—what I am told is called the Wiley balance.
Subsection (3) would give the judge a crucial judgmental role and is in contrast to what some have called the judicial straitjacket in Clause 6. As highlighted in our debate in July, the PII system does not enable a judge to rely on material that is seen by one party and not another. As a general rule, it does not take place in secret. In this way, national security can be protected while ensuring fairness, transparency and equality of arms. It is worth remembering also that, unlike CMPs, PII is not an all-or-nothing process. A wide range of tools is available to judges, including the use of redactions and in camera hearings, to ensure that justice can be done while national security-sensitive information, such as the names of agents or their operating techniques, is excluded. My noble and learned friend on the Front Bench said that a first-stage PII process would be costly and illogical. However, we have been reassured by the special advocates that this is not right and that it is CMPs that are likely to prove costly and time-consuming—in addition to their other, controversial qualities.
Lord Pannick
My Lords, Amendments 36 to 38, 40 and 47 to 49 are in my name and the names of the noble Lords, Lord Lester of Herne Hill and Lord Beecham, and the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge. Amendment 50 has the same signatories save that the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, is a substitute for the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, for reasons that I should explain. The amendments, like all the amendments to Part 2 in my name, seek to implement the report published last week by the Joint Committee on Human Rights, a committee on which the noble Lord, Lord Lester, and the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, serve as members. The amendments also seek to implement similar conclusions of your Lordships’ Constitution Committee, of which I am a member.
Noble Lords will know very well that strong views are held on all sides of the House about whether closed material procedures should be introduced. This is a difficult and sensitive issue. The amendments in my name do not—I repeat, do not—seek to resolve the dispute as to whether noble Lords should approve the introduction of closed material procedures. We will address that issue when we come to Amendment 45, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, and other noble Lords. The amendments in my name—particularly the amendments in this group—seek to ensure that if CMPs are to become part of our law, careful controls are needed to limit their application to ensure balance and fairness. In particular, they seek to ensure that a judge in an individual case should have a discretion, not a duty, to order a CMP. The judge should ask himself or herself whether or not a CMP is needed in a particular case as a last resort if there is no other effective means of ensuring both justice and security.
There are three reasons why your Lordships’ House should adopt the approach that this should be a last resort with judicial control and discretion. First, CMPs are a radical departure from common law principles, which we all respect and approve, that a party to a case has a right to see the evidence against him and has a chance to answer it. This is a departure—it may be a necessary departure—from the principle of transparent justice. The Joint Committee addressed this issue at paragraph 16 of its report. It said:
“All of the evidence that we have received, apart from that of the Government, regards the proposals in the Bill which extend closed material procedures into civil proceedings generally as a radical departure from the United Kingdom’s constitutional tradition of open justice and fairness. We agree”.
The second reason why we should be very careful and impose controls on CMPs is that a CMP is inherently damaging to the integrity of the judicial process. Judicial decisions are respected precisely because all the evidence is heard in open court and can be reported, subject to exceptions, and judges give a reasoned judgment that explains their decision.
The third reason why a fair balance involving judicial discretion is so important is that the Government’s own rationale for introducing CMPs is not the protection of national security. It is very important to be clear about this. The law already has effective means of ensuring that any information the disclosure of which would damage national security does not have to be revealed in open court. Those are the rules of public interest immunity. The Government say that CMPs are needed not to protect national security but to ensure fairness to them as defendants and to ensure that as much evidence as possible can be heard by the judge. There may or may not be strength in that argument—these amendments do not address that issue—but if the Government’s own case for CMPs is promoting the fairness and efficiency of civil proceedings, then this House should ensure that the CMP provisions are fair and balanced.
To turn to the specific amendments, Amendment 37 provides that the judge should order a CMP only if satisfied that fairness cannot be achieved by any other means. If there is another solution, such as supplying the gist of the evidence to the claimant, using anonymity orders, or security witnesses giving evidence from behind screens, all of which happens now, and if those methods enable the evidence, or as much of it as possible, to be disclosed to the claimant, it is surely wrong in principle for the law to require the judge to move into a secret hearing. This was the view expressed to the Joint Committee by Mr David Anderson QC, who is the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation. The Joint Committee quoted his views in paragraphs 66 and 67 of its report. Perhaps I may remind the House of what Mr Anderson said:
“I said that I thought that a CMP could be tolerable in these sorts of cases—but only if certain conditions were satisfied. One was that a CMP should be a last resort to avoid cases being untriable”.
At paragraph 67 the Joint Committee adds:
“The Independent Reviewer in his more recent evidence indicated that he would be supportive of building into clause 6 of the Bill a requirement that a CMP only be permitted as a last resort: as he put it, a CMP should be available only if ‘there is no other fair way of determining the case’”.
That was the recommendation of the Joint Committee.
Amendments 38 and 40 have a similar objective. They would allow the judge, when he or she considers whether to impose a CMP, to have regard to the possibility that another solution is available through public interest immunity. Public interest immunity is the doctrine of law that keeps out of open court material the disclosure of which would be damaging to national security. But public interest immunity is not an all-or-nothing matter. As I have said, it may enable some of the material to be disclosed—the gist or essence of the case—and documents can be redacted to preserve what is genuinely confidential. I suggest that the existence of PII needs to be taken into account by the judge in deciding whether to move into secret session. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Marks, is concerned about Amendment 38, but it is important to remove Clause 6(3)(a) so that the judge can consider other means of addressing the problem. Amendments 38 and 40 were recommended by the Joint Committee at paragraph 62 of the report. I will not spend time on it, but again this was a recommendation from the independent reviewer, Mr Anderson. All these amendments are necessary if CMPs are not to be imposed unnecessarily and disproportionately.
Amendments 48, 49 and 50 would ensure that the litigant excluded from the open hearing by the CMP was always given at the very least a summary and the gist of the closed material sufficient to enable him to give instructions to his legal representatives and the special advocates. Again, that was recommended by the Joint Committee, which referred to the supporting evidence on that issue from the former reviewer of terrorism legislation, the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, and to the views of the current reviewer, Mr Anderson.
Amendments 36 and 47 seek to ensure that, before ordering a CMP, the judge should ask whether the degree of harm to the interests of national security if the material is disclosed outweighs the public interest in the fair and open administration of justice. The Joint Committee stated in its report, at paragraphs 69 to 72, that the Bill as currently drafted wrongly precludes any balancing at all, however limited the national security interest may be, however substantial the damage to fairness if a CMP is ordered and, indeed, however peripheral the national security evidence may be to the issues in the case. That cannot be right; we need some degree of balancing here. I emphasise that the effect of these amendments, if approved, would not be that any evidence touching on national security would have to be disclosed—PII would prevent that—but simply that the judge could not order a closed hearing unless this balance is satisfied and the Government would therefore be unable to rely on the evidence.
I know that the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, is not persuaded yet by Amendment 50 and that the noble Lord, Lord Marks, is also concerned about it. It might be better if, in due course, I do not move Amendment 50 today but consider with others, in the light of the amendments, if any, that are approved by the House today, whether it is appropriate on Third Reading next week to look again at what is now Amendment 50 for the purposes of tidying up the legislation. I hope that that approach—on Amendment 50—commends itself to the House.
Each of the amendments in this group in my name will help to ensure that, if we are to have CMPs, there are proper limits, proper controls, a proper balance and judicial discretion, and that CMPs are a last resort in what I suspect will be the very small category of cases where there is no other fair solution that maintains national security. At the appropriate time, and unless the Government are prepared, as I hope they will be, to make concessions even at this late stage on these matters, I intend to test the opinion of the House on the amendments in my name.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I thought it might help the House to take the unusual step of speaking early in the debate on behalf of the Opposition in order to make our position clear in relation to the amendments in this group, in particular those that emanate from the report of the Joint Committee on Human Rights. I note, incidentally, that yesterday the Deputy Prime Minister endorsed many of its recommendations. In answer to a question from my right honourable friend Sadiq Khan, he said:
“I am very sympathetic to a lot of what the Committee says, and the Government are considering its amendments with an open and, in many respects, sympathetic mind. I hope that we will be able to amend the Bill to allay those concerns in line with many of the recommendations made by the Joint Committee on Human Rights”.—[Official Report, Commons, 20/11/12; col. 428.]
I do not know whether the noble and learned Lord would be able, later in the debate, to indicate whether and when those expectations that the Deputy Prime Minister encouragingly aroused yesterday will be fulfilled. We already have some amendments that would not quite meet the Deputy Prime Minister’s intentions as expressed yesterday.
During Second Reading, I referred to the difficulty that we and Parliament as a whole face in calibrating the balance between the two principles embodied in the Bill’s title of “Justice” and “Security”. It has become increasingly clear that completely reconciling those competing desiderata is effectively impossible. We of course accept that the Government have genuine concerns about national security, even though, perhaps understandably, the Bill does not define the term, as was pointed out by a number of Members of your Lordships’ House, including the noble Lords, Lord Hodgson and Lord Deben, and the noble Earl, Lord Errol, during Second Reading. The noble Marquess, Lord Lothian, took the view then about national security that, “You know it when you see it”. That might be thought to be uncomfortably close to implying that security is in the eye of the beholder; in this case, a government beholder. It is impossible to provide a comprehensive statutory definition of what constitutes national security, but some guidance during parliamentary debates, of which later judicial notice might be taken, would be helpful in at least indicating areas that would fall outside the definition.
The Government’s other main concern, of course, is the difficulties that they face in presenting their case without the protection of closed proceedings, coupled with the cost—both reputational and financial—of having to settle cases in order to avoid disclosure. However, as we have heard repeatedly during the passage of this Bill through the House, the proposals constitute a radical departure from the cornerstone of our legal system: the right of a party to know, and to challenge, his opponent’s case. This right has been emphasised in the clearest terms in a number of judgments to which reference was made earlier in these proceedings, such as those of Lord Kerr and Lord Neuberger. Moreover, although the Government do not accept the point, they also appear to clash with the provisions of Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, as powerfully argued by John Howell QC in his opinion for the Equality and Human Rights Commission. I understand that the Government are not prepared to disclose the legal advice that they have obtained on this point, effectively invoking their own closed material procedure on the issue.
The Government’s proposals in themselves constitute a significant reputational risk to our system of justice. In passing, it is interesting that, just as we are debating this Bill, the Government are announcing serious changes to the system of judicial review that are designed to make it much more difficult for their decisions in a whole variety of areas to be challenged. Your Lordships might think that a disturbing pattern seems to be emerging.
We are told, in relation to CMPs, that a number of claims are now pending. However, interestingly, the special advocates were denied access by the Home Secretary to any of the files, despite the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, Mr David Anderson QC, upon whom the Government seem selectively to rely, supporting that request. We have recently seen in the Daily Mail an attempt to imply that the Government were facing the prospect of paying out millions to settle cases involving suspected terrorists, although even the Daily Mail, editorially, seems to be opposed to the Government’s proposals. But of course the procedures need not involve claimants of that description. They could apply to all civil claims where a national security justification might be advanced. So claims by a member of the Armed Forces or security services, or an innocent victim of what is euphemistically called “collateral damage” arising from military action, would also be caught by this procedure.
There is also the paradox that the procedures would not apply to inquests, so that justice will be seen to be done only where there has, sadly, been a fatality. Yet as my right honourable friend Sadiq Khan pointed out in his letter to Mr Clarke, the 7/7 inquests were conducted along lines very similar to those advocated by the Joint Committee and reflected in the amendments that we are now debating, without any damage ensuing.
The interests of national security can be protected by means other than simply relying upon closed material procedures. The Opposition support most of the suite of amendments effectively emanating from the Joint Committee report, seven of which we have subscribed to. The thrust of these amendments is to vest greater discretion in the judges, who are not quick to reject the Government’s case, and to facilitate a balancing of the public interest in justice and the interests of national security in a way that, despite the Government’s rather airy protestations, the Bill as drafted does not.
Amendment 33 extends the possibility of an application for CMP to either party and on the court’s own motion. Amendment 40 refers to the possibility of utilising the public interest immunity procedure under which, as we have heard from the noble Lords, Lord Hodgson and Lord Pannick, a variety of workable steps can be taken—gisting, redaction, confidentiality rings, closed hearings—to protect material that should not be made public, before recourse is had to closed material procedures as a last resort. Incidentally, Mr Clarke’s statement on Monday’s “Today” programme that the judge should not have the discretion to have, in public, evidence that puts at risk the lives of agents or intelligence services, was grossly misleading in implying that this would be a consequence of accepting amendments of this kind. The measures I have just mentioned would prevent that happening.
Amendments 35 to 38, 40 and 47 enshrine both the judicial discretion which many have criticised in the course of debates and the balancing principle which is at the heart of the Joint Committee’s proposals. Taken together, these amendments place the judge firmly in control of the process, with the means to balance the interests of justice and security, protecting from disclosure what is essential not to be made public. Despite the protestations of Ministers, the Bill in its current form does not meet these critical objectives.
We have some difficulties, as the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, has referred to, with Amendments 48 to 50, particularly the insertion of the phrase, in Amendment 50,
“so far as it is possible to do so”,
in the proposed requirement to ensure that a summary of material, disclosure of which the court does not authorise, does not itself contain material damaging to national security. I for one am not sure what the words import or how far they would extend. We would wish to explore this issue further, perhaps at Third Reading, as the noble Lord indicated, or even later when the Bill is considered in the House of Commons.
In his letter of 13 November, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, who has a deservedly high reputation for legal expertise and fair-mindedness, made some minor concessions and one major one. The latter restricts the order-making powers to extend closed material procedures, and another requires notice to be given to the other party of an intention to apply for a CMP. Those concessions are welcome and I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord, and indeed the Government, for them. Interestingly, the noble and learned Lord’s letter also touches on the court’s inherent right to strike out a claim if highly relevant sensitive information could not be considered—itself a powerful tool with which to protect national security without the need for this Bill.
Outside the Government, there appears precious little support for the sweeping changes the Government propose. Civil liberties organisations—as one might expect, perhaps—the Law Society, the Bar Council, even Monday’s editorial in the Times, which has been quoted, and some leading Conservative Members of Parliament such as David Davis and Andrew Tyrie, unite in expressing profound concern at the changes that this Bill would bring about in our system of justice.
Like many other Members of this House, I travel to and from it by the Underground, where passengers are regularly enjoined to “mind the closing doors”. I hope we bear that injunction in mind today. We must ensure that the doors of justice are not closed in the way this Bill seeks to do, however genuine may be the reasons that prompt it.
We learnt a few days ago the identity of the next Archbishop of Canterbury, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham, whom all Members of your Lordships’ House, of all faiths and none, will join in congratulating and wishing well. The announcement put me in mind of another archbishop, Thomas à Becket, whose life and death were the subject of TS Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral, in which the following lines occur:
“The last temptation is the greatest treason:
To do the right deed for the wrong reason”.
I urge the House to support the amendments backed by the Opposition, moved by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and in so doing not to succumb to the alternative temptation of doing the wrong deed for the right reason.
Lord Lester of Herne Hill
My Lords, I speak as a member of the Joint Committee on Human Rights. I intend to make only one speech, if I can get away with that, and to make it as brief as I can.
The issues raised in this debate are of profound importance to the rule of law in a parliamentary democracy. Part 2 of the Bill has aroused huge and justifiable controversy. It was condemned root and branch by my party at its annual conference. Many Liberal Democrats would ditch Part 2 in its entirety as illiberal, with or without procedural safeguards. In her letter to the Times last week, the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, explained that she remains of the view that inviting the court to look at all the relevant secret material and letting it decide what, if any, weight to put on it is an advance over where we are today. I agree with her.
The purpose of these amendments, recommended unanimously by the Joint Committee on Human Rights, is to achieve that result and to make Part 2 comply with the fundamental principles of justice and fairness protected by the common law. We hope that the Minister and the House will agree that our report was thorough, fair and balanced, and that our recommendations are put forward to improve, not to wreck, Part 2.
I shall not delay and weary the House by reading the relevant parts of the JCHR report into the record. The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, has already referred to the relevant parts. The report speaks for itself, and I would suppose that anyone who takes part in this debate will have read the report in its entirety.
Lord Dubs
My Lords, briefly, I support the amendments. I make one specific comment. Having listened to the speeches of my noble friend Lord Beecham and the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, I say simply that there is a very thin line between their arguments in support of the amendments and Amendment 45 and the other group, which seek the removal of CMPs. The line is so thin that I believe that I could use the case of the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, in particular, which he put so eloquently, to come to a different conclusion: to support our amendments. That is an argument for later. In the mean time, I hope that the House will support the key amendments when we come to votes.
Baroness Berridge
My Lords, I speak as a member of the Joint Committee on Human Rights and as the fourth name on this group of amendments. Normally, I take very seriously the advice given by our Government —so much so that I took the advice of the Government’s Chief Medical Officer early last week not to seek antibiotics for a cough and cold, so I apologise. I am living to regret following that advice and I apologise for any resultant disturbance to your Lordships’ proceedings this afternoon.
It is the judge’s court, not the Government’s, so it should be the judge’s decision or discretion as to the fairest way to proceed with the case before him or her—whether that is by using public interest immunity with all its flexibility, as outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, or by using a closed material procedure.
It is so important that this House stands firm on that principle, not only to protect the credibility of the judicial process but to safeguard the interests of the other party to that litigation. The Government, who are one party to the litigation that we are considering, usually have control over the other place, so it is only this Chamber that can protect the other party to the litigation and keep the important procedural powers in the hands of the judge by your Lordships accepting this group of amendments.
These amendments, particularly Amendment 37, reflect the view of David Anderson, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation when he stated to the joint committee that this ensures that cases are not tried in closed material procedure that could otherwise be done under public interest immunity, nor will cases be struck out that can be tried in a closed material procedure. The judge must retain a wide procedural discretion, which, if these amendments are accepted, I accept may mean that our judiciary will begin a new balancing act: balancing the unfairness of the exclusionary nature of PII against the unfairness of the closed material procedure, which leads to the claimant and his or her lawyer being absent. I believe it is very important to retain this judicial discretion and to leave these matters in the hands of our judiciary, who have shown that they can be entrusted with such fine balancing acts. My name is therefore on these amendments.
Lord Morgan
Thank you. I am very anxious to hear the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, too. I will not speak for very long. I am not a lawyer and I sit on the Back Benches, as I always have, where one is required to vote but not necessarily to think. Yet occasional flickers of thought agitate our minds. This clause is deeply unfair and the amendments are profoundly right. It seems characteristic of what has happened to liberty in this country over many years with, I am sorry to say, the endorsement of all three major parties: the tilting of the balance away from the free individual—the citizen—towards the state, reinforcing raison d’état contrary to the common law. The element of secrecy adds something new that we have not had since the time of the Tudors. It was specifically condemned in the Petition of Right in 1628, which is quite a long time ago.
This clause has caused outrage among lawyers, as we have heard, and civil liberties groups. It has been strongly criticised by the Joint Committee on Human Rights. Why? Because it is totally one-sided. It is a closed court, with the litigants, lawyers and the press excluded. Only the lawyers representing the Crown can communicate in private with the judge. The litigants are not aware of the content, tone or substance of those conversations. They are protected inadequately by special advocates, because their powers are limited, and the interests of litigants in civil cases are not properly defended as, if I may say, people accused of criminal activity under the criminal legal system are protected. Public interest is cited: a term defined so broadly almost as to lose all meaning. It shows that the normal judicial process is a fair, balanced and adversarial system when both sides can present their case. These aspects are being marginalised and sidelined. As previous speakers have said, this is a process that has now been launched and is very likely to increase and multiply.
These amendments should go further—I would like to see the whole clause disappear—but will undoubtedly improve these otherwise dismal procedures. This reflects a welcome tilt towards libertarianism, including from my own party, which has not been notable in that sphere in recent years. I am very glad to welcome that under its present leadership. The Secretary of State would be compelled to present a case for a public immunity initiative; the court would be able to consider it dispassionately and calmly without being steam-rollered by the Government, as would otherwise happen; the litigants could have proper legal discussions with their advocates.
At the moment, there would be no real authority accorded to judges, whose hands would be tied by the terms of the Bill. They would have little choice other than to accept the submissions of the Government, so these amendments are deeply valuable—not simply to those involved with the law but to any citizen of this country. This would enable the courts to consider and to estimate the comparative balance between the rights of a free individual as against the damage to national security, which might have to be more carefully defined. To that extent, these amendments make an odious Bill somewhat less repulsive. The Minister is a very fair-minded man who has the respect of all Members of the House. He has listened to strong arguments against this clause from all sections of the House, and I am sure he will consider them fairly and courteously.
Lord Lloyd of Berwick
I fear that I may disappoint the noble Lord, Lord Morgan—but I hope not. I have no difficulty at all with Amendments 37 and 40, which were tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, but I have some difficulties with Amendments 34 and 35, which we are going to come to in a later group. Those are the amendments that would substitute the word “may” for “must”. They are the basic amendments that would give the judge a discretion rather than imposing on him a duty in certain circumstances.
Amendment 36, which has been spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, spells out how that discretion is to be exercised. It states that the judge must balance,
“the degree of harm to the interests of national security”,
on the one hand, against,
“the public interest in the fair and open administration of justice”.
It is now many years since I heard a PII application. It was never an easy balancing operation, but at least with a PII application one was balancing a particular piece of evidence and how much harm it would do to the national interest, on the one side, and how much good it would do to the case of one party or the other, on the other side. It was difficult but it was a fairly specific balancing operation. I find much greater difficulty with the judge being required to take account of,
“the public interest in the fair and open administration of justice”.
I cannot see how he can possibly evaluate that in the abstract. In one sense, it might be said to overwhelm everything else, of course; but on the other hand, how much weight can be given to that? Amendment 36 is very different from the operation that one used to, and still does, carry out in an ordinary PII application. I am not happy with Amendment 36 and that sort of discretion being given to a judge.
Baroness Neville-Jones
My Lords, the focus of the Bill is to enable this country to find a means of dispensing justice while protecting national security. National security has not had much of a hearing so far this afternoon. I shall explain why I do not think that public interest immunity is any longer an adequate safeguard in respect of national security. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that, at the moment, the PII regime prevents justice being dispensed consistent with security. Pace the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, I do not think that this is an impossible goal.
When national security-sensitive evidence which may be important to the claimant’s case—we all agree about that—is excluded from the courtroom by a PII certificate and the judge may not take it into account in coming to a judgment, there are two consequences: the claimant is unable to prove his case and the Government cannot defend themselves properly. To protect national security evidence from disclosure in open court the Government are being forced to agree substantial settlements, with unjustified reputational damage ensuing. The inability of our legal system to provide adequate recourse to parties in civil dispute brings no credit to it and we need to do something to mend it.
Amendment 40 would insert PII as a first stage in the legal process. This would undoubtedly greatly increase the length of proceedings and costs without necessarily guaranteeing that evidence would be heard. I cannot help feeling that this is pointless. Moreover—and this is a real problem—PII impinges adversely on the claimant’s rights and, contrary to the assertion of the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, since the case concerning Binyam Mohamed, PII has also proved to be a less than total protection for national security sensitive information. We do not now have a safeguard in PII to protect national security. It has really changed the ground. In that case, the court ordering disclosure of American material despite the Government’s PII certificate has damaged our intelligence relationship with the allies, especially, although not only, with the United States. We have this judgment from the independent reviewer of terrorism, David Anderson QC, who I know has been quoted by other noble Lords. However, I know that, on this point, he is right. It is a very serious matter if our allies can no longer trust our ability to keep secret intelligence passed to us secret.
The fact that we have not had a major terrorist incident in this country since 7/7 is not the result of the conversion of the enemy but of the successful diligence of our intelligence and security services in protecting us. They depend on vital—and I mean vital—sharing of intelligence with allies. The effect of recent cases in civil courts, and the numbers of these are growing, has now spread into the core security interests of the UK. Some noble Lords talked about the core security interests of this country in justice, and I entirely agree. However, we also have another interest to protect which is important to us. We are now damaging the core security interests of the UK. If we do not find a way, as part of a responsible national security policy, of restoring credibility to our promise to protect information given to us, we will find our intelligence relationships further eroded over time and our national security eroded with them.
It is not just the control principle that is at issue, it is UK national security. This cannot be subjected to balancing tests of the kind set out in Amendment 47 —and Amendment 46, for that matter—as if it were somehow exchangeable with other goods. Lives are not at stake in civil proceedings but they are—they can be—in national security.
Closed material proceedings are of course second-best to completely open court proceedings. There is nothing that divides anybody in this House on that point; we all agree. The problem, however, is that we are not in an ideal world. Only the court can decide to allow closed material proceedings under the Bill, and presumably the judge would not permit that if they did not think that there was a substantial national security interest to be protected and they had not been convinced by the submission of the Secretary of State. In that case, this issue would not arise. However, if it does arise and the court agrees that there should be CMP, it will permit a full testing of the claimant’s case. The Government will be able to defend themselves in a manner that protects sensitive national security information.
The Bill also provides for gisting to the claimant. This is much better than the absence of justice and the potential prejudice to national security at the same time. Amendments 48, 49 and 50 would destroy the balance that the Bill would bring about.
Much has been made already of the Government’s proposals being “a radical departure” from our traditional norms. However, the closed material procedure is drawn from the procedure created by the previous Labour Government for the special immigration appeals courts which, I might say, Liberty was very influential in setting up, and which have been tested and accepted as compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights. The reality of justice there is demonstrated by the fact that the Government lose cases. Amendment 44 would bring some SIAC procedures into question, as well as rendering this Bill null and void.
I hope that this House will accept that this Bill is a balanced response to a difficult issue. I take seriously, along with other Lords, the need for safeguards, but I believe that many of the proposals on the Marshalled List go too far. I hope that this House will reject amendments which, far from improving the Bill, either remove or render ineffectual the purpose of closed material proceedings. To use the words of the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, I believe that this Bill passes the smell test.
Lord Wigley
I want to speak very briefly to Amendment 48, which has been grouped with these amendments. I do not accept that this tips the balance, as the noble Baroness suggested just a moment ago.
One of the most unsettling provisions of this Bill is contained in Clause 7, which provides that if a Closed Material Procedure is triggered, a court is not required to give the excluded party a summary of the closed material. Rather, the legislation, as drafted, requires only that the court should consider requiring such a summary to be given. In any case, Clause 7(1)(e) provides that the court must ensure that, where a summary is given, it does not contain material, the disclosure of which would be against the interests of national security.
If this clause goes through unamended, there will be no requirement to give excluded parties sufficient information about the case against them so that they can give instructions to their special advocate. Surely this is wrong, otherwise people could lose cases without being told any of the reasons why, which is an unacceptable situation in circumstances where the national security is not at stake.
Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames
My Lords, I start by paying tribute to the Joint Committee on Human Rights for the very important work it put into producing the thorough and excellent report that gave rise to the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and others.
The first question to be addressed in considering the introduction of CMPs to ordinary civil proceedings is whether the Government have in any way made out a case for their necessity. That is a matter upon which, as the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, pointed out, the Joint Committee found itself unpersuaded. However, if there are 20 such cases now, as figures recently released by my noble and learned friend the Advocate General for Scotland state, as well as the obvious prospect of an increasing number in the future, as the fact that the Government are a soft target for such cases becomes well known, that is a significant number, if a small one. In such cases, because the evidence has to be withheld altogether for the protection of national security—and it is worth reminding ourselves that that is what PII does—there can at present be no determination at all, and therefore no justice. That lack of justice has to be weighed against the damage that would be done to our civil justice system by the extension of CMPs to certain civil claims. CMPs are, as has been said, inherently unfair. They represent a serious departure from open justice, because the evidence cannot be tested by cross-examination in the ordinary way: by advocates acting on the instructions of their clients, who themselves have a full opportunity to know and meet the case against them. CMPs, therefore, represent a justice that is flawed. For my part, I think that to choose to have no determination at all in these cases, and to prefer no justice to flawed justice, would be the better choice, unless the safeguards for CMPs proposed by the Joint Committee are in place.
Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers
My Lords, I find myself in familiar territory, as I sat in a judicial capacity on a number of appeals dealing with closed material, including Al-Rawi. Closed material is anathema to any court, and the Supreme Court always managed to deal with issues relating to closed material without looking at the material itself. I am, however, reluctantly persuaded of the need, in the interests of justice, for a closed material procedure in exceptional cases where the Government would otherwise have no alternative but to submit to a civil claim for damages because to defend it would necessarily involve putting into the public domain material that would cause disproportionate harm to national security. It is for that reason that I support the batch of amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and other noble Lords in relation to Clauses 6 and 7.
I would expect the Government and those supporting Clauses 6 and 7 to welcome these amendments. Let me explain why. I draw attention to Clause 11(5)(c), which provides that,
“Nothing in sections 6 to 10 … is to be read as requiring a court or tribunal to act in a manner inconsistent with Article 6 of the Human Rights Convention”.
That is a very significant provision. It means that a judge will be precluded from acceding to a closed material application unless satisfied that to do so will be compatible with the Article 6 right to a fair trial.
The use of closed material in civil litigation will undoubtedly be challenged as a matter of principle. That challenge will surely reach the Supreme Court and, if it fails, will be renewed before the Strasbourg Court. If it reaches that court, its decision is likely to be critical. If it holds that the use of closed material in civil proceedings is incompatible with Article 6, the English judges are likely to follow that ruling; and Clauses 6 and 7 will become a dead letter.
The Bill as it stands makes no provision for the application of a test of proportionality. The test is simply: would disclosure be damaging to the interests of national security? If the answer is yes, the court is mandated to accede to the application that the material in question be not disclosed. Clause 7 then leaves it in the discretion of the court as to the extent to which, if at all, the closed material can be deployed in support of the Government’s case. The amendments proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and other noble Lords introduce a test of proportionality. They also make it plain that a closed material order can be made only as a last resort when there is no other way of having a trial that is fair to both parties. The amendments also require a gist of the closed material to be given to the other party.
These amendments will, it seems to me, significantly increase the chances that the provisions in relation to closed material are held to be compatible with Article 6 by the Strasbourg Court. That court has made it plain that it considered that gisting was an essential feature of a closed material procedure in the context of control orders, and the court is likely to take the same view in relation to civil litigation. If and when this issue reaches Strasbourg, it is important to appreciate that the court is not likely to have access to the closed material that has weighed with the courts of this country, nor to the closed judgments relating to that material. It seems to me likely that the Strasbourg Court will require to be persuaded that the English courts have applied a test of proportionality before allowing closed material to influence their decisions, that a gist of the closed material which is sufficiently specific to enable the other party to meet the case made against him has been provided to him, and that closed material has been admitted because there was no other way of procuring a fair trial. That is what these amendments set out to achieve.
If these amendments are made, it does not mean that the Government are going to be forced on occasion to disclose material that they consider to be adverse to the interests of national security. It means that where the court does not consider that the use of closed material will be proportionate, the Government may have to litigate without the benefit of that material if they remain unprepared to disclose it, or even to settle the claim made against them. The same will be true if the Government are not prepared to gist the closed material. As the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, has observed, the debate on Clauses 6 and 7 is not concerned with the protection of national security; it is concerned with the requirements of a fair trial.
It is for these reasons that I support the amendments in question.
Lord Judd
My Lords, I should like to add a word of tribute to the Joint Committee on Human Rights for the thoroughness and courage of its work, and I pay tribute to those who put these amendments forward.
I am not a lawyer, but what concerns me in all this is what lies behind the issues we are discussing—we are trying to protect a society that is worth having. Central to the society that is worth protecting in the United Kingdom, as I understand it, has been the evolution of the cause of justice and fairness in our legal system. That has been the central pillar of what has made Britain a country in which it is good to live. Alongside this, of course, has been the independence of the judiciary; and the judge has a key role—not a role that is perceived by just those in the know, but one that can be widely seen as the key role—in ensuring that this happens.
The first thing I will say is that I find myself troubled by the fact that if we compare ourselves now with how we were 20 years ago, the quality of justice in our society is not as good; there has been an erosion. Of course I understand the acute and sinister pressures behind this trend. We are up against sinister, ruthless techniques and people. I worry that we are giving them the victory and legislating to underpin that victory by taking steps that may diminish the quality of our justice.
Let us look for a moment at the kind of issues that are being considered in the cases about which we are worried. They include torture and human rights, which are sensitive and emotive matters. If it becomes a growing concern in society that things are not as they should be in the administration of justice in these areas, and if it should be thought that the Government and Executive want to conceal things that happened which should not have happened, that will play into the hands of the extremists who are trying to build anxiety, doubt and instability into our society.
This is the very time that we must stand steadfast. Of course I am not suggesting—it would be madness to do so—that there are no matters that simply cannot be revealed in a court case. However, we must not regard this as something that on balance is right. If we are going to diminish the normal standards that we expect and see as central to our justice system, it must be an absolute last resort because we have to do it, and it should be confined to the narrowest possible areas of control. The amendments in this group are a step towards resisting a further erosion of our system of justice.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
My Lords, I accept that my noble friend the Minister has an acutely difficult task in dealing with this part of the Bill and with these amendments. I do not think that anybody in this House pretends otherwise. Balancing national security against individual liberty and due process is judgment-of-Solomon stuff. However, I concur with the virtually unanimous voice of those who have said that there is a want of balance and proportionality in the arrangements in this part of the Bill.
In particular, I support Amendment 36. I will not repeat what others said very well, but I will draw the attention of the House—and perhaps of some beyond the House—to a very plangent example of the failure of the Bill to balance as it should the two competing issues. As was explained, Clause 6 requires a judge—it is not discretionary—to grant an application for a closed material procedure if,
“disclosure would be damaging to the interests of national security”.
There is no qualification of “damaging”. There is no talk of “substantial” or “significant” damage. As it stands, a judge would have to grant such an application if the damage were marginal or even trivial. That is why it is essential to agree Amendment 36—and Amendment 37 with it—and some other amendments in the group that would ensure that no judge was put in the difficult, highly undesirable circumstance of having to grant a closed material proceedings application in circumstances that, on any common-sense basis, would not be warrantable.
Lord Glentoran
My Lords, I will step out of the courtroom and into the street. Most of my life I have lived close to terrorism or among it. I have lived close to those in the secret services and many in the police. One thing that we must not vote for tonight is a reduction in the abilities of the public prosecution services, lawyers and, more importantly, police, who to my personal knowledge are extremely frustrated, certainly in Northern Ireland and in other areas that I know of, that they cannot get convictions when they know that people are guilty. They cannot get the evidence into court because they are protecting our secret services—our police and undercover agents. Throughout the problems in Northern Ireland which I have known, and throughout some of the other ones which I have known in my lifetime, those people have done a wonderful, brave job. They must not be put at risk on account of the human rights requirements.
Lord Owen
My Lords, although I did not intend to intervene, I urge the Minister, when he comes to reply, to develop any serious reservations he may have about Amendment 48. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, would consider doing for Amendment 48 what he is doing for Amendment 50. I do not hold the alarmist view of these amendments that is held by some members of the intelligence services; they are necessary and correct and I have no difficulty with any of them. However, I can imagine circumstances in which, under Amendment 48, it would be difficult to change “consider requiring” to “require”. That is particularly true if one considers that Amendment 49 states,
“sufficient to enable the party to whom the summary is provided to give effective instructions on the undisclosed material to their legal representatives and special advocates”.
That seems a pretty fair summary of what should be required, but it rings a certain alarm bell that there might be circumstances under which it would be necessary to try to persuade the courts, even in this difficult situation, that the pressures, particularly coming from people who have made available this intelligence, are so great that it would jeopardise the relationship of sharing information if we accepted Amendment 48. It would remove all discretion from the court.
In this debate those who have been justifying the amendments have often said that it is to avoid restricting the court and to give more power to the court’s judgments. This amendment would go in the opposite direction. I would like a little more explanation as to whether it is really necessary to change “consider requiring” to “require”.
Lord Macdonald of River Glaven
My Lords, I can be very brief. Following the publication of the Green Paper, the Government indicated a concession that the Green Paper’s proposals were drawn far too widely and that the legislation that they would bring forward for consideration would be far tighter. In particular, they indicated that a judge rather than a Minister would have the final say and that closed material procedures would be available only in the most exceptional circumstances.
In fact, the Bill did not provide for either of those undertakings. It is only these amendments that are capable of securing them. The amendments finally give the judge the appropriate discretion to balance national security with the interests of justice, which is an essential tool for the judge if he is to control the fairness of the procedures in his own court, which is a critical aspect of the rule of law.
Secondly, the amendments secure a situation in which a closed material procedure would genuinely be a measure of last resort because they will require every other option to be considered first. My conclusion is that the amendments provide what the Government promised but did not secure in the Bill. For that reason, I shall support them.
Lord Woolf
My Lords, may I just add a few words to the very able speeches that have already been made? I preface them by saying that I am a hedger, not a ditcher. I hope that I will be forgiven for putting my words in the context of my own experience in this case because it is particularly relevant. For five years I was what was known as a Treasury devil or a Treasury junior, whose task, without having any political allegiance, was to be its representative in the courts in cases which would otherwise cause difficulty when being heard. One went to the court with the advantage that you were instructed by the Treasury solicitor. You were the general counsel of the Government in civil cases but when you were dealing with cases of the kind we are here considering you appeared in a completely neutral capacity.
As a result of that experience, I found that within the procedure then available—in which evidence which damaged national security would have to be excluded—there were all kinds of things that the courts and advocates could do to avoid the decision being made that the evidence could not be looked at in the court because of public interest immunity. As has been pointed out, that does not help the interests of justice because the court is blindfolded for some evidence which would otherwise be relevant. However, by using the tools available—which included members of the Bar on different sides accepting that they could rely absolutely on the integrity of the Treasury devil counsel—you could, in the great majority of cases, get evidence before the court in a way which achieved justice.
However, there was a very small minority of cases where that could not be done. One then had the unfortunate situation where there was relevant evidence that could influence the outcome which not even the judge could take into account, either for a claimant or a defendant. I suspect that no one in this House would like that situation to arise—certainly the judge did not like it—and that is why the kinds of efforts that I have indicated were taken regularly to avoid it happening. I emphasise also that, even where that happened, only a small portion of the case would not be investigated; other parts of the case could be investigated.
In generality, the proposals contained in the Bill have a great advantage over the existing process of public interest immunity: they allow the judge to have the material in a way which ensures that the interests of national security are protected. The European Convention on Human Rights does not intend or require a court system of any country to act in a way which is inconsistent with the interests of national security. It requires that the court, if it is going to take action which is not normally appropriate, should take all the steps which are open to it to minimise the effects of so doing. That is why, so far as proceedings in this country are concerned, the European Court of Justice in Strasbourg proposed the use of the special advocate. That was one step that could be taken to further the interests of justice which hitherto we had not taken. The noble Lord, Lord Lester, in his powerful speech, explained the history of how that form of action had its source in Canada, was praised by the European court, and when appropriate was adopted in this country. The procedure did not cure the disadvantages of evidence not being given in the ordinary way, but it did provide a way of getting closer to doing justice than was possible without it.
Lord Faulks
My Lords, I will be very brief as all the arguments have been well rehearsed. I share the concern of all other noble Lords about these provisions and the agonising balance that has to be struck. I particularly agree of course that either party should have the right to go to these proceedings, very much as a last resort. However, I have one particular anxiety and I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, will be able to satisfy me and other Members of the House when he comes to sum up at the end. The various amendments that the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, proposes include a number of hurdles—a Grand National of hurdles in fact—while the JCHR amendments provide a slightly fewer number of hurdles. If those amendments become part of the Bill, there will be circumstances in which we are left in precisely the same situation that we are in now; namely, that a judge does not accept the Government’s view about national security in operating the balancing act and the Government will then be left with the choice of doing exactly as they are now, and either settling the case or giving up.
Although I entirely applaud all the sentiments behind these amendments, I worry about how they are going to work in practice and whether they have a danger of defeating the Bill as a whole.
Lord Carswell
My Lords, the issues in this Bill can be fairly described as a clash of rights. They could also be described as a clash of wrongs. It is wrong—terribly wrong—that people’s safety and lives should be put at risk by the disclosure in the public domain of evidence that could, in some way, be withheld without irretrievably compromising the interests of justice. It is wrong, as the Government have said, that they should have to expend enormous sums of taxpayers’ money to settle claims because that evidence might put at risk the lives of people or the intelligence interests and co-operation of our allies. It is also terribly wrong that litigants be left in a Kafkaesque limbo, where they cannot know the case that is being made against them or the evidence that is being produced, or cannot be allowed full consultation with their advocates to ensure that they are able to put forward their own case, if they have one, as effectively as possible.
The balancing of interests and considerations has been traditionally not just a principle but a very strong instinct running through our law. It is far, far better if we can incorporate compliance with that instinct into the present issue rather than impose certain rigid requirements that are incapable of being observed without the risk of considerable and great injustice. I pay tribute to the Joint Committee on Human Rights for the quality of the argument and expression of its report.
There is a range of means in practically every case for reaching a proper solution that acknowledges and gives effect to the different considerations. I give an analogy that is not from the present issues, not from civil law but from criminal law: the protection of witnesses who would fear for their own safety if they were to give evidence in public. This is something of which I have had fairly considerable experience over the years, sitting as a trial judge when many witnesses, quite understandably, were extremely fearful for their lives and safety if they gave evidence.
There was a graduated list of possible ways of dealing with this and one had to consider that in any given case. It started at the lowest end, allowing the witness to give his or her name and address on paper to the judge only, but otherwise giving evidence in the normal way in open court and subject to ordinary cross-examination. At the other end of the scale, the witness was hidden behind a curtain or a screen and his or her voice was distorted so that the persons in the court could have no idea, unless they were clairvoyant, who was giving this evidence. It could have its humorous side. I remember a group of Army witnesses sitting in court—they all had dark glasses on and the most curious wigs, and they looked an amazing sight. But we applied that list as best we could and I suggest that this approach exemplifies the way in which Parliament should deal with this problem. For that reason I support the amendments.
This will not be an easy task for the judges who have to shoulder it. One has to acknowledge that it may not always be discharged perfectly, and certainly it will not always be discharged in a way that pleases the Government of the day. But undertaking that sort of burden is part of the function of a judge and we must trust them to take it on and to discharge it to the best of their ability. We must bear it in mind that in any given case the judge will have expert argument—and the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, has said how effective and persuasive that can be—setting out the issues, giving the judge the opportunity and the time to weigh them up and attempt to come to the best possible solution. I submit that it is far better to run the risk of justice being imperfectly administered than to put the judges into a straitjacket at the Government’s behest. I support the amendments.
Lord Elton
My Lords, many noble Lords have said that striking a balance between justice and public security is a very difficult task, and that is exactly what this House is now being asked to do. Your Lordships who are learned, or learned in the law, will no doubt have made up your minds by now, but as a Member of the House who is a layman in these matters I rise simply to make a plea to my noble friend. He has brought a Bill to the House asking for more powers to be given to the Government to protect their agents working in the public interest. History is full of such appeals, and the duty of Parliament is to look at them with grave suspicion, particularly, as my noble friend Lady Berridge says, at a time when a Government have achieved so much preponderance in the other place. I am therefore very anxious to have clear statements, in one voice, from the Government who are putting this case, as to the individual merits of the different amendments.
It seems to me that there are not two simple, discrete packages, but that there are individual bits that are appealing and others that are not. Each will have a price. That price will be paid either in cash, by not going forward with the case, or in security, by risking exposure. We need to know that price as we make up our minds on each individual case. I speak as a layman, and I believe that there are many who need this guidance.
Lord King of Bridgwater
My Lords, I hesitate to intervene in such a distinguished judicial gathering. In my time, I have had some involvement with intelligence matters. I recognise, as has been very well recognised by a number of noble Lords, how extraordinarily difficult these issues are and the challenges that they will pose for a judge when exercising his responsibilities.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, made the point very well that what we should be concerned about is national security. We should also be concerned with public respect for the system of justice. If there were to be, as we are told, an increasing number of cases that cannot be defended by the Government, in which perhaps substantial payments have to be made to what may appear to be thoroughly undeserving claimants, the public outrage and the damage that will do to respect for justice in this country will be extremely grave. I have been very impressed by what I think is a general consensus emerging that this is not a measure that should be abandoned by voting against Clause 6 but that this is a measure of last resort, provided that there are proper protections in place.
It cannot be emphasised too strongly that we depend for our defence in this country not just on the very able capabilities of our own intelligence and security services but on the vital liaison that we have with a number of key allies. Those allies are now spread much more widely than people may realise. A number of them are extremely sensitive about whether the security of the intelligence that they provide under the tightest restrictions, which is held most closely in their own countries, is going to be maintained in whatever arrangements we introduce into the justice system in this country.
The noble Lord, Lord Marks, was querying whether there had been any such case. Of course, we are familiar with the issues that arose in the Binyam Mohamed case, when the Divisional Court ultimately rejected the Foreign Secretary’s third PII certificate. David Anderson QC, who has been referred to on a number of occasions, said that on the basis of what he was shown,
“there are signs that we are currently on probation and that there has already, in some respects, been a diminution in intelligence sharing”.
That is a very serious concern and certainly not a judgment that I would challenge. In my own experience, I was very conscious of the sensitivity in these matters and the importance of maintaining the most open channels.
Lord Lester of Herne Hill
I am sorry to interrupt my noble friend, but does he accept that in the Binyam Mohamed case, neither the Divisional Court nor the Court of Appeal presided over by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Neuberger, revealed any information that in any way prejudiced national security, even though it is true that some of the affidavit evidence of the Foreign Secretary and of Hillary Clinton was questioned at the Divisional Court level?
Lord King of Bridgwater
I do not think I have ever quoted Donald Rumsfeld, but when my noble friend very firmly asserts that there was no risk to national security, my worry always is the,
“things we don’t know we don’t know”
in these issues as to what sensitivities there may be. That is the worry that emerges out of this.
Let us be quite frank, there is not always a huge enthusiasm to share intelligence. There are plenty of people in the intelligence agencies of other countries who are very secretive indeed about the intelligence that they have and deeply distrustful of any other country that they do not believe will properly protect it, so any excuse that they can have—which they will argue internally in their own organisations—not to share intelligence in this way is something that we have to be extremely careful about.
It is against that background that I look with great interest to the reply of my noble friend the Minister. I have listened with great respect to the points that have been made. Some very good points have been made about the importance of ensuring judicial discretion in these matters. I got the impression that the Government have already moved quite significantly in that direction, which I wait to hear. However, in respect of my noble friend’s Amendment 31, I think that CMPs definitely have an advantage over PIIs. I do not support Amendment 31. I support the noble Lord, Lord Owen, in what he said about Amendment 48. I believe that Amendment 50 is also one that people have reservations about and I hope that that will not be pressed either.
Baroness Manningham-Buller
My Lords, I well understand the concern coming from all angles of this House on this legislation, and it is entirely right that these issues are fully scrutinised and judged by us. I think that everybody accepts that what is proposed is not ideal, but the question is: what is the best answer? There is the central dilemma of how to deploy into court a wealth of secret information that can be judged and weighed by the court without compromising it.
I am sorry to repeat this, but I think that I have to: the dangers of compromising secret information are several. The first is the obvious risk to the officers who are concerned with it and, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Carswell, made clear, to the sources of it. The second is the technologies that are available but are fragile and can no longer be used. We are trying to deal with those two things.
If the House will indulge me, I want to say something pretty personal. It is deeply distressing to me and to my former colleagues to be accused of really wicked iniquities in the case of torture and maltreatment. We have not been able to defend ourselves. The closed material procedure gives the opportunity for this material, which may or may not reflect badly on the security and intelligence services—I naturally think that it would not, but others may judge differently—to be looked at. We have been judged by many to have been engaged in criminal activity. But there has been no prosecution; there has been, concerning my service, one police investigation and the CPS found no case to answer. There are other police inquiries going on at the moment and, because I believe in and respect the rule of law, I cannot comment on them; we will see what the outcome is. However, I believe that closed material procedures are a way in which the judiciary can make a judgment on the validity of those claims. We need CMPs for a range of reasons, and I am glad that it seems that, with some exceptions, the need for them is accepted by this House.
When we get on to the next part of the Bill, we will talk about intelligence sharing and Norwich Pharmacal. I may wish to comment at that stage; I do not now.
PII, apart from keeping out of court material that we wish the judge to look at, will be impractical in some cases. I believe—this is information from my former colleagues because I had retired by then—that around a quarter of a million documents were involved in some of the claims that have already been settled. Going through those line by line would be a mammoth and very long task.
Finally, perhaps I may pick up the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Faulks. We should hope to avoid reaching a stage where, because of the need for the open practice of justice and because the balancing act rules out the use of secret intelligence, the Government will have to withdraw and settle and we might get back to where we started, with these cases not being heard. That is a risk that we will probably have to cope with, but I hope that the House will support the central value of having some proceedings to hear these cases in the absence of any at the moment.
The Advocate-General for Scotland (Lord Wallace of Tankerness)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. By any account, it has been a very well informed debate, with people speaking from some rich experience. The contributions from those who claim to have no legal background are equally important in bringing the perspective of those who do not deal day-in and day-out with legal issues. As my noble friend Lord Elton said, we are dealing with the difficult issues of trying to achieve a proper balance between liberty, justice and security.
I was encouraged by my noble friend Lord Elton to look at the amendments in turn, but perhaps I may make some introductory remarks. It has been some time since we last considered Part 2, although much has been said about it in the mean time. It is important to remind the House why the Government have brought forward the clauses introducing closed material procedures into civil proceedings where sensitive national security material is relevant. As my noble friend Lord Marks indicated, in a letter which is available in the Printed Paper Office, which I sent to the chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, we believe, having done a cross-departmental trawl, that there are about 20 current civil damages cases where material relating to national security would be central. There have been seven new cases during the 12 months leading up to 31 October this year. As my noble friend said, if for some reason we were thought to be a soft touch and did not have any means of properly determining those cases with evidence being allowed to come before a judge, a trend could be established.
Intelligence operations depend, inevitably, on surveillance, investigation and, most critically, information -sharing between agencies, their sources and their liaison partners, as was said by my noble friends Lord King and Lady Neville-Jones. Underlying those arrangements are two principles. The United Kingdom does not confirm its involvement or the involvement of its liaison partners and sources, as to do so would result in a loss of trust and information-sharing would dry up. We rely on others to keep our information safe; and our partners rely on us to do the same. Although much reference has been made to the United States, I recall from our deliberations in Committee that it was made clear that there is a number of other countries whose information we also depend and rely on.
In cases where people are bringing proceedings alleging that the Government were involved in detention, rendition or torture, the Government’s defence would be likely to include: the nature of any involvement, which would require the Government to breach their long-standing policy not to comment publicly on whether or not they had been involved in any particular operation; what the Government knew at the time, potentially risking the lives and safety of sources; what the Government had shared with their partners, potentially revealing the fact of, and nature of, relationships with partners; and any assurances sought and/or received about an operation, again, potentially revealing the fact of, and nature of, those relationships. All those things could be central to any defence and none of them could be put in the public domain without the risk of jeopardising the safety of sources or the willingness of partners to work with the United Kingdom.
It is interesting that the shadow Justice Secretary is on the record as saying:
“In two and a half years’ time, it could be me in that seat making that tough decision. So it is very important for ministers to have the opportunity to protect sources, to protect delicate operations and all the rest of it. They shouldn’t be jeopardised by a civil action”.
At present, as has been said in our debate, the only way to prevent the disclosure of such highly sensitive national security material when civil litigation arises is through public interest immunity. Although the system of PII works well in most cases, it is not working in a small number of cases that hinge on sensitive national security material. That point was clearly and eloquently made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf. He said during our deliberations in Committee:
“PII has the very unfortunate effect that you cannot rely on the material that is in issue, whereas both the claimant and the Government may want to rely on that material”.—(Official Report, 11/7/12; col. 1189.)
PII requires the court to balance, on the one hand, the damage that would be caused to the public interest with, on the other hand, the public interest in the administration of justice. That includes the impact excluding the material will have on the claimant’s and defendant’s cases, as well as the general public interest in open and transparent proceedings—the so-called Wiley balance.
Lord Lester of Herne Hill
I am sorry to interrupt my noble and learned friend. Does he accept the Joint Committee’s point that, instead of relying on Article 6, to weaken the common law, one should approach the convention through our legal system, including common law guarantees of fairness? Does he also accept that we should not use Article 6, which is a compromise, for mainly civil countries’ standards, but that we should be looking at our own common law, as explained by the Supreme Court in the Al Rawi case?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, Article 6 has been a very good safeguard for many claimants, or people appearing before the courts, of securing a fair trial. The fact that the courts are expressly enjoined to have regard to it does mean that in particular cases, if the requirements of a fair trial lead to requirements of disclosure, when one comes to that second stage of the CMP process the court would be obliged to order disclosure. However, as I have already indicated, it may well be that in these circumstances the Government take the view that even then, disclosure could be damaging to national security, but they must bear the consequences, as set out in Clause 7(3), if they feel unable to disclose.
I finally come to Amendments 47 to 50. They relate to the second stage of the process—and I indicated before that Amendment 47 has the same considerations that I expressed with regard to Amendment 36. The aim of the provisions is to put more material before the court—not the same amount—so that cases that currently cannot be tried because they hinge on highly sensitive national security material can be heard, leading to real findings on important allegations about government action.
Where the consequences are the inclusion of the material in the case, there is no precedent for including Wiley balancing. Other CMPs that already exist and do not use it have been upheld by the courts as being fair and compliant with Article 6. The position of the Government is therefore that there is no case to include balancing of the sort that is implicit in these particular amendments.
The noble Lord, Lord Owen, expressed concern about the requirement, as opposed to an obligation to consider to require, in terms of disclosure. As a Government we share that concern about this set of amendments. Amendment 49 also goes even further and provides for disclosure under the AF no. 3 principle, meaning that material can be disclosed, even if it is damaging to national security, if that is necessary for the individual to be able to instruct their special advocate. This amendment does not take full account of the judgment of the Supreme Court in Tariq—and I will stand corrected by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Phillips, if I get this wrong—which held that Article 6 does not provide a uniform gisting requirement in all circumstances.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Mance, said at paragraph 27 that,
“the balancing exercise called for in paragraph 217 of the European Court’s judgment in A v United Kingdom depends on the nature and weight of the circumstances on each side, and cases where the state is seeking to impose on the individual actual or virtual imprisonment are in a different category to the present”—
the present being an employment tribunal—
“where an individual is seeking to pursue a civil claim for discrimination against the state which is seeking to defend itself”.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, went on to say at paragraph 72:
“The context will always be crucial to a resolution of questions as to where and how this balance is to be struck”.
I could not help but think of the point that the noble Lord, Lord Owen, made, that when so much has been said about judicial discretion, this is perhaps an area where there ought to be proper judicial discretion, and where an absolute requirement on the judges should not be made. Wherever it is possible to provide gists and summaries of national security-sensitive material without causing damage, they will be supplied. In those cases where Article 6 requires gisting of this type, as I have already indicated, Clause 11(5)(c) means that the court will order it.
Finally, Amendment 50, which the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, indicated that he may not move, would instruct the court to ensure that any summaries only do no damage to the interests of national security,
“so far as it is possible to do so”.
I am afraid that that is a risk that the Government cannot take. We cannot say to our international partners that we will protect their information,
“so far as it is possible to do so”.
Perhaps above all, we cannot say to sources who are risking their lives for us, “We will protect your identity and, accordingly, your life and safety as far as it is possible to do so”. We do not believe that that is a risk that the Government should take and we believe that we should be categorical about it.
This set of amendments puts at risk our national security in order to hear compensation claims that can be fairly dealt with by the model set out in this regard in the Bill. The Government’s duty is to protect national security and it is not an optional duty. It is fundamental and some may say that it is our very first duty. Against that background, I very much hope that the noble Lord will withdraw his amendment.
Lord Pannick
Before the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, replies, it may be of assistance to the House if I seek to respond to a specific question put to me by the noble Lord, Lord Owen. I am very grateful for the general support around the House for the concept of judicial discretion in this area and that CMPs should be a last resort, if they are to exist at all.
The noble Lord, Lord Owen, asked me to address Amendments 48 and 49, to which the Minister referred. I am grateful to the Minister for the very careful way in which he went through the amendments. The noble Lord, Lord Owen, was concerned that Amendments 48 and 49 would introduce a duty to provide a summary or a gist of the material if the closed material proceeding is to be ordered. The answer is that disclosure of the summary or the gist would be required only if the Government wish to proceed with a CMP. If they do not wish to disclose the gist or the summary, which is a matter entirely for them, they do not have to do so under the amendment. There simply would be no closed material proceeding. I suggest that that is entirely appropriate if we are to have a fair balance of the interests in open justice and other competing interests. I am grateful to the House.
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts
I am extremely grateful to my noble and learned friend for the courteous and extensive way in which he has replied to Amendment 31, on which this debate has hung. Perhaps I may make clear to my noble friend Lady Neville-Jones that this was not to end CMPs: it was merely to narrow the gateway to CMPs by requiring a PII process first. The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, has discussed a number of amendments that give effect to the recommendations of the Joint Select Committee. If I was going to be irreverent, I might say that I regard those as offering 80% of the loaf, as opposed to 100% of the loaf that I was seeking.
However, I have to recognise that the Joint Select Committee has spent a great deal of time on this, a great deal more time than I have. Speaking as it does for both Houses of Parliament, it speaks with great authority. I also practically recognise that 80% of a loaf is better than no loaf at all. I shall seek, with the leave of the House, to withdraw my amendment and then give my support to the noble Lord if he chooses to move his amendments to give effect to the Joint Select Committee’s proposals. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Pannick
Lord Pannick
My Lords, I can be very brief because I can see that your Lordships are keen to move to vote on this matter. Amendment 33 addresses a specific aspect of fair balance. Under the Bill, a CMP may be ordered only on the application of the state. Amendment 33 would provide that the judge is able to order a CMP also on the application of another party to the proceedings or on the court’s own motion. That may be a practical matter for the reason given by the noble Lord, Lord Marks. The claimant, on the advice of the special advocate, may prefer the case to be heard by means of a CMP or at least part of it, rather than to have the evidence excluded altogether, given that the evidence may assist the claimant. I beg to move.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, consistent with the spirit of the way in which the noble Lord moved his amendment, I shall try to be brief, but I think that it is only fair that I explain why the Government are not accepting this amendment.
It is part of the principle behind our system of government that the Executive are the guardian of the United Kingdom’s national security interest. Courts have frequently stated that the Government’s function to protect national security by claiming PII is a duty rather than an option. Correspondingly, we believe that it should be the responsibility of the Secretary of State to apply for a declaration that a closed material procedure may be used. The courts play an essential role in scrutinising the Government’s exercise of these functions, but the question of whether to claim PII, and accordingly whether to make an application for a declaration that a closed material procedure may be used, should be a question for the Government.
In practice, it is the Secretary of State who holds national security-sensitive material and is in the best position to judge the scope and nature of that material, with advice from the security and intelligence agencies. Other parties may not even be aware that the national security information exists. It will remain open to a third party to approach the Secretary of State and request an application for a CMP if they do have reason to want one. If the Secretary of State refuses, that decision could be judicially reviewed.
I accept there is an underlying concern that the Government could inappropriately use this power because there is a feeling the courts are powerless to prevent the Government claiming PII to hide something, and conversely claiming a CMP when it is to the Government’s advantage to have material before the court. I do not think this is a concern that is ever likely to be raised in practice. In the first instance, it is for the Secretary of State to instigate the CMP application or PII claim, and the power to order a CMP or to accept a PII application rests solely with the judge. The judge would be alert to any unfairness to the non-government party, and within the CMP would have the case management powers to be able to ensure that the claim is fairly heard.
That is, in summary, why we would resist the amendment, and I invite the noble Lord to withdraw.
Lord Pannick
I am very grateful to the noble and learned Lord. If we are to have CMPs there must be equality of arms and there must be fairness, and it must be open to the applicant to apply to the judge for a CMP to be ordered. I wish to test the opinion of the House.
Lord Pannick
Lord Pannick
My Lords, the amendment would provide for judicial discretion in this context. We have had a full debate on whether or not there should be judicial discretion. I beg to move.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I am not quite sure that I can say that we do not support the amendment and just leave it at that, as that would not be courteous to the House.
Very briefly, the Bill states that the judge must order a CMP if he considers that a party to the proceedings would be required to disclose material and that such a disclosure would be damaging to the interests of national security. The amendment would change the “must” to “may”, introducing greater judicial discretion. However, the Government do not consider that this is a necessary amendment given the narrow criteria that are set out for triggering a CMP and the other safeguards in the process.
When the Secretary of State makes an application whereby a CMP might be used, the judge needs to be satisfied of two things: first, that there is material that a party would normally be required to disclose; and, secondly and significantly, that disclosure of that material would damage national security. That is not a fig leaf, as some have described it. The judge will have the final say about whether or not those conditions are satisfied. The Secretary of State has to demonstrate that genuine damage to national security, not embarrassment, would be caused by the material being disclosed publicly; and if the judge disagrees with that assessment, he could refuse to order a CMP. Equally, if he considered that the material was not relevant to the facts of the case and the Secretary of State was therefore seeking a CMP where one was not necessary to protect material that was relevant to the case, he could refuse to order one on that basis, too. This is a significant role for the judge.
It is also important to remember that the process does not end with the court’s declaration that a CMP may be used. It is, as has been described in our previous debates, a gateway. Stage 2, set out in Clause 7, is a process whereby the special advocate can then challenge individual documents as to whether they should go into open or closed proceedings, and this is done successfully.
In those circumstances, I encourage the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment, although I suspect that he is not going to do so.
Lord Pannick
The noble and learned Lord is very wise. If we are going to have CMPs, it should be at the discretion of the judge rather than as a matter of duty. I wish to test the opinion of the House.
Lord Pannick
“( ) the degree of harm to the interests of national security if the material is disclosed would be likely to outweigh the public interest in the fair and open administration of justice”
Lord Pannick
“( ) a fair determination of the proceedings is not possible by any other means”
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, it may be for the convenience of the House if I indicate that, while the Government do not accept Amendments 37, 38 and 40, we do not propose to resist them at this time. There will obviously be an opportunity to reflect on them.
Lord Pannick
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, in Committee, my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford tabled an amendment seeking to amend the effect of the disclosure gateway provisions in the Security Service Act 1989 and the Intelligence Services Act 1994. The amendment was based on a suggestion that emanated from the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law. At that time the Government resisted the amendment on the grounds that it was not necessary to secure the agencies’ compliance with their disclosure obligations and that it was wider than appropriate because it would mean the courts could order disclosure into civil proceedings regardless of the connection between those proceedings and the agencies’ functions.
However, following the Committee stage, Professor Sir Jeffrey Jowell from the Bingham Centre wrote to me urging the Government to reconsider the issues raised by the amendment. After careful consideration and consultation with experts on this complex area of law, the Government have concluded that a similar amendment would be necessary. This is a technical area of law and it may help if I briefly explain why the change is needed.
Under Clause 6, the court must, on an application from the Secretary of State, make a declaration that the proceedings are ones in which a closed material application may be made if the court considers that a party would be required to disclose material in the course of proceedings and disclosure would be damaging to the interests of national security. The problem with the Bill as drafted is that it does not make it clear that statutory bars to disclosure into open court should not prevent there being disclosure into closed material procedures.
I assure the House that the Liberty analysis of this amendment is wrong. In an e-mail to parliamentarians its policy director described the amendment as being able to expand the categories of secret information on which the application for a CMP declaration can be based. That is not the case. The amendment makes it clear that the court should ignore any statutory provision that would prevent the disclosure of relevant material into open court but not into closed material procedures when the court is deciding the question of whether a party to proceedings would be required to disclose material. In other words, we do not want to be in the unfortunate position where we are unable to use a CMP as a result of these Acts covering the Security and Intelligence Agencies. These Acts are in part designed to ensure that highly sensitive information is not made public in the interests of our national security. The closed material procedures, however, have been assessed to be secure enough to allow highly sensitive information into a courtroom to be considered by a judge. The Government and agencies want the chance for a judge to come to an independent judgment. We do not want silence on these important matters.
Once again, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Thomas for having raised this issue in Committee. While we may not have agreed on every point today, I am always grateful for his tireless work in holding the Government to account and for his detailed contribution. I am particularly grateful to the Bingham centre for taking time to scrutinise the Bill and for writing to me and asking the Government to rethink. The centre is an important legal research institute and the Government welcome its contribution to make sure that the Bill is suitably drafted. I beg to move.
Lord Thomas of Gresford
My Lords, have I not always said that this is a listening Government? I am grateful to my noble and learned friend for taking on board what I said on the last occasion, which I confess I have now totally forgotten. However, clearly it was very persuasive and I thank the noble and learned Lord for the amendment.
Lord Pannick
“( ) Before making a declaration under subsection (2), the court must consider whether a claim for public interest immunity could have been made in relation to the material.”
“( ) Rules of court must make provision—
(a) requiring the Secretary of State, before making an application under subsection (1), to give notice of the Secretary of State’s intention to make an application to all of the parties to the relevant civil proceedings,(b) requiring the Secretary of State to inform all of the parties to the relevant civil proceedings of the outcome of the application.”
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 41 now but I hope it will assist the House if I do not speak to the other amendments in this group until after they have been debated. I shall therefore respond at the end of the debate to both this amendment and the other amendments in the group which have been tabled by other noble Lords.
When I was responding to a debate on a topic which falls within this group, I boldly announced that I am not a lawyer. In the course of my remarks I said something which provoked a strong response from some of the lawyers who were involved in the debate that day and it is therefore a pleasure to move a government amendment that addresses the concerns raised in debate at that time. The point at issue then was the provision of notice by the Secretary of State to the other parties in a case in which a CMP is to be applied for. The Government committed to considering the issue. We gave it more detailed consideration over the Summer Recess and wrote to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, together with a number of other noble Lords who raised questions at the time of the debate.
In that letter, the Government explained that on further consideration it was clear to us that there were difficulties of both principle and practice with having CMPs without notice. We made it clear that closed judgments would exist without anyone other than the judge and the Secretary of State being aware of their existence if we were not to give notice, and that special advocates would also be unable to take instructions from the individuals whose interests they represent or to communicate with them at all. It was our view that this problem could be sorted out in the detailed rules of court for CMPs. However, the Government have considered this further and believe that it should be safeguarded in the Bill. The amendment provides for two procedures: the Secretary of State must give notice of his or her intention to apply for a CMP to the other parties in the case, and he or she must also inform the other parties of the outcome of the application.
I hope noble Lords will agree that this enhances the safeguards available under the Bill to ensure that the maximum amount of information that can be provided to the open representatives in the case is provided. I hope noble Lords will also agree that this amendment materially advances the continued efforts of the Government to ensure as much openness and transparency as possible, and to ensure that nothing is kept secret that does not need to be for genuine national security reasons. I beg to move.
Lord Pannick
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 56 in this group, which has been proposed by the Joint Committee. It would ensure that rules of court make provision for the media to be notified of any application for a closed material procedure so that they can make representations on the issue to the judge. The amendment would also ensure that a party to a closed judgment may apply for it to be made open at a later stage. It is not sufficient for the Secretary of State to give notice of an application for a CMP to the parties to the case. The reason for that is that a CMP will severely impede the ability of the press to report legal proceedings. It may be that it is only the media who are concerned about a proposal to introduce a CMP in a particular case; the other parties may not be focusing on the matter or may not object.
It is also essential for rules of court to provide a mechanism by which judgments that are closed can be reopened and published after the passage of time if there is no longer any reason for secrecy. These provisions were recommended by the Joint Committee, and perhaps I may quote what was said yesterday in a lecture by the president of the Supreme Court, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Neuberger:
“Without judgement there would be no justice. And without Judgments there would be no justice, because judicial decisions, at least in civil and family law, without reasons are certainly not justice: indeed, they are scarcely decisions at all. It is therefore an absolute necessity that Judgments are readily accessible”.
I accept entirely that if there is a CMP, of course that part of the judgment will be closed, but it is essential that rules of court allow for the possibility of a later application to open up that which no longer needs to be secret.
Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws
My Lords, I support the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Pannick. I serve on the Joint Committee on Human Rights and we were concerned that confidence in the judiciary is absolutely vital in our society. The press coverage of matters and their entitlement to come to a court and to make applications is an important element of democracy and open justice. We would encourage the Government to accept this amendment.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
My Lords, Amendment 56A in this group is tabled in my name. I am afraid that it is a manuscript amendment and I hope that noble Lords have got it, but for those who were not given a copy when they came in, it is an addition to Clause 10 which is about the general provisions under Section 6 proceedings. It requires that the:
“Rules of court under subsection (2) shall only diverge from rules of court pertaining to proceedings outside the scope of this Act to the extent necessary to prevent disclosures of information damaging to the interests of national security”.
The whole point of the amendment is to put some constraint on the otherwise unacceptable breadth of the provisions in Clause 10(2) which allow rules of court to be made. Perhaps I may briefly give noble Lords a gist of the breadth of this provision-making power. The first set out in paragraph (a) is,
“about the mode of proof and about evidence in the proceedings”.
There are no qualifications, there is no limitation, guidance or definition, so they can just make rules about the mode of proof and evidence in the proceedings; paragraph (b) concerns whether the proceedings shall have a hearing attached to them at all; paragraph (c) concerns whether there shall be legal representations in the proceedings; and paragraph (d) concerns whether the person against whom the proceedings are launched shall have full particulars of the reasons for the decision reached in those proceedings, and so on.
I do not understand why the Government have produced a rule-making power relating to a highly sensitive and important clause with no constraint, limitation or definition. All my amendment seeks to do is to put a lasso around what I believe are unduly wide powers. It would provide that, in effect, the only use of these powers shall be,
“to prevent disclosures of information damaging to the interests of national security”,
which is what this part of the Bill is principally all about. I have put the amendment forward in the hope that the Government will accept it or, if the wording is not to their liking, that they will undertake to bring new wording back at Third Reading.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, for the avoidance of doubt, I should say that the Opposition support Amendment 56. My noble friend Lady Kennedy beat me to the Public Bill Office in putting her name to it. As she and the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, have said, it is important that the press and the media generally should have notification of applications of this kind. It complements a later amendment that will require the regular reporting of the number of applications that have been made, so to some degree the two things flow together.
The manuscript amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, has arrived very late in the day and, given the other excitements we have been enjoying, I confess that I personally have not given it sufficient attention. I will be interested to hear the views of the Minister if she is replying to that particular amendment in due course. I would also be interested to learn the views of the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, on it, if he is able to give them. On the face of it, the amendment seems fairly persuasive, but it has been brought forward so late that I am finding it difficult to come to a decision, although other noble Lords may find it easier to do so. But certainly so far as Amendment 56 is concerned, and indeed the original amendment in this group, the Opposition are fully supportive.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords for their remarks. I will speak generally and respond to the noble Lord, Lord Phillips. The noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, has not said anything about his amendments in this group but what I will say applies to those as well.
The Bill does not seek to change the rules in relation to civil proceedings, save where this is necessary to have a closed material procedure; we are not otherwise changing the ordinary rules in civil procedures relating to disclosure of evidence. The noble Lord, Lord Phillips, in speaking to his manuscript amendment, talked about adding a lasso. We believe that the Bill already provides a lasso. We agree with the thrust of the points he makes but do not think it is necessary to accept his amendment, because the Bill provides for the essence of this point in Clause 9, where it says that, subject to securing closed material procedures, the ordinary rules of disclosure must otherwise apply. The way that his amendment is worded may also be a potential source of confusion in that it is unclear what is meant by the word “necessary” in the amendment in a particular case. More specifically, we are already providing for the concerns that he has raised.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
I apologise again to my noble friend and to the House for the lateness of this amendment. I think her argument was that Clause 9 makes my amendment redundant, but am I right in thinking that Clause 9 relates to rules of disclosure whereas Clause 10(2) relates to rules across a much wider plain, governing standards of proof, evidence, whether or not there is a hearing, legal representation and so on?
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
I will address that point by saying that we are not seeking to change any of the ordinary rules for civil proceedings in this Bill. The normal rules for civil proceedings apply in the same way here except for where it is necessary to change them in order for us to meet the requirements of a closed material proceeding.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
The noble Baroness says that the normal rules of civil procedure apply but Clause 10(2) gives extraordinarily wide powers to make new and different rules. That is my point and that is my concern.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
It is probably easier if I turn to the other points that have been made in this debate. In the course of doing so, maybe I will receive some assistance that will allow me to answer the noble Lord’s question in greater detail. As if by magic, I have been handed a note. Clause 10(2) gives powers to make rules but these are in consequence of CMPs.
I move on to the question of media reporting and the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy. The amendment that I have moved, which hopefully the House will accept, means that the parties to CMPs will be notified when an application has been made. In essence, the point was that this is not sufficient in terms of notifying the media. It is obviously a matter for the parties to the claim to decide whether to inform the media. This amendment will ensure that the judge notifies the parties, such that this will be disclosed in the normal proceedings of disclosure that courts make. The noble Lord is looking at me quizzically. He will know more about this than I do, but when the judge notifies the parties that there has been an application, unless it is necessary for him not to do so in the interests of national security, that will be in the public record that exists in the court, which presumably the media are monitoring at all times. This is not about withholding information from the media.
Furthermore, if the media had the right to intervene in this process, it would be necessary for them to have access to all the material so that they could judge or come to a view as to whether it should be a matter for a closed hearing or not. That would be contrary to the whole point of a closed material procedure.
Lord Pannick
I am not of course suggesting that the media should have access to the closed material, any more than the claimant does. The claimant is notified but does not see the secret material. The point is that the media should also simply be notified, so that they can object to a closed procedure.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
They will be notified, if not directly, by the process of the court notifying both parties to the claim. If the parties wish to notify the media, they can. The media will also be aware through the court disclosing its business in the normal way. The media will also be aware if the claimant wishes to tell them—as I am sure many will—about accusations that they wish to bring against the Government and the reason for them bringing the case in the first place. It is quite unlikely that the media will not be made aware of the application that has been made for a closed material procedure.
I would also add the point I made in Committee, that the media are not an institution with formal responsibilities to represent the public interest. Once they are notified formally in this way, it seems sensible or logical to me that they would then feel that they need to know more about the case—one limb of the amendment covers this—in order for them to have some kind of useful contribution to make about whether this should be a closed hearing or not.
Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws
In what way is this really significantly different from the many circumstances in which the press are excluded, or are advised not to print matters that are taking place in a court, such as the names of individuals, and a notice is posted to ensure that that is not done? We are really asking for a process of posting. The Minister is, of course, absolutely right that the rumour mill is likely to lead to people knowing and to the press finding out, but this is about making sure that there are formal processes rather than relying on the press being informed by lawyers, the parties or persons who would want the press to become interested. I would have thought that this is much better done through a formal process. I wonder why it is so different from other cases.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
The amendment means that the judge will notify the claimant that the Secretary of State has made an application. Following normal practice, the judge’s decision will be part of the public record and so the media will be informed of that in the normal way.
Obviously, the press will have access to all the open elements of the case in the same way as they have access now. The sort of scenario that the noble Baroness describes would be a normal open court hearing within which there are aspects that the judge has decided to put some rules around. This is a specific issue about an application for a CMP and is therefore slightly different but, in terms of the direct analogy with the open part of the hearing, it would be exactly the same.
Lord Lester of Herne Hill
My Lords, I apologise for the fact that I missed the very beginning of this and it may be that in doing so I am about to say something stupid. However, am I right in taking from what the Minister is saying that the Government oppose Amendment 56 even though the Joint Committee attached enormous importance to this as a way of securing open justice without in any way damaging national security? In other words, in accepting Amendment 41, are the Government saying that Amendment 41 is instead of Amendment 56?
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
The point that I am trying to make, and I have made it several times, is that in the amendment that the Government are moving we are ensuring that it is now going to be part of the formal process of the courts to alert those who may be interested of the judge’s decision. As far as the media are concerned, we do not feel that it is necessary for there to be a specific notification to the media of the fact that the CMP has been applied for and consequently has been agreed or not agreed. There is nothing in that that is about withholding information.
The media report on other cases that use CMPs, in particular they are able to report on a finding on the issues. Indeed on other CMPs there does not seem to be a problem at all with the way that this works. In terms of the media being able to intervene in individual cases, which is another aspect to this amendment, civil damages cases that would be heard under this legislation are private law claims and it could be inappropriate for third party interventions to be made in such claims. The claimant may not want the media to intervene in the proceedings. I think that the most important point is that the outcome of all CMP cases will be reportable, increasing the opportunities for the media to report on these kinds of cases, as at present the Government are obviously having to settle rather than a claim being seen through to its conclusion.
I will turn to the other point that the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, raised about closed judgments, which is also covered in the JCHR amendments. It may be helpful for noble Lords if I briefly give some background on how closed judgments already work. There is a judicial safeguard on the use of closed judgments. In a case involving sensitive material, the judge must be satisfied that any material in the closed, rather than open, judgment would be damaging to national security and so could not be released. Special advocates can also make submissions to the judge about moving material from the closed judgment to the open judgment. If the court is persuaded that there would be no harm to national security, the material can then be moved to the open judgment.
The Government believe that it is important that those that are entitled to access closed judgments are able to do so. For this reason, the Government have created a searchable database containing summaries of closed judgments that will allow special advocates and HMG counsel to identify potentially relevant closed judgments. It is worth making the point that this new initiative has been put in place following the various stages of the passage of this Bill, both in terms of hearings and of discussion at JCHR. I am grateful to all noble Lords who have led to that new database being available.
The amendments also propose a review mechanism. Although I welcome this suggestion, the Government do not think that this particular proposal would work in practice. As drafted, it could mean that a person could attempt to subvert the disclosure process built into closed material proceedings by applying for the information immediately after the court had decided what information should be contained within the open and closed judgment, and then at regular intervals thereafter. A person could also abuse the process and put in an application each day. This would place a serious resource burden on the courts and agencies.
Having listened to the debate today and the findings from the JCHR report, the Government recognise that the review of closed judgments is an important issue and needs further thinking. The Government therefore request that Ministers have more time to look into the issues and report our findings to Parliament during the passage of this Bill. Obviously this may be something that would be looked at in the other place. To conclude, I ask noble Lords to accept the government amendment not to have CMPs without notice. I hope from the course of this debate that the noble Lords who have amendments in this group feel able to withdraw them at this time.
Lord Beecham
Before the noble Baroness sits down, in relation to the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, would it be a way forward for her to take that back so that it might be raised, if necessary, at Third Reading? It is very late and the Minister is in difficulty—I think that we are all in difficulty—in terms of understanding the implications of the amendment, so this may be a way through the dilemma.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
I am grateful for that suggestion. I do not want to keep apologising, but I do think, if the Minister agrees, that that is the way to deal with this.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
I cannot commit to anything at this stage, but what I can do is to consider the amendment outside the Chamber and certainly to have a further discussion with the noble Lord.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I will also speak to Amendment 43, the effect of which would be to add the Supreme Court to the High Court, the Court of Appeal and the Court of Session as the courts that would be covered by closed material proceedings in the context of this Bill.
I think that it is important that there is consistency within the hierarchy of courts covered by these provisions. As I have indicated, this amendment would add civil proceedings before the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom to the list of courts in the Bill in which closed material procedures under Clauses 6 to 11 may be used. At present, the only courts for which this is available are the High Court, the Court of Appeal and the Court of Session.
I understand that there might be some concerns about adding to the list. The reason for adding the reference to the Supreme Court is to seek to put beyond doubt that the Supreme Court is empowered to apply closed material procedures. It was felt that the Supreme Court was likely to be considering points of law only and the Supreme Court already has some of its own bespoke procedures where it can exceptionally exclude parties from proceedings if in the public interest. However, after the Bill was introduced, the Government became concerned that omitting the Supreme Court might be a gap in the legislation. The lower courts would be able to rely on the procedures set out in the Bill but the Supreme Court—the supervisory court for those courts—would have either no exceptional procedure or a different one.
I do not think that the Government are naive. I think that we are realistic enough to realise that once we enact this Bill, the early uses of the procedure in the High Court almost certainly will be appealed in some form or another, and it seems quite likely that at least some of these appeals will make their way to the Supreme Court. This amendment will put beyond doubt the Government’s intention that the Supreme Court should continue to have the ability to consider sensitive material and ensure that we are not left in the very unusual situation of the highest court in the land not being able to adopt the same procedures used in the lower courts.
For completeness, I should add that noble Lords may have noted that the first set of rules of court under the Bill for the High Court and the Court of Appeal in England and Wales and Northern Ireland are to be made by the Lord Chancellor. This is simply a matter of ensuring that the implementation of the CMP provisions of the Bill can occur swiftly. We do not think that the same rationale applies for the Supreme Court. The first set of rules are to be made by the president of the Supreme Court, as now.
I very much hope that the reasons for adding the Supreme Court will satisfy your Lordships’ House. We are not talking about the horizontal scope of the Bill but the vertical reach, namely the courts in the hierarchy that may hear such claims.
Concern was also expressed in Committee that in the future the reference to “relevant civil proceedings” to which there could be an extension by order could include inquests and fatal accident inquiries. That was not the Government’s policy, as we made clear in our response to the Green Paper consultation. We had brought forward a Bill we believed would not allow any Government to add inquests to the definition of relevant civil proceedings now or in the future, but we were grateful to the Delegated Powers Committee’s consideration and we took on board its comments.
Likewise, the report by the Joint Committee on Human Rights also made comments regarding this order. I understand that the remaining concerns are to ensure that closed material proceedings should be used only when absolutely necessary and in a narrow and targeted context. It is for this reason that the Government have tabled an amendment to remove the order-making power completely; in other words, removing Clause 11(2) to 11(4).
I can assure your Lordships that this decision has not been taken lightly. Parliament has legislated for CMPs no fewer than 14 times over the past 10 years. It is conceivable that national security material may become relevant in contexts other than the narrow ones listed in the Bill. The impact of cases not being heard is felt by not only the Government but claimants, whose cases can be severely delayed. Nevertheless, the Government understand the importance of the issue. This amendment will set to rest any fears raised by the Joint Committee that the order-making power could have been misused or that this clause would open the door to commonplace use of CMPs. It will also put beyond any doubt that inquests are beyond the scope of the Bill.
My noble friend the Duke of Montrose has tabled an amendment to require the consent of the Scottish Government and the Northern Ireland Executive for the Secretary of State to make an order to amend the definition of civil proceedings. The Government are committed to properly respecting the devolution settlements, but if the amendments to delete the order-making power altogether are carried, my noble friend’s amendment would not be necessary. I hope that this also satisfies the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and others that takes forward the recommendation of the Joint Committee on Human Rights. I beg to move.
Lord Pannick
I am very grateful to the Minister for confirming that the Government are proposing the deletion of Clause 11(2) and the order-making power.
I have a concern about Amendment 43, which includes the Supreme Court in the list of courts that will have power to make a CMP. Given the role of the Supreme Court as the final court of appeal in this jurisdiction, it is highly undesirable that it should decide points of law of public importance in judgments that the public and lawyers generally cannot see.
I do not intend to divide the House on Amendment 43. Given the amendments supported by the House earlier this evening, I would understand that the Supreme Court would have ample discretion to decide whether or not it is appropriate for it as the final court of appeal to order a CMP, and no doubt it would wish to take into account the undesirability, if so perceived, of the Supreme Court issuing judgments that, at least in part, the public and lawyers generally would not be able to see. However, I raise that concern.
The Duke of Montrose
My Lords, I thank my noble and learned friend for the way in which he presented his amendments. As he notified the House earlier, if his Amendment 59 is approved, my Amendment 60 will become superfluous. I raise the point that without Amendment 59, there would be a very real danger that anything that the Secretary of State had decided to amend by order in the Scottish courts would be seen as meddling in the affairs of the Scottish legal system. At present, there is nothing more likely to inflame the amour propre of the Scots than actions such as this.
The possibility of this problem was drawn to my attention by the Law Society of Scotland. If Amendment 59 is adopted, we will have a much clearer and more workable piece of legislation than one that is likely to cause controversy. If by any chance it is not carried, I will still wish to bring my amendment forward.
The Bill appears to be walking a fine line on what might be termed issues that might require a legislative consent Motion in the Scottish Parliament and those that would not. Even now, Clause 6(7)(c) of the Bill gives powers to the Court of Session. I understand that early in Committee it was briefly drawn to the attention of the Justice Committee in Edinburgh. Can my noble and learned friend tell the House whether this question of a legislative consent Motion has finally and satisfactorily been resolved?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, as I indicated, the intention is that the Supreme Court should not have available to it powers that are available in the lower courts, but the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, makes an important point with regard to judgments.
With regard to my noble friend’s concerns, it probably would have been the case that had we had a power that involved Scottish Ministers, a legislative consent Motion would have been required. Although the Bill refers to the Court of Session, it has become abundantly clear in our deliberations that the substance of these matters relates to national security, and national security is very clearly reserved to the United Kingdom Parliament and therefore a legislative consent Motion would not arise.
( ) the Supreme Court”
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
My Lords, I beg to move that further consideration on Report be now adjourned. In doing so, it is worth noting that the dinner break business this evening is not time-limited. Without prejudging the debate, it is possible that we may be able to return to the Bill in less than an hour. Following discussions in the usual channels, I suggest that Report will not resume for 45 minutes, so not before 8.31 pm.
Care Quality Commission (Healthwatch England Committee) Regulations 2012
(11 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Collins of Highbury
That this House regrets that the Care Quality Commission (Healthwatch England Committee) Regulations 2012 (SI 2012/1640) fail to provide sufficient safeguards to ensure the independence of Healthwatch England from the Care Quality Commission, despite Government assurances given to the House at report stage of the Health and Social Care Bill on 8 March 2012, and that the regulations fail to provide for effective national patient representation in the health service.
Lord Collins of Highbury
My Lords, my purpose in tabling this Motion is to highlight how these regulations, in their present form, may undermine the one thing Healthwatch England needs to succeed: public trust and confidence.
As my noble friend Lord Harris of Haringey argued so brilliantly on Report, an effective organisation for patients must be measured against three basic criteria: first, independence from the providers, commissioners and regulators of health services, because a patient complaint may involve the need to challenge any or all of these interests; secondly, genuine grass-roots representation from groups and individuals—no top-down organisation; thirdly, that its work and comments be derived from sound local information.
Over the past 40 years, we have seen community health councils, then patient participation forums and, most recently, LINks. They may not have always fully met these criteria, but each built on the progress of its predecessor in delivering greater patient involvement. No matter how often the Government assert to the contrary, the arrangements proposed in these regulations do not pass the test of independence. They say that Healthwatch England will have genuine operational independence by ensuring that the majority of its members are not also members of the Care Quality Commission. However, under the regulations the Healthwatch England chair must consult the CQC chair before the first appointments are made. That does not exactly reinforce the notion in my mind of independence. However, even with this measure and some of the others in place, it remains difficult to see how Healthwatch England can build public trust when its governance is controlled by the CQC, a body whose own organisation and resource problems have been so publicly aired.
The fear for many is that that the Healthwatch England committee will be rapidly absorbed into, and moulded and overwhelmed by, the dominant culture and infrastructure of the CQC. The Government have told us how important the duty of collaboration is within their reformed NHS. If that is the case, why not use this duty rather than leave Healthwatch England within the governance structure of the CQC?
The skill and ability of the new Healthwatch England chair will no doubt be a significant factor in whether it succeeds. I congratulate Anna Bradley on her appointment. Having worked at Which? for many years and been a former chief executive of the National Consumer Council, she is extremely well qualified to meet the challenge. From her public statements, it is clear that she fully appreciates that for Healthwatch England to succeed it must meet the challenge of independence and effective patient representation.
A key to this will be the strength of the local Healthwatch network. As local Healthwatch develops during the next six months, it must show that it listens to patients and service users and captures their feedback, a role that LINks have performed with distinction in many areas.
However, with no clear rules in law, we are potentially left with a range of different local social enterprises determining national representation. By not providing statutory status to local Healthwatch, the Government missed the opportunity for them to be organisations that were fully trusted and supported by patients and public alike. At the launch of Healthwatch England, Anna Bradley also acknowledged that, with stretched health and social care budgets, an ageing population and significant systems reform, it was essential that HWE be focused on real people, their experiences and their needs. She said that Healthwatch England would actively seek out evidence from all sections of the community and collate it to find out what needed to change. I fully understand her desire to ensure that such evidence is not dependent on those who shout the loudest. She said that Healthwatch England would go out of its way to hear from those who sometimes struggle to be heard. However, I fear that, with these regulations, we will have a body that is perceived to be appointed from high—a top-down organisation which is not representative. The 10 members recently appointed to Healthwatch England have highly relevant knowledge and experience, and I have no doubt that their specific skills and expertise will be a tremendous asset to its work—three have been appointed because of their specific local involvement. However, to be genuinely representative, there is a case for more, if not a majority, to be drawn from local Healthwatch.
Healthwatch England will be looked to by 152 local Healthwatches as an organisation that understands and has experience of both national and local problems and issues, including the special needs of deprived communities, people suffering as a result of health inequalities and people living in rural areas. The connection between local Healthwatch and Healthwatch England must be more than a brand, a name and a conversation.
The decision to restrict local Healthwatch membership of Healthwatch England to only four members, one from each of the four NHS regions, Greater London, North, Midlands and South, appears totally inadequate. In addition, the decision to restrict from 2013 local Healthwatch membership of Healthwatch England to people described as “directors” of local Healthwatch organisations is limiting and confusing.
Not only is there a risk of reduced funding with local authorities commissioning local Healthwatch, some of which we have already seen in the tendering process that has commenced, but there is also huge potential for conflicts of interest. Can we really ask a patient or carer to have confidence in a complaint being properly pursued when it involves a regulatory failure in a local authority social service? I am sure that patients will see the potential conflict of interest even if the Government cannot.
We are facing the prospect of fragmented services being delivered by multiple providers even within a single local authority. One issue of particular concern for me, which I have raised previously in the House, is the patient advocacy service, used by adults, young people and children wishing to make a complaint about NHS healthcare. There are currently three providers of the Independent Complaints Advocacy Service in England, commissioned by the Department of Health centrally. In future, this will be commissioned instead by 152 local authorities. It has been estimated that this will add £2.2 million to the cost of the service—which currently costs £11.7 million—massively reducing what is available for other patient services provided by the Local Involvement Networks.
Further, while there will be only one local Healthwatch contracted in a single local authority, this body will be permitted to subcontract most, if not all, of its activities. This will result in some areas in multiple contracts, solicitors’ fees and all the other on-cost of commissioning. The waste of public money on contracting is absolutely appalling.
In the end, it will come back to how the structure proposed in these regulations will play out in practice and how conflicts of interest between Healthwatch England and the CQC, or indeed Healthwatch organisations in local authorities, will be dealt with. The issues that the Minister must therefore address and questions that he must answer tonight are: how will public trust be maintained when a complainant about a CQC investigation into a care home discovers that the body investigating the complaint or championing improved quality of care on behalf of patients is a committee of the CQC itself? How will the culture clash between Healthwatch and the CQC be addressed and managed? How will the Minister, to quote the word used by many in this House, stop CQC “suffocating” Healthwatch England? How will he ensure that potentially serious conflicts of interest are dealt with?
I conclude with the issue I started with: public perception and understanding of, and confidence in, the independence of Healthwatch. It is important that Healthwatch is seen to be credible and truly independent, able to challenge and to scrutinise the work and decisions of the regulators, both CQC and Monitor. We need an independent Healthwatch England and we need local Healthwatch bodies that everyone can rely on to be genuine patient representatives. I am afraid that these regulations give us neither.
Baroness Jolly
My Lords, I will not speak at length this evening and will speak mainly of the issue of the independence of Healthwatch England. I was at the launch of Healthwatch England and met some of the members of the committee. As the noble Lord said, many come from wide and relevant backgrounds, and they were really enthusiastic about the task in hand. They represent all regions of the UK, disabilities and gender. I understand that the full committee is now appointed.
There is an undoubted need for a patient watchdog, as we have heard. Many hours were spent in debate in this Chamber, in Committee and on Report, on the Health and Social Care Bill to try to mould it as best as possible to achieve that. During that debate, some of us carried out a campaign with Ministers outside the Chamber as well as inside, but there was no acknowledgement that the siting of Healthwatch England as a committee within the Care Quality Commission would cause concern. Indeed, it was said that the connection would be beneficial to the process and result in improved channels of communication.
Those arguments are now past, and Healthwatch England is now constituted, but the secondary legislation we are discussing today is silent on the issue of independence. We are left to wonder whether that is a missed opportunity or a deliberate omission. I always look on the bright side, so let us assume that it is a missed opportunity.
We know that the chief executive officer of the CQC holds the budget for Healthwatch England. What safeguards are in place to ensure that the money is not used to support core Care Quality Commission business or, indeed, to prevent the board of the Care Quality Commission, of which the chair of Healthwatch England herself is a member, saying that the way that the Healthwatch England committee wanted to spend the allocation was not as it thought fit?
If so, where does that put both the Care Quality Commission and Healthwatch England—and, indeed, the confidence of the public in their watchdog—if a future chair of Healthwatch England goes native or a chair of the Care Quality Commission becomes overbearing? That is a reflection not on personalities or individuals but on roles and responsibilities. Both current incumbents of those positions have assured me that that could never happen, but we all know of instances where what seemed perfectly good appointments change the way that they work over time. Working arrangements honoured under one regime may not carry over to a successor.
I commend the work that Anna Bradley has done thus far in setting up the organisation and her commitment and understanding of the role. She has said:
“We will be accountable to Parliament not the CQC ... We will work with the CQC as strategic partners. Guarding that independence will be a very important aspect of my job and the committee’s job”.
As I said, Anna Bradley sits on the Care Quality Commission board as part of her role and is appointed directly by the Health Secretary. She is adamant that the patients’ champion will be fully independent from the regulator.
A set of arrangements has been developed to safeguard the independence of Healthwatch England, whose budget—£3 million in 2012-13—is determined by the Department of Health. Healthwatch England will have full editorial independence over its publications; its committee will set its own priorities; and the chair will appoint the committee, ensuring that a majority are not Care Quality Commission commissioners, and oversee the work of Healthwatch England’s director, its senior officer. Any disputes between the Care Quality Commission and Healthwatch should be resolved through “open and frank discussion”, with the Department of Health responsible for resolving any intractable issues.
The Government’s intention was clear about the independence of Healthwatch England when the Bill was being debated, and it is to be regretted that that did not find its way into legislation or this secondary regulation. This organisation will be closely watched. Its relationships with partners are clearly defined in legislation. Its first chair has been absolutely explicit about its independence very early in her appointment, with the clear support of both the CEO and the chair of the hosting organisation, the Care Quality Commission.
I want Healthwatch England and local Healthwatch to succeed. We owe that to all patients across the country. With all the changes working their way through the NHS and the care system—it is essential that, despite its name, we should not forget that Healthwatch watches after health and care—it is imperative that it is working as efficiently as possible to its agenda, not that of the many stakeholders. For the sake of the public, those in receipt of care, it must succeed.
I would welcome reassurance from my noble friend that the lack of regulation or independence will not impede Healthwatch England’s independent operation and an indication of how that can be guaranteed.
Lord Harris of Haringey
My Lords, I am pleased to have the opportunity to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, on this Prayer. She has highlighted the weakness in the Government’s position. I am confident that the people who have set up Healthwatch England are of good will and that they intend and wish it to work; that Anna Bradley will be an excellent person as chair of Healthwatch England; that the outgoing chair of the Care Quality Commission is committed to making it work; and that the chief executive of the Care Quality Commission is committed to making it work. I even believe that Ministers in the Department of Health are committed to making it work.
The problem is that we are provided with a framework of regulation which does not guarantee that in future. One or two appointments down the road, with a new leadership of the Care Quality Commission and, perhaps, with different Ministers at the Department of Health, how will those things be ensured, especially if budgets remain tight and Healthwatch England starts to be effective and makes criticisms which are difficult for Ministers—or, worse still, in this context, for the Care Quality Commission? That is when those problems may arise.
That is why, when the Bill was passing through this House, there was so much concern about the importance of independence for the Healthwatch structure. My concern is that, given that the legislation has passed, this is a wasted opportunity to make it stronger.
One of the lessons that is expected to come from the Mid-Staffs inquiry relates to independence. The report is expected to identify the systemic failure of organisations to focus primarily on the needs of the patients of that hospital. Because each was looking at its own area, nobody was taking the step back to say, “How does this work from the point of view of patients?”. That is where Healthwatch should come in and be influential: to cut through the complicated organisational structures which the Health and Social Care Act has bequeathed to the NHS. That is why the simple issue of how it preserves its independence is so vital.
When the Bill was going through Parliament, the noble Earl held a meeting to discuss how Healthwatch England should work. He made the point that there would be valuable synergies from Healthwatch England being located within the Care Quality Commission. He did not stress, but it was clearly part of the equation, that there would also be some useful cost savings associated with that. The cost savings could be achieved in a whole variety of ways. It would be possible to have an agency agreement whereby some of the back office functions were provided by the Care Quality Commission or any of the plethora of structures that the Health and Social Care Act has bequeathed to the NHS. Similarly, because the duty of co-operation exists, you would hope that those synergies could be activated without the need for the Healthwatch organisation to be subservient to the Care Quality Commission. It would have been possible in these regulations to create a structure which, while preserving the general framework of the Act, would ensure that there was independence.
If we look at the regulations that we have before us, we see a number of flaws. First and foremost, for example, is the size of the Healthwatch England committee. Potentially, this will be a committee of as few as six members. I appreciate that in the initial instance it is larger than that, because people of goodwill are trying to make this structure work. However, in three, four or five years’ time there may not quite be the same atmosphere or there may be a feeling that the wings of Healthwatch England need to be clipped back. In any event, with six to 12 members it is going to be extremely difficult to ensure that there really is the geographical diversity that is necessary; the coverage of all the many major areas of special need that exist as far as health and social care is concerned; and proper recognition of ethnicity and gender within that. Again, the initial membership has provided a reasonable attempt to achieve that diversity, but where is the guarantee of that in the future?
I know there is a feeling that small boards work well. The noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, who is not in her place on this occasion, has talked to us glowingly about the value of having small, dynamic boards to run organisations but this is a different sort of organisation. It is supposed to be one that represents the generality of the interests of patients across the whole country and which derives its authority from what is happening in local Healthwatch organisations around the country—the 150-odd local organisations that will exist. It is therefore not appropriate to have a small board in such a case, as it is not the same sort of structure.
Then we have the rather strange arrangements for the appointment process. In the first instance, the chair of Healthwatch England has to get the approval of the chair of the Care Quality Commission before appointments can be made. The future arrangements are that the chair will make the appointments directly but let us be clear: the chair of Healthwatch England is a Secretary of State appointment and has the potential to be the poodle of the Department of Health. I have been in the position of being in charge of the organisation representing patients and I remember successive Secretaries of State, from two parties, making attacks on the organisation because we were being effective and raising issues that were uncomfortable.
Under those circumstances, can we be satisfied with a future arrangement whereby the Secretary of State solely makes the appointment of that individual, who then appoints all the other members of the Healthwatch England committee? In the initial stage, you have a double lock where the chair of the Care Quality Commission gets involved but in future you will have someone who might be appointed as a poodle or to muzzle the watchdog nature of Healthwatch England appointing individuals who are, no doubt, like-minded. That is why the arrangements are strange.
We then have the provision for suspending members, which is set out here. Presumably, the suspension is different from disqualification but the Secretary of State may dispense with the chair of Healthwatch England for a variety of reasons, which includes,
“failing to carry out those duties”.
Who is going to determine what those duties should be? Essentially, we are being told that the Secretary of State will decide what he or she thinks is appropriate for Healthwatch England to be carrying out. Again, the chair then has similar powers in respect of individual members. I make a specific request of the Minister: that in his reply he spells out absolutely that it will not be appropriate for either the chair or the members of Healthwatch England to be suspended from their membership if they are pursuing their interpretation of what is in the interests of patients and their organisations, and the people that they represent.
Baroness Masham of Ilton
My Lords, the Explanatory Memorandum to these regulations states:
“The instrument also places a requirement on the chair to ensure that arrangements for the selection and appointment of persons take into account the principles of openness and transparency”.
The votes this evening illustrate that people want openness and transparency, and I commend this. I would like an assurance from the noble Earl, Lord Howe, that the members of Healthwatch England and the local Healthwatches will be treated well. As volunteers, LINks members have not been given enough support. It is disappointing that Healthwatch England will not be independent. It must not become a puppet of the CQC, which has had problems, and the local authorities that host it.
There is an immense amount to do to keep patients safe in the health service—those in care homes and those with mental problems. One hopes that Healthwatch England will support local Healthwatches. When there is so much fragmentation and so much to do, will the CQC and Healthwatch manage to cope? I hope there will be spot checks, otherwise inspections do not mean very much, as has been shown in the awful problem of the care home near Bristol. I hope that the Minister, who I think believes in independence in his heart, can give us some assurances tonight.
Lord Whitty
My Lords, I do not want to repeat the arguments that have been made. I was going to repeat the arguments that I made about the history of consumer representation in other sectors, but time is against us. The conclusion from that would be that independence and the perception of independence are vital for all the reasons that my colleagues have spelt out today. The Act is there, and the regulations will be there after tonight, but the Minister at least ought to be prepared to say that he will review the situation after, say, two years. If he were prepared to say that tonight, I would give Anna Bradley, who I have great respect for, and the other members the chance to prove that this situation works, but it might also show up some strains in it. If the Minister could say that, I would walk away tonight a happier man.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Earl Howe)
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Collins, has posed a number of questions about Healthwatch England and how it will work within the Care Quality Commission, and I welcome this debate. In view of the time constraint, I am not sure that I am going to be able to cover all the points, particularly those relating to local Healthwatch, but I will do my best.
First, I would like to take a step back to the White Paper Equity and Excellence: Liberating the NHS where our first plans for Healthwatch were set out. The Health and Social Care Act 2012 was passed by Parliament in March this year and enacted the proposals for Healthwatch to be the new consumer champion for people in health and social care. As a result, locally and nationally, Healthwatch will bring about better national leadership on public engagement and better communication for patients, service users, members of the public and communities to enable their concerns to be heard and acted on.
In the debate on the Bill in the Lords, the Government made it clear that Healthwatch England has an important role to play for patients and the public to present their views on health and social care at the national level to inform service improvements. Accordingly, the 2012 Act set up Healthwatch England to be the national body that would present the collective voice of the people who use health and social care services so as to influence national policy, advice and guidance. The Act sets up Healthwatch England to have relationships with other national bodies, such as the NHS Commissioning Board, Monitor and the Care Quality Commission itself, and with local authorities and the Secretary of State. Healthwatch England has the power to advise these bodies and the Secretary of State for Health, which could include making recommendations, and the recipients of such advice are under a statutory duty to respond. This is an important power for Healthwatch England to drive the consideration of issues, get a response and make the correspondence public, which I believe is a very tangible way of delivering openness and transparency in how these bodies respond to the issues that Healthwatch England raises. That could be a matter relating to the actions of the CQC itself.
I believe that these arrangements will engender trust. They will also embed the patient and public voice and the experiences of patients and the public at the heart of services. Healthwatch England is able to build other national relationships, such as with Public Health England. In addition, Healthwatch England will provide the leadership and support to a network of local healthwatch organisations which, in turn, will feed back the information from local people and communities to inform the national picture of what needs to be heard, and acted upon.
Since the Act was passed, the Healthwatch England committee was launched on 1 October at a stakeholder event hosted by the first chair of Healthwatch England, Anna Bradley. The chair has appointed to the committee 10 members so far who, collectively, bring the range of expertise and experience required for Healthwatch England to operate strategically at the national level. Those members were shortlisted and interviewed by a selection panel through an open and transparent process. Independent members of the panel included Joe Irvin, chief executive of the National Association for Voluntary and Community Action, and the criteria were drawn up in consultation with external stakeholders.
I shall name the 10 members for the benefit of noble Lords. They are: John Carvel, who was social affairs editor of the Guardian for nine years and a Guardian staff writer for nearly 40 years; Alun Davies, who has worked as a policy and planning manager in an adult social services department in a unitary council in the south-west and has been actively involved in disabled people’s politics; Michael Hughes, an independent policy and research adviser who was the director of studies for six years at the Audit Commission overseeing national reports on a range of topics including adult and children’s social care; Christine Lenehan, who is director of the Council for Disabled Children and has worked with disabled children and their families for over 30 years; Jane Mordue, who is deputy chair of Citizens Advice; Dave Shields, who was a health and well-being strategy manager for Southampton City Council, developing the city’s health and well-being partnership; Patrick Vernon, who was the chief executive of the Afiya Trust, one of the leading race equality health charities in the country and previously worked as regional director for MIND; Christine Vigars, who is chair of Kensington and Chelsea LINk and a trustee and former chair of Age UK Kensington and Chelsea—she has taught social work and worked in community care development in the voluntary sector; David Rogers OBE, who is a councillor for East Sussex County Council and chairs the Local Government Association’s community well-being board; and Dag Saunders, who is chair of Telford and Wrekin LINk and is one of two representatives for LINks on the Healthwatch programme board at the Department of Health. I hope the House will agree that this membership will give Healthwatch England not only strong and independent leadership but also the right skills and knowledge in relation to the commissioning and delivery of health and social care services, as well as on public engagement, consumer advocacy, equality and diversity, and specialisms such as children and young people.
The noble Lord, Lord Collins, has questioned the extent to which Healthwatch England will be able to act independently. I suggest to him that it will be able to do this in a very real sense. Healthwatch England will set its own strategic priorities, separate from the CQC; it will have its own operational and editorial voice, again separate from the CQC; and it will develop its own business plan and take responsibility for managing its own budget.
Under the leadership of its new chair, Healthwatch England has already made great progress in putting arrangements in place to ensure that it will function independently of the Care Quality Commission, while benefiting from its position as a statutory committee of the commission, without compromising good governance and lines of accountability. In fact, the benefit of this structure runs both ways. It will immensely strengthen the link between the views of patients and the public and regulation. The advice that Healthwatch England provides to the Care Quality Commission will enable the commission to address failings in the provision of health and social care services. It will also enable the commission to address any local risk management systems and, at the same time, Healthwatch England will have the commission’s offer of valuable expertise in data management, the gathering and use of intelligence, analysis, and an evidence base of information to pool and share knowledge. The CQC has publicly committed in its consultation document on its strategy for 2013-2016 to make the most of the opportunity Healthwatch offers and to support its development to make sure people’s views, experiences and concerns about their local health and social care services are heard. The CQC has made it clear that people’s views, experiences and concerns will more systematically inform its work.
Working as a committee within the Care Quality Commission makes Healthwatch England very well placed to connect people’s concerns about safety and quality with the work of the commission. This symbiotic and symbolic relationship is unique and will go a long way to embedding what I know noble Lords want to see, which are the voices of the patient and the public at the heart of care.
I was asked what will happen if Healthwatch England goes off the rails in some way or goes native. The Secretary of State has a duty to keep the performance of the health service functions under review. That requirement involves keeping the effectiveness of the national bodies under review; these bodies are listed in the Act. The list includes the Care Quality Commission, and Healthwatch England as its committee. That reassurance should go a long way to make sure that the functions that these bodies are meant to perform are ones on which they will be held to account.
Lord Collins of Highbury
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his response, and all noble Lords for their contribution. The noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, said that this was a missed opportunity and I am glad that she recognises that on this occasion. I wish that, on Report, we could have pushed through some of those concerns in a much more positive way. I am afraid that it is still a missed opportunity in view of the contribution from the noble Earl. As my noble friend Lord Whitty says, there was an opportunity today to state publicly not only a genuine commitment, but how we can translate that commitment into the assurances that the public will want. I hope that the Government will keep this matter under review. It is a sad fact that we have an organisation whose formal governance is under the Care Quality Commission. The chief accounting officer of Healthwatch England will not be Anna Bradley; it will be the Care Quality Commission. That poses some fundamental issues for the public.
Nevertheless, we have had a good debate. Everyone on this side of the House wishes Healthwatch England every success. We certainly wish its new chair every success. In the light of the debate, I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.
Justice and Security Bill [HL]
(11 years, 6 months ago)
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22:04 - Division on Amendment 45 - Ayes: 25 / Noes: 164 - Amendment 45 disagreed.
22:15 - Division on Amendment 47 - Ayes: 87 / Noes: 123 - Amendment 47 disagreed.
Lord Dubs
My Lords, in the earlier debates this evening, we discussed the CMPs at great length. As I said in passing, many of the arguments against or seeking to modify the CMPs could easily have ended with a move to abolish them altogether. So in one sense, the case has already been made, except that I have to go back over it briefly. We are talking about probably the most fundamental aspect of the Bill: whether or not we should have anything like CMPs on our statute book at all.
CMPs represent, as was said earlier, an absolutely fundamental change in our judicial system—more fundamental than, perhaps, was fully appreciated. For the things that will fall under CMPs, it is the end of our adversarial system, when judges will no longer have to hear both sides of an argument in order to come to conclusions. It has been said by people who are more expert than I that if you take away one side, then injustice is virtually guaranteed. Our adversarial system depends upon two sides: two parties. Without that, our system can hardly be assured of providing justice. Indeed, it may well not do that at all.
We are, after all, talking about 350 years of applying a principle and doing this in practice. If we depart from such a fundamental principle, we are damaging our basic freedoms. It means that citizens can no longer challenge the powers that be in court and be heard openly in doing so. It takes away one of the most fundamental rights of the British citizen: that they can go to court, that they can challenge authority and the powers that be. That will no longer be possible.
Indeed, this will tarnish the reputation of British justice. I understand that at least one newspaper in Russia has already commented—approvingly or not, I do not know—that these proposals will provide secret courts. Maybe the Russian paper thought that that would be a good idea, or was seeking to justify something in that country. Certainly, however, if other countries are already commenting before we have even passed the legislation, we ought to be pretty careful about it.
Of course, as has been said before, the system will work on whispers. The Minister or the Government will whisper to judges and the decisions will be made accordingly. Indeed, David Anderson QC, the independent reviewer of terrorism, who has often been quoted this evening, has said that these measures cannot be justified on security grounds. He had other reasons for justifying them in terms of cost or not paying people money, but, on security grounds, he did not think that they could be justified.
One of the concerns, which has been expressed quite frequently, is that if you give a Government powers, even on a limited basis, they will inevitably start using them more widely. This is no disrespect to any Minister—it is simply the way the system works. We can all visualise a civil servant saying to a Minister, “Well, Minister, you know you do have the powers to do this, and they’re on the statute book”, and the Minister will say “Hmm, I forgot that”, and then “Can I get away with it?”, or “Will Parliament notice?”, or words to that effect. This is how Governments of all colours work. We therefore have to be careful that when we give powers that are intended to be limited, they will inevitably be used more widely. The special advocates themselves—all those consulted in a survey, which was almost all of them—said, I believe, that this whole idea was “incurably unfair”.
I want to give one example. I have lots of them, but I do not want to trespass on the time of the House too much. I have a document here which was in fact produced by the Ministry of Defence in court, so I am not giving away any secrets, though it was headed “Confidential” before it went into court. It is produced by an organisation called the United Kingdom Detention Oversight Team, or UKDOT. Its job is to visit detainees in Afghanistan who are held by the Afghan authorities. I will quote from this document, because it came out in court because we did not have CMPs. If we had had CMPs, it is almost certain that none of this would have been known. The document is headed “Electric Flex-Redux”.
“The team arrived. On arrival we interrupted an interview (we conduct our interviews in one of the two interview rooms) which caused the interrogator and prisoner to vacate the room in haste to accommodate the UKDOT. In the interview room we found on the floor behind the interviewer’s desk the same UK socket electric flex the UKDOT had seen on a previous visit”—
It refers to the visit in September and then continues:
“We took a photograph of the flex (see photograph) and after a few minutes a guard appeared and, in an uncomfortable silence, removed the flex: no explanation was offered and, for fear of causing a scene, none was asked for”.
I have here a photograph of the flex lying on a carpet. There may be an innocent reason for this, and this is not an investigation of how this operated. The point is, this would never have come out if we had had the legislation that the Government wanted. Therefore, I argue that the CMPs would help cover up things that we ought to know about. It would not have come to light if the CMP had been in use at the time.
I will conclude with the following. I was a member of the JCHR some time ago, when we produced the first report on these proposals, although I was not a member when it produced a second report. However, both reports have a number of things in common, one of which is that they said that the Government had produced no evidence to substantiate the use of CMPs. In the end, that is the most crucial argument. We are stumbling along, setting a very dangerous precedent, as far as our judicial system is concerned, and we are doing it without the evidence that would justify such a dramatic and drastic change. All we have is the say-so that there are a number of cases in the pipeline—and I do not doubt the Minister’s good will—which might or might not come under this system, and which might or might not contain something important that would be revealed if we did not have CMPs. No evidence produced by Government could justify this major piece of legislation. I beg to move.
Lord Strasburger
My Lords, when I spoke to your Lordships’ House on Second Reading, I highlighted how the injection of closed material procedures into our civil justice system would infect it with unfairness and corrupt it with secrecy. Currently, the British people hold their courts in high regard, and respect their decisions. This is partly because our judges are seen as incorruptible, independent and wise, but the main reason is that court decisions are the result of a fair and transparent process. In an adversarial system such as the English one, the right to know and challenge the opposing case is not merely a feature of the system—it is the system.
Judges do not have the resources or power to investigate the merits of the case themselves. They depend upon the process in which both sides assemble and present their evidence, and then challenge each other’s cases. They then judge which case is the stronger in the light of those mutual challenges.
The Government have stated that,
“protecting the public should not come at the expense of our freedoms”.—[Official Report, 19/6/12; col. 1660.]
This seems to be precisely the cost that the Government wish to exact in the name of greater security. In fact, the Bill does very little to provide the public with greater security, while giving an unacceptably high level of protection to the security services from exposure of their alleged wrongdoings by the civil courts.
The Government would need to advance the most persuasive reasons to justify such serious damage to our civil justice system. They have completely failed to do so. That is the conclusion that the Joint Committee on Human Rights came to. It stated:
“We remain unpersuaded that the Government has demonstrated by reference to evidence that there exists a significant and growing number of civil cases in which a closed material procedure is ‘essential’”.
Listen to the clear opinion of the special advocates, the government-appointed lawyers who spend much of their time working at the coalface in this dark and murky part of our legal system. A memorandum about the Bill, which was signed by 59 out of 67 of them, states that,
“the Government would have to show the most compelling reasons to justify their introduction”,
referring to the CMPs. It went on to say,
“that no such reasons have been advanced; and that, in our view, none exists”.
The Government have completely ignored this highly authoritative condemnation of the need for the Bill. The only comments that I can recall are an admission by the former Lord Chancellor that,
“the evidence of the special advocates most unsettled me”.
But he has done nothing to correct his unsettled condition and I presume that he is still unsettled, as I am.
Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws
My Lords, I should say immediately that I am a member of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, and I supported the amendments that have just gone through this House. But in fact my position is quite a clear one; I do not approve of the closed material procedure at all. I was prepared to make concessions and vote for the amendments that have just gone through, but really I do not think that it is needed at all.
This country is just emerging from a very dark period in our history in which there is compelling evidence that in the aftermath of 9/11 our intelligence services departed from the standards that we would expect of them and became too closely connected with those who torture. There has been evidence of involvement in rendition, and allegations of being too closely proximate to places where torture has been taking place, providing questions and information to interrogators who have used horrifying procedures to extract answers from people who are detained. Unfortunately, our desire to be a supportive ally to the United States of America often led us into activities that are unacceptable but should not have been covered up by secrecy—and nor should they be in future. It is important for the good standing of our country in the world, but also for the standards that we normally set ourselves, that that history is placed before the public, and that we know that it happened so that it cannot happen again.
I accept that there are matters of national security that should not be in the public domain, but national security cannot be used to cover up conduct that is criminal and which debases our standing in the world. Over many years of practice in the courts I have done many cases involving national security, and I am sensitive to the issues involved. The prohibition of torture is one of the few absolutes in the law of human rights. The United States of America forgot that in the Bush era, despite being a signatory to the conventions, as indeed we are. It insisted on calling its methods, “enhanced interrogation procedures”—anything more than waterboarding being outsourced to other countries that were not quite as squeamish.
I support the amendment because the flag of national security is too often a flag of convenience to prevent shameful or embarrassing conduct being exposed. We have well established procedures in our courts and our system to deal with issues that need the cover of secrecy. I have been involved in many cases where PII has been used, where witnesses appear behind screens, or where there is non-disclosure of names or anything that could be identifying material. There are methods and ways in which material that is sensitive to national security can be received without putting our security in jeopardy or, indeed, not received at all.
Let us be clear. This piece of legislation arises at the behest of the United States of America, and we should not behave like a lapdog. One of the reasons is because the USA is also unhappy about being revealed as having participated in many of these shameful activities. However, this legislation has arisen in particular because of the exposure of the terrible facts in the case of Binyam Mohamed. I keep hearing people saying, “But of course these were people suspected of terrorism”. I heard the young American colonel who came to this country who did not choose to represent Binyam Mohamed, but eventually, when it was said that there had to be representation of people in Guantanamo Bay, she acted for him. I heard her presenting to a gathering of lawyers evidence of the extent to which he had been tortured and rendered from Pakistan to north Africa, and eventually to Guantanamo, where his genitals were subjected to insult and attack, and where he was tortured. There is no doubt that he experienced terrible events. It does not matter whether you are talking about someone who is a suspect of terrorism or not; such conduct is unacceptable.
Torture is one of the most egregious of crimes and we are trying to stamp it out in the world. That will be done only if we set ourselves the highest standards, take the lead in doing that and do not succumb to the entreaties of even our closest ally to enter into court processes that might make it more difficult for people who want redress for any role that we might have played in their torture. When they seek redress and come to our courts, they should be able to expect not to be spurned by the courts, which is, in the end, what this piece of legislation will allow to happen.
I remind this House that not long ago in Libya, papers were found after the events in that country and its liberation from Gaddafi, which disclosed that we, Britain, had played a part in the rendition of a man who now sits in government in Libya—a man who was an opponent of Gaddafi. However, at the request of Gaddafi, we had participated in his rendition back to that country.
I want also to raise another issue that is of profound moral and ethical importance to us if we are to care about such issues—the use of drones. There is evidence that our intelligence services are providing locational intelligence to the Americans in order that a CIA operative, sitting in Oregon, can direct a drone even into Pakistan, and sometimes find that large numbers of civilians, including children, are at the receiving end of the bombing. It may have the success of taking out people considered to be enemies, but it has the horrifying additional outcome of killing innocent people.
The closed material procedure will make it impossible for us to reach into these dark parts of conduct that may be taking place in our name. It would be shameful to allow this to go through our House without calling it to account. It is not a piece of legislation to which we should put our names. I regret that the Labour Benches are empty. Perhaps it is because a lot of this might have happened on a Labour Government’s watch.
Lord Lester of Herne Hill
The noble Baroness gave the example of drones. Could she explain how anything in the Bill would impact on a claimant in the context of drones?
Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws
There is a case going through the courts. A British resident called Noor Khan is seeking a judicial review. He wants a declaration of unlawfulness made because his father—a civilian, not a terrorist—was killed in northern Waziristan in an American drone attack. This was not in the conflict area of Afghanistan but in Pakistan, and the victim was a civilian casualty. I am told that a number of cases that concern people are linked to the use of drones in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere. People in Britain will call into question certain legalities because our domestic law covers the behaviour of people who are not in a war zone, and who therefore are subject to domestic law. The noble Lord, Lord Lester, will know that that does not mean that international humanitarian law gives them any protection.
Lord Lester of Herne Hill
I am sorry to press the noble Baroness, but I still do not understand what she is saying. It must be my fault. I would like to know how, in a judicial review of that kind about drone policy, what is in the Bill will change the matter in a way that will not allow the applicant for judicial review to secure justice. How will the process be different from what we have now? That is what I am trying to understand.
Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws
I am interested to hear the noble Lord, Lord Lester, the great human rights lawyer, defending secret processes of this kind. There is no doubt that applications will be made for closed material proceedings in those sorts of cases because the state will not want to divulge the circumstances in which locational intelligence was given. What we as members of the public would want to know would be whether we are playing the role of providing that kind of intelligence, which may in turn lead to the deaths of many civilians, particularly in places that are not covered by war.
I call upon the moral impulses of the House. Do noble Lords think that this is a proper way of dealing with activities that may be covered by national security, when national security is being used as an excuse to cover unacceptable behaviour? It may mean that we will never be able to find out the truth about rendition and the use of torture, and about any role that British operatives played. That would be a very unhappy state of affairs, and a departure from a very proud part of our common-law history and principles. It is a source of regret that so many people are prepared to go down this road.
Lord Reid of Cardowan
My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness. I am sorry to start by correcting her, but the Labour Benches are not empty, nor bereft of any representative of the previous Government. As a former Home Secretary, I am one such representative. Unfortunately, the other Home Secretaries—Mr Clarke, Mr Straw, Mr Blunkett and Ms Smith—cannot be here because they are not Members of this House, which may account for their absence.
I may be a lone voice among the speakers, who all seem to have come from the Joint Committee on Human Rights, but I will say two things. First, on the moral question, I deprecate torture as much as anyone in this House. I deprecate it in the case of that have been mentioned. I also deprecate it in the case of the 62 British citizens who were tortured by being burnt to death in the Twin Towers and the 50-odd British citizens who were tortured to death by being blown up in the subway and on the buses in London. They had human rights as well, and the primary human right is the right to life. There is a moral obligation on government to take that into consideration.
I find that one of the astonishing things about these debates is that there is never any context about the nature of national security. It is paraded camouflaged in words such as murky, corrupt, and lapdog—the disparaging avalanche of comments against our security services. Politicians can take it. We are used to it from the Opposition, from people outside and from some of our errant Back-Benchers, but the intelligence services do not deserve that. Were it not for them, I can tell you, thousands of British citizens would have had their basic human right of life removed from them. In one incident in August 2006, 2,500 people would have been blown out of the skies over the Atlantic were it not for our intelligence services and, yes, their colleagues in the American intelligence services.
So let me just say a word to balance the quite proper legal points that have been made about national security. We have come through a dark time. I regret to say that we still live in a dark time, not just here but throughout the world—anyone who thinks that areas of Pakistan are not a conflict zone does not begin to understand that. There are two elements to the threat to the British people, as there always are in any threat. The first is intention and the second is capability. The real question that we should be asking is not whether this proposal arrives from the Government because they are corrupt, because they have been seduced by civil servants or because they are lapdogs of the Americans. We should be asking what particular set of circumstances regarding the threat to national security brings a measure like this on to the agenda. We should then analyse the two elements of threat: intention and capability. Let me to say a word on both. The intention of those who wish to inflict terrorism on the citizens of this country is now unconstrained. It is not limited, as it was with the IRA in terms of tactical questions. It is not limited by their concern for what the public might think. It is not limited in terms of the numbers that they wish to kill. Anyone who tried to kill 10,000 people in the Twin Towers would be happy to kill 10 million people. Indeed, not only are they not constrained in their intent by politics or ideology, they are driven in their ideological premise towards a massive massacre of people.
That on its own would be bad enough to weigh in the minds of today's Home Secretaries if it were not for the fact that the other element of threat, which is the ability to carry out the intent, is now unfortunately unconstrained as well. Those in the past who had a genocidal intent, such as the Nazis, were constrained by the technical ability to achieve their intention—in the Nazis case either by carbon monoxide or Zyklon B canisters. Biological, chemical and radiological weapons now mean that we live in a world where unconstrained intent to do damage is allied with the potential for unconstrained capability. That is the burden that sits on the shoulders of government Ministers nowadays, not whether they will fall out with the Americans or anyone else. It is in that context that we have to consider the unique circumstances that we have never had to face before because the means of mass destruction have not been available to small groups of non-state actors and, by and large, non-state actors have not had an unconstrained intent to murder in a wholesale fashion. It is those circumstances that make the protection of intelligence all the more important. Had it not been for that exchange of intelligence—in one case, across 29 countries—we would not have achieved the protection of our British citizens and their fundamental right to life.
Lord Thomas of Gresford
I am sure the noble Lord is not suggesting that those of us who oppose these clauses are in favour of terrorism. He must appreciate that we are not concerned with proposals that will make security information available to the public. All we are concerned about is, what is the response to an action that is brought by a claimant against the security services or any other government department? I appreciate the noble Lord’s sincerity but is he not a little off the point?
Lord Reid of Cardowan
There are three points there. First, of course I was not suggesting that there was any intent on the part of the noble Lord. However, I was explaining that there is a law of unintended consequences. You do not need an intention to make it easier for terrorists in order to embark on a course of action that ends up assisting in that. The second point relates to the Government’s response. As I understand it, the Government are saying that we currently have a system that does not give us justice because the requirement to protect national security information is such that they cannot take it to court, and therefore, whether or not it is just, someone is in receipt of benefits.
Lord Reid of Cardowan
Let me finish with the questions that I have been asked and then I will happily come back to the noble Lord.
The third question is whether I am off the point. I do not see how this issue can be discussed without a deeper understanding of the security—I truly do not—and yet in this Chamber I hear speech after speech about law but no one sets out the circumstances in which we have to face these threats. We might as well try to exist in a vacuum. Of course we can turn our eyes and act blind to the world outside but we have at least to try and understand the circumstances that give rise to what the Government are doing, or alternatively we will be forced to say that they are either mad, bad, corrupt with power, lapdogs, murky, conspirators or acting at the behest of evil civil servants.
Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws
The noble Lord is presenting a parody of the argument that I have made, and I refute it. I understand—as does everyone in this House because we have debated it so often—the incredible context of having to deal with terrorism. Sensibly, however, most of us accept that you do not sacrifice the high standards of legal procedure that we have developed in this country to the terrorists. When the British state does that, it descends to the level of the people who bomb, kill and do all the things that the noble Lord has described so powerfully. If there is any question that our security services have in any way fallen from grace—and no one is suggesting that they have tortured—in the standards that we expect and which they normally set store by themselves, it is important that that should be explored so that we can put right any of the wrongs that have taken place. That is the issue.
Lord Reid of Cardowan
Perhaps I may respond and then I will give way to the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller. I was not trying to parody or even respond to the argument of the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, with the exception of her incorrect statement that there is no one from Labour here and her reference to Pakistan. The rest of it actually applied to the generality of the arguments that I have heard since I came in. I have made my position known on torture, but I have also made my position known on the obligations of government to protect the rights of the British citizen, including the basic one of the right to life.
Baroness Manningham-Buller
The noble Lord, Lord Strasburger, should speak first.
Lord Strasburger
Can the noble Lord tell the House about a single occasion when a British court has released into the public domain any information that has been detrimental to the country’s national security? Can he name a single one?
Lord Reid of Cardowan
That is rather a Catch-22 question, is it not? The reason they have not is that they have settled out of court. That is the point that we are trying to make. The noble Lord is asking for evidence that cannot be adduced. The very purpose of bringing forward this provision is precisely to meet a situation which has arisen because they cannot.
Lord Reid of Cardowan
The explanation for a no is always more substantial than a straight no.
Baroness Manningham-Buller
My Lords, I feel I have to rise to speak because of the presumption of guilt suggested by some people on the part of my organisation in the past. I should say first that torture is a crime in our law and in international law. It is morally wrong, ethically wrong and it is never justified—even when, as the Americans would claim, you get the truth from it. That is irrelevant. It is not what a civilised country does and it is illegal. For my colleagues to be accused of it is to accuse us of a crime.
I can now talk about the Binyam Mohamed case. We interviewed him in Pakistan in 2002, where he was in American custody. Later that year we sent questions to the Americans to put to him. There were two things that we did not know in 2002. We did not know that our closest intelligence ally was resorting to waterboarding; that is, torturing people. We did not know that in 2002. Additionally, we did not know that Binyam Mohamed had been rendited by the Americans to Morocco. Had we known that, we would have been more careful about the questions we had put, as I said to the parliamentary committee in 2006 and as it was recorded in its report. Certainly we regretted that.
Because torture is a crime, the person who interviewed Binyam Mohamed in Pakistan was extensively investigated by the police. A report went to the Crown Prosecution Service and it was decided that there was no case to answer. If any of my colleagues had been involved in criminality, the criminal courts—we are not talking about civil proceedings here—the police and the Crown Prosecution Service would have been involved. We are absolutely subject to the criminal law, and so we should be. But I find it pretty difficult to accept a presumption of guilt without it being proved in a court.
I shall put a caveat on that, picking up the comment of the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy. I cannot talk about matters to do with Libya because those are the subject of current civil proceedings, as I understand it, and criminal investigations. It would be inappropriate for me to comment at this stage.
Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws
I must ask the noble Baroness if she was listening when I made my speech. I made it very clear that there was no suggestion of British officers being directly involved in torture. I spelt out clearly and precisely what the noble Baroness has just described—being in places where people were being detained, providing questions and information that was ultimately used in interrogations where horrifying procedures were used. We know that happened in Binyam Mohamed’s case, and I made the suggestion that there was compelling evidence that it had happened in other cases. I would ask this question of the noble Baroness: does she accept that Britain played any role at all in rendition?
Baroness Manningham-Buller
Because it relates to the Libyan thing, I cannot answer the question. It is the subject of criminal investigations.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
My Lords, perhaps I may remind the House that the Companion sets out that, at Report stage, a speaker other than the mover of an amendment, a Minister or the noble Lord in charge of the Bill can speak twice only if granted the leave of the House, and then to explain a material point of his own speech that may have been misunderstood or misquoted.
Lord Reid of Cardowan
I will give way but I was not quite finished. I have heard of being overtaken by events but I think that I was overtaken by Baronesses in the middle of my speech. I did give way to the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller.
I have said what I wanted to say, which was mainly to try to give to the debate a balance which I think is, perhaps wrongly, missing. We are discussing a justice and security Bill generally, and the actual analysis of the security elements of that seemed to be somewhat missing from our deliberations, both in this group of amendments and previously.
Lord Lester of Herne Hill
I hope the fact that, with Roy Jenkins, I helped produce the first anti-terrorism Bill, which became the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act 1974, illustrates that I take national security at least as seriously as the noble Lord, Lord Reid—if not perhaps quite as seriously, because no one could take it as seriously as he does.
Neither the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, nor my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford were present when I explained earlier today that the origin of the closed material procedure, which they both deplore, comes from suggestions made by civil society—that is to say organisations such as Justice, Liberty, the AIRE Centre and Amnesty International—both in the Chahal case and later, through me, in the Tinnelly case. They both deplore the procedure as criminal lawyers, and I quite understand that as a criminal lawyer you regard everything in terms of the context of criminal trials and that the CMP is seen to be totally incompatible with their concept of justice. I understand and respect that. However, they have to face the fact that the procedure came in because the Strasbourg court could not find any other way of weighing the needs of national security with the interests of justice. It had regard to the Canadian procedure, because that is what Liberty, Justice and the AIRE Centre—and perhaps also Amnesty, although it denies it—suggested to the Strasbourg court.
When Lord Williams of Mostyn was responsible for the SIAC Bill in 1997 I was one of those who spoke in favour, because although it is imperfect justice, I could not think of a better way of weighing the needs of national security against the interests of justice. I believe that it has worked pretty well in the context of SIAC, and we, as the Joint Committee on Human Rights, have recommended that SIAC’s jurisdiction be extended. I do not think that the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, as a party to the report, will disagree with that. I do not think that she has so far.
The short answer to the supporters of this amendment is that we have today incorporated into Clauses 6 and 7 almost all the safeguards that the Joint Committee on Human Rights advocated. We did so in order to strike a better balance between fairness and national security. If the supporters of this amendment succeed, they would remove Clauses 6 and Clause 7 altogether. That would mean that the Bill would go to the House of Commons with no safeguards. The Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary, the Home Secretary and others would have little difficulty in ridiculing what we had done. They would find that, having spent the period before the dinner hour putting in the safeguards, we had spent the period after it removing them. I can be accused of being over-logical, but it seems to me that to walk upon your head is a very strange thing to do. It makes me realise the wisdom of the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, when he once rebuked me for making a serious point after the dinner hour. I now realise that all the serious points were made before the dinner hour and what we now have is a kind of tragic comedy. I very much hope that we do not as a House approve amendments that will have the effect of undoing all that we have been doing since 3.30 pm.
Lord Macdonald of River Glaven
I am going to be fairly brief. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Reid, will accept that I have an abiding interest in national security. I was Director of Public Prosecutions and chief prosecutor for some of the period that he was Home Secretary, and during the worst of those years that he has been referring to, between 2003 and 2008. We had the London bombings on 7 July, the attempted bombings on 21 July, the airline plot, the dirty bomb plot, the fertiliser plot, and a conspiracy to plant bombs in the Bluewater shopping centre—deliberately at half term, so that there would be women and children present.
I understand all those issues. I should like to say to the noble Baroness that my presumption is that members of the security services do not go to work to commit crimes and that they work tirelessly in the national interest and to protect public safety. That is my view about national security and about the security services. I think that the debate that we are having here is slightly different from that and I do not believe that anything that is proposed in this amendment would damage national security in any way or needs to be in effect an insult to members of the security services. It is a question about the sort of legal system that we want, and therefore questions of law are bound to intrude. But I accept the national security context.
Baroness Manningham-Buller
I am not insulted, I just feel that when the suggestion is that we have committed serious crime, I need to retaliate to that.
Lord Macdonald of River Glaven
I understand that.
What I want to do is to return, I am afraid, to the legal context. I will be fairly brief. I want to address three questions in the context of closed material procedures: one is public confidence; one is fairness; and I think the most important one is the delivery of justice, as this has been a large part of the Government’s argument. To what extent can closed material procedures deliver justice where no justice is presently available?
The first issue is public confidence. How is public confidence in the justice system achieved? My own view is essentially that it is won through securing the trust of the public. This is achieved in a number of ways, particularly I think through openness and—that overused word—transparency, especially in terms of the judgments given. It is particularly important that judgments in cases are given in public and so the judgment itself is open to public scrutiny. If a judgment is not open to public scrutiny, that judgment will struggle to win the trust of the public. Why should the public believe that something is so simply because a judge says that it is so? The ability to scrutinise a judgment is absolutely critical.
Not least of the damaging effects that closed material procedures may have—I think will have—will be to damage public confidence in our judiciary. Who is to trust a judgment against him made upon the basis of material that he has never seen? What litigant would trust the judge who makes the judgment based upon material that that litigant has never seen? The question of public confidence is not simply a question of public confidence in the system, it is a question of public confidence in perhaps the most important people who populate the system, the judges.
This brings me to my second point, fairness. I think that everyone accepts, as they must, that closed material procedures are unfair. In one profound sense, and I do not need to labour this point, they are not fair because they are not balanced. As the noble Lords have been told, special advocates are very eminent lawyers instructed by the Government to secure fairness in these proceedings. It is well known that the special advocates themselves oppose the creation of closed material procedures precisely on the grounds that they believe that the process is unfair. I remind the noble Lords again of something that the noble Lord, Lord Strasburger, said. These special advocates, who have been in all these cases, have said that they have not seen a single case in which the issues could not properly be litigated safely using PII and other ancillary procedures, securing justice without revealing the slightest hint of national security secrets.
The final and perhaps most important point of all—it has been made persuasively by the noble Lord, Lord Lester, and others—is the delivery of justice. This has been a common theme in this debate, including contributions from very distinguished former judges. The argument is that closed material procedures will provide some justice where none is presently available, in the absence of material that would otherwise be excluded under PII; in other words, the courts will now be able to consider material that they could not consider before, and that is a better form of justice.
Lord Judd
My Lords, the noble Lord has spoken very powerfully about the importance of public trust and how the amendments before us are emphasising the means by which that trust can be secured. But when we divert from the practices of justice as we have come to understand and appreciate them, we must do so only in the most extreme and exceptional circumstances, and there must be no opportunity for a drift towards this process becoming a matter of convenience. I may be overegging it slightly but that is a fear one must have in mind.
The noble Lord also spoke about the importance of public confidence in the law and the administration of the law. I want to take that argument a little further. My noble friend Lord Reid, in a very powerful intervention that I am sure we all took extremely seriously, underlined the danger of small numbers of people with modern technology and devices at their disposal.
That is why the whole case for maximum, transparent justice in the process of law is so important. Many of the issues behind the cases involved will be extremely controversial and elicit a lot of passion in particular sections of the community. If it can ever be argued or demonstrated that we are not applying a commitment to justice in the way it can be achieved, but are finding that because of the terrorist element we are deserting that position, that will play straight into the hands of the extremists who want to exploit frustration, alienation and the rest. We are giving ammunition to the enemy—if you like me to put it as bluntly as that—and I find that unforgivable. Why give ammunition to an extremist who is determined to undermine our society by failing to stand by the principles of what we know justice is about, unless it is a most exceptional, extreme case where special circumstances have to apply?
Lord Faulks
My Lords, the Justice and Security Bill demands justice and security. We have been quite rightly reminded by, among others, the noble Lord, Lord Reid, how important it is to consider security. In human rights terms, Article 2 of the convention places a responsibility on the Government to protect life and to take all steps appropriate to ensure that the human rights of citizens generally are protected, so that human rights are not just for the litigants involved in these proceedings but for all of us. However, justice is to be done by this Bill and there is undoubtedly a justice gap. I thought that, during Committee stage, we had moved towards a consensus that CMPs, although not a desirable option, were nevertheless a necessary evil in order that justice should be done.
Contrary to what my noble friend Lord Strasburger has said, the JCHR, of which I have the good fortune to be a member, acknowledged, relying in part on the evidence of David Anderson, that there were a limited number of cases in which justice could not be done in the current situation. That is why the Bill has been brought before your Lordships’ House. As to the possibility of justice being done under these provisions, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, who has experience of these things, said in Committee that the special advocates were underestimating their capacity to represent those clients. Nobody suggests that it is an optimal position, but my own experience of judges tells me that they customarily do everything they can to remedy any disadvantage that a litigant might have—and of course they will have a disadvantage in CMPs. The suggestion that the Government’s case will simply be accepted by a judge without challenge or question is wholly unwarranted. Within the Bill as it is at the moment, judges have considerable powers; now that these amendments have become part of it, they will have considerably more powers.
I therefore suggest that the Bill presents an opportunity for security and justice, as the name suggests. The amendment proposed will wreck that opportunity and justice will be denied.
Lord Thomas of Gresford
My Lords, I have had experience of a torture case, the Baha Mousa case, which involved the death of a hotel owner in British custody in Basra. Your Lordships will recall that there was a long trial in which what had happened in the stinking hellhole of a derelict guardhouse was investigated. Men had been held in stressed positions with their hands tied behind their backs and hoods over their heads, and Baha Mousa, after a night during which passing soldiers from other regiments were called in to have a pop at the prisoners in that position, died with some 90 injuries to his body. What happened as a result of that? There was the trial and then a long inquiry, chaired by Lord Justice Gage, which lasted more than two years. His report has brought significant publicity and changes to what goes on. The noble Lord, Lord Judd, was talking about transparency. There is something that was brought out into the open. I do not think that any commanding officer in the British Army will not have regard to the treatment of prisoners by troops under his command hereafter. That is what transparency and publicity do. I was very interested to hear the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, cite an interrogation that had taken place in Afghanistan more recently when, no doubt, proper safeguards for the prisoners were in place.
Reputational damage? Of course there was reputational damage to the soldiers, the officers, the regiment and the British Army, but that is the price that has to be paid to put things right. I am not particularly moved by the argument that settling cases causes reputational damage to the security services. Of the civil cases brought in this country, 95% are settled, often without any admission of liability. I have never heard it suggested that there is reputational damage from a settlement from such circumstances. Nor have I heard it suggested anywhere that because the security services have settled cases brought against them, they have suffered reputational damage in any meaningful sense. When one reads what happened in the Binyam Mohamed case, one feels that there should be more transparency about what happens within the security services. Perhaps then, the suspicions with which the noble Baroness is so concerned would go away.
Everything that can be said on the issue of principle has been said, even if not by me, so I do not propose to go back to that. I just want to raise one or two practical points. The first is this. A lot has been said about fairness to the security services—that it is not fair that they should settle. What about fairness to the claimant? Suppose, for example, that a claimant wishes to sue the security services for exposing him to torture or to unlawful rendition. Let us assume that his claim is entirely genuine. Let us not start with the assumption that one hears in certain quarters that of course he is lying. Let us assume that it is a genuine case. There is no legal aid. He cannot find a lawyer to act for him on a no-win, no-fee basis because it will be impossible for a lawyer to assess his chances of success. How can any lawyer take on a case when it is possible for the defendant to go behind the scenes, talk to the judge and disclose evidence which the claimant never sees? How can you take on a case on that basis?
Of course, the special advocate is allowed to see the secret evidence, but can he go back to find out whether there is any possibility of challenging that evidence? How can he go back to his client to talk to him? He is not permitted to under the system. He cannot take proper instructions and, as my noble friend said, use the ordinary method of ascertaining the truth in the British courts of justice for centuries: by cross-examination, by challenging and testing the evidence and the credibility of the person who is giving that evidence. It is just not possible, so nobody is going to take the case on. That is the first problem to get through. We talk as if practical considerations such as that do not count. The claimant never gets his case going, or if he does he loses and never knows why.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I begin by paying tribute to my noble friend Lord Dubs, who has spent a lifetime in the indefatigable support of human and civil rights. I certainly listened very carefully to what he said today.
I confess to some disappointment that during this debate we have heard little evidence of the Deputy Prime Minister’s references to sympathy for the report of the Joint Committee on Human Rights and still less of the amendments that he said the Government would sympathetically consider. I do not know at what stage, if at all, this House will have an opportunity of considering such amendments. We have Third Reading next week, and there is no indication from the Minister that that would be an occasion when such amendments might come forward.
However, I would welcome the recognition of reality on the part of the Government Benches on three of the amendments that were moved earlier this evening. If those amendments had not been carried, we on the Opposition Benches would have voted for the amendment moved by my noble friend and supported by a number of your Lordships tonight, but we conclude that it would be better to send to the House of Commons the considered views and the amendments passed by very large majorities in this House than to send the Bill without those amendments, and simply leaving it that the provisions that caused most of us considerable anxiety were deleted from the Bill. In my judgment, and that of many of us in this House, that would leave us in possibly the worst of all possible worlds.
In terms of the practical politics of the situation, we might conceivably end up with a worse Bill returning to us than the one that, if this amendment is rejected, would be leaving us. For that reason, I am inviting my colleagues on these Benches not to support the amendment, but equally not to vote with the Government against it. My recommendation to my colleagues is that we should not vote on this amendment but should abstain. We look forward to the amendments that the Deputy Prime Minister spoke of yesterday which, presumably, would go further than those which this House approved with such substantial majorities this afternoon and this evening.
The Advocate-General for Scotland (Lord Wallace of Tankerness)
My Lords, this has clearly been an important debate with passions expressed on both sides of the argument. Following the votes that we have already had —on amendments which my right honourable friend the Deputy Prime Minister was talking about; the House has had an opportunity to consider the amendments emanating from the JCHR report—the Bill looks very different from that which arrived on Report. The CMP process has now altered with the wishes already expressed by this House. I therefore urge noble Lords not to remove these clauses altogether after such time has been taken to scrutinise and amend them. My noble friend Lord Lester summed it up very well: there is no point in spending a long time before the Dinner Break putting these safeguards, as he described them, into the Bill, only to simply take them all out after the Dinner Break.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
This is the Bill as the House has now passed it. The House has accepted that CMPs are needed. The Government will and should properly reflect on the steer that this House has provided as the Bill moves to the other place. Crucially, we believe that closed material proceedings are absolutely necessary and are, indeed, a significant improvement on the current system.
I am not going to rehearse all the arguments that we have been through on a number of occasions. I will just pick up one or two points that were made in debate. The noble Lord, Lord Dubs, talked about a system of “whispers”. The closed part of the proceedings will not be a cosy chat between the judge and the government lawyers. The non-Government parties will be excluded from the proceedings, as will members of the public, but the interests of the excluded parties will be represented by special advocates, about which I will say a word in a moment. In other words, the closed proceedings will look much like open proceedings in that they will have counsel for the Government and counsel who are special advocates representing the interests of the excluded party and making submissions to the judge.
I understand the concerns that are expressed about the special advocate, but it is also fair to say that the special advocates themselves sometimes underplay their own abilities. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, said that he has read the transcripts in the case of M v Secretary of State for the Home Department, and had been impressed with the openness and fairness with which the issues in closed session were dealt with by those who were responsible for the evidence in that case before the SAIC. He went on to say that while the procedures that the SAIC adopts are not ideal—no one is pretending that this is a perfection of justice or making that argument—
“it is possible by using special advocates to ensure that those detained can achieve justice and it is wrong therefore to undervalue the SIAC appeal process”.
The noble Lord, Lord Dubs, also referred to what he said were “cover ups”. This was echoed by a number of contributors to the debate. This completely misunderstands the whole purpose of closed-material proceedings. I share the view of those who have expressed in these debates that they abhor torture. The Government abhor torture. The Government do not condone it, and nor do they seek others to conduct torture on their part.
My noble friend Lord Thomas said that we should assume a case where there has been malfeasance on the part of someone acting on behalf of the British Government. The point is that if there were such as case, it is important that these issues are properly considered and investigated. The point under the present situation, with public interest immunity certificates, is that if public interest immunity is successfully asserted, none of that evidence will actually be before a judge. It is important that that evidence should be before a judge. It is important that there is fairness for the claimant, and there is not necessarily fairness for the claimant if the claimant has to settle because important information cannot be considered in open court and we have not allowed them the opportunity of closed material proceedings. While there may be some satisfaction in getting a financial settlement, it might not be a satisfaction if you have indeed been wronged and do not have a court judgment to confirm that. It is not only the security services, on which we have perhaps focused our debates, for which the present system can act unfairly. It is unfair, too, on someone with a just claim who cannot get it properly vindicated in the courts because evidence cannot be brought before them. That makes the point that that is also, as has been said, unfair to those who believe that they have a proper defence and cannot deploy it. In our first group of amendments today the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, indicated that that has the effect of lowering morale in cases where people believe that they have done no wrong and they have a proper defence but cannot deploy it.
Lord Dubs
My Lords, we have been over these issues a number of times this evening, so I shall confine myself to making some very brief points. Of course, everyone is against torture. It is abhorrent and criminal. We are all opposed to terrorism and will do nothing to weaken the security of our country. Had I not left my London residence late and had left at the usual time, I would have been going through Edgware Road on the day of the bombings. I therefore felt fairly close to that, although I was a quarter of a mile away at the time. I certainly would do nothing that would weaken our safety and security.
I do not think that there are widespread cover-ups in our society but there have been a number. We have had a number of inquiries which were intended to reveal to people what actually happened when there had been a suspicion of a cover-up and what happened when there had been a cover-up. Hillsborough is only one example and there are several. The argument is not so much that we are hiding cover-ups but that we should be open and transparent. People should see that there are no cover-ups. I fear that the CMP will make people feel suspicious about the integrity of our justice system.
I would like to use many arguments to rebut what the Minister said but the hour is late. I wish to test the opinion of the House.
Lord Pannick
Lord Pannick
My Lords, we debated the amendment much earlier this evening. It relates to Clause 7 and is the equivalent to Amendment 36 in Clause 6, which was an amendment that your Lordships voted on and approved. I therefore beg to move.
Lord Beecham
“Extent
(1) The powers under sections 6 to 11 of this Act expire at the end of the period of 5 years beginning with the day on which this Act is passed.
(2) The Secretary of State must before the end of the period of 5 years propose to Parliament that a Parliamentary select committee be established to conduct a review.”
Lord Beecham
My Lords, sunset clauses are never popular with governments and I suspect not too popular with Members of the House at this time of night either. I will accordingly not detain the House for long on this, and I do not intend to put the amendment to the vote. However, I ask the Government seriously to consider it given the magnitude of the change under whatever form this Bill now takes. Whether it rests with the amendments agreed today by your Lordships’ House or it comes back to us from the House of Commons in a somewhat different form, it is in any view still a major change in our system of justice. It is one that should be monitored as it takes effect over a period.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, for moving the amendment, which I say at the outset we are not in a position to accept. However, let me give an indication as to why sunset clauses are not necessarily appropriate here. Apart from anything else, I am trying to get my head around the idea of a sunset clause for litigation which could go over a period of time and it is difficult to think that you might have to sunset something. A case might start under a particular form of procedure and, if the sunset clause was effective, that procedure could be reverted in midstream.
There are also other considerations because this goes beyond what is proposed for the closed material proceedings we have been discussing. In relation to the case of Norwich Pharmacal, one of the primary concerns we are seeking to address is how we provide reassurance to those who give us important intelligence information so that we can protect information shared with us in confidence. A time-limited protection would undermine any reassurance we were able to give.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, the Minister should recognise that the amendment relates only to Clauses 6 to 11.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
I apologise. Other amendments are grouped with it which I suspect have not been spoken to. None the less, the point I was making earlier applies to Clauses 6 to 11. If there was a procedure in train and the provisions were to sunset, I am not sure how that would rest.
However, I may be able to give some reassurance. The Constitution Committee did not recommend a sunset clause but said that the House may wish to consider the Bill being independently reviewed five years after it comes into force. Of course, Bills are subject to review normally some three to five years after Royal Assent, and it might be appropriate to do that should the Select Committee with responsibility decide that it wished to conduct a fuller post-legislative inquiry into the Act.
I recognise what the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, has said and it is self-evident from the debates that we have had that this is a material change. However, it is right and proper that we should leave it to the Select Committee to decide the form that the independent post-legislative scrutiny should take. That is a proper way in which this matter might be addressed.
Lord Beecham
I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. I welcome the noble and learned Lord’s indication that some kind of Select Committee procedure might be adopted for this purpose.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
“Use of intercept evidence in employment cases involving national security
(1) Section 18 of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (exclusion of intercepted communications etc. from legal proceedings: exceptions) is amended as follows.
(2) In subsection (1), after paragraph (d) insert—
“(dza) any proceedings before an employment tribunal, or (in Northern Ireland) an industrial tribunal, where the applicant or the applicant’s representatives are excluded for all or part of the proceedings pursuant to—(i) a direction to the tribunal by virtue of section 10(5)(b) or (c) of the Employment Tribunals Act 1996 or (as the case may be) Article 12(5)(b) or (c) of the Industrial Tribunals (Northern Ireland) Order 1996 (S.I. 1996/1921 (N.I. 18)) (exclusion from Crown employment proceedings by direction of Minister in interests of national security), or(ii) a determination of the tribunal by virtue of section 10(6) of that Act or (as the case may be) Article 12(6) of that Order (determination by tribunal in interests of national security),or any proceedings arising out of such proceedings;(dzb) any proceedings on an appeal under Article 80(2) of the Fair Employment and Treatment (Northern Ireland) Order 1998 (S.I. 1998/3162 (N.I. 21)) where—(i) the appeal relates to a claim of discrimination in contravention of Part 3 of that Order (employment cases) and to a certificate of the Secretary of State that the act concerned was justified for the purpose of safeguarding national security, and(ii) a party to the appeal or the party’s representatives are excluded for all or part of the proceedings by virtue of section 91(4)(b) of the Northern Ireland Act 1998, or any proceedings arising out of such proceedings;”.(3) In subsection (2)—
(a) in the opening words, for “(db)” substitute “(dza)”, (b) after “anything—” insert—“(zza) in the case of proceedings falling within paragraph (dza), to—(i) the person who is or was the applicant in the proceedings before the employment or industrial tribunal, or(ii) any person who for the purposes of proceedings so falling (but otherwise than by virtue of appointment as a special advocate) represents that person;(zzb) in the case of proceedings falling within paragraph (dzb), to—(i) any person who is or was excluded from all or part of the proceedings on appeal under Article 80(2) of the Fair Employment and Treatment (Northern Ireland) Order 1998, or(ii) any person who for the purposes of proceedings so falling (but otherwise than by virtue of appointment as a special advocate) represents that person;”.”
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My Lords, I have a speaking note for this amendment and I will not take the risk of moving it formally because it adds a new clause to the Bill. I hope noble Lords will forgive me if I explain this quite lengthy and complex clause, although it is simple enough in its intention. It would allow intercept material to be adduced in closed material procedures in national security cases in employment tribunals.
Intercept material is excluded from legal proceedings under Section 17 of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, but an exception already applies in limited circumstances by virtue of Section 18 of that Act. The section lists those specialised proceedings, including the Special Immigration Appeals Commission and cases relating to terrorism prevention and investigation measures proceedings, where intercept material can be used in the closed part of the proceedings. It is the Government’s objective to find a practical way to allow the use of intercept evidence in court. Section 18 does not currently include employment tribunals, and the amendment seeks to change this. The change would enhance the effectiveness and fairness of employment tribunals, it would be consistent with the objectives of this Bill and wider government policy, and it will help protect national security. Perhaps I may take these issues in turn.
The first is consistency with the Bill and its effectiveness. By allowing intercept material to be adduced in a limited number of cases where such material may be available, the amendment would enable employers to defend claims, for example, for unfair dismissal with a broader set of evidence than is currently available. The ability to adduce intercept material in CMPs is consistent with the wider provisions of this Bill, in particular paragraph 9 of Schedule 2, which includes a provision for an amendment to Section 18 of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act to allow for intercept material to be admitted in any Clause 6 proceedings. This further amendment would bring employment tribunals in line with the small number of specialised civil proceedings in which the disclosure of intercept product is already permissible.
Perhaps I can now address the question of operational necessity. This amendment does not represent an academic exercise. There will be cases before employment tribunals where an employer is not properly equipped to defend its actions as it is unable to adduce the full breadth of material available. For example, there will be cases where the Government are defending a claim for unfair dismissal following the removal of a former employee’s vetting clearance. Currently, if the vetting is based on intercept material, it would not be possible to adduce that material in support of the vetting decision. The national security vetting system is designed to provide an assurance that those with access to sensitive information do not pose a security risk. It is very important that an assessment of the risk is made on the basis of all the relevant material, regardless of the source.
Where a decision is made to withdraw vetting clearance it is important to the integrity of the system that the decision can be maintained and is capable of being defended from legal challenge. Where intercept product or intelligence based on intercept is integral to the decision, its unavailability in employment tribunal findings could result in employers wrongly losing their case and an adverse impact on the national vetting system. Furthermore, departments may become reluctant to rely on information provided by the security and intelligence agencies for fear of not being able to defend decisions taken. It is also important that those bringing proceedings in employment tribunals can be confident that the tribunal has access to all the information on which a decision was made so that decisions can be properly examined.
I believe that the widening of the number of settings for a very small number of important cases in which intercept material can be considered should be welcome. I hope that noble Lords will see fit to support this important amendment. I beg to move.
Lord Dubs
My Lords, I do not dissent from the Minister’s reasoning, and indeed am grateful to him for explaining the issue. However, he has opened the door to a much wider issue that I want to touch on but not debate, because the hour is too late and this is not the Bill on which to do it.
The Minister will be aware that many noble Lords, including those of us on the Joint Committee on Human Rights, have for a long time been arguing that intercept evidence should be permissible in criminal cases as a way of bringing people to justice who otherwise cannot be brought to justice and have to be dealt with in other, less sensible ways, such as control orders, TPIMs and things like that. If the Government are so anxious to justify the use of intercept evidence in these instances, I wonder why we cannot take a step further and consider very seriously the use of intercept evidence in criminal cases where we would have a proper system of justice and where people who are guilty of offences, or thought to be guilty, could actually be brought to trial as opposed to being dealt with in the way that they are. This is a bit of a thin end of the wedge, but it is important and I would like to feel that the Government will think hard about it.
On the Joint Committee on Human Rights, we were on two occasions able to meet civil servants dealing with this, who always said to us that they were looking at it but that it was difficult. I can see it is difficult, because it is hard enough in this case and even harder in criminal cases. Will the Government consider looking seriously into the use of intercept evidence in criminal cases now that they have this as a very useful precedent?
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, I will follow that by asking whether the Government are satisfied that the objections that they have told us there are to the use of intercept evidence in other cases do not apply in the case of employment tribunals. I have been listening to the introduction of this amendment, wondering whether I am in favour of it because I am in favour of the use of intercept evidence or against it because, presumably, the intercept evidence could be treated as closed material. I am rather torn on this, but the question that the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, raises is a very important one.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I endorse my noble friend’s remarks. I touched on a similar point during Second Reading and I think other Members of your Lordships’ House have also expressed an interest in this matter. We obviously do not expect the Minister to confirm that the principle will be adopted forthwith, but it would be helpful if an indication could be given as to when the Government might respond to the interest in this that has been evident in various of our debates as this Bill has made progress through the House.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I am grateful to noble Lords for extending the scope of our debate somewhat, outside the frame of the particular Bill that we are dealing with. It raises some very interesting issues and both the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, and my noble friend Lady Hamwee got to the nub of the issue. I take the advice of the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, to perhaps not make a commitment on this issue. However, I can describe the parameters, because Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, the right to a fair trial, differs between civil and criminal proceedings. In particular, the exacting standards imposed by the criminal limb of Article 6, which is at the heart of the legal difficulties for a workable IAE regime, do not apply in the context of civil proceedings.
Furthermore, the nature of CMPs—which may well be involved of course, because of the nature of the intelligence—means that legitimate national security interests, such as the need to protect sensitive techniques or capabilities, can be more certainly protected than in criminal proceedings. I think all noble Lords would understand that. The proposals in the Bill demonstrate our commitment to making progress wherever it is possible. We continue to engage with the cross-party advisory group of privy counsellors in this work.
“( ) Section (Application for public interest immunity) applies in disclosure proceedings to which this section applies.”
Lord Dubs
I will be very brief. We now come to the Norwich Pharmacal issues: applications for public interest immunity. In this group there are two points to which I would like to draw the attention of the House. First, there is subsection (4) in Amendment 65, where we would exempt from open disclosure any matters that are the basis of,
“any agreement with foreign intelligence services that intelligence is shared confidentially and cannot be disclosed without the consent of the intelligence service which provided the intelligence”.
That is accepted in this amendment.
However, the amendment really seeks to say that there are certain domestic and international wrongs that should not be kept quiet or confidential. They are listed. They are matters of the utmost seriousness: genocide; murder; torture; slavery; cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment; child abuse; or,
“serious breaches of the Geneva Conventions”.
It is my contention that these matters are so serious that they ought not to be protected with confidentiality under the Norwich Pharmacal procedures, but that they should be made open and publicly known. If they are to be made open and publicly known, of course that fact in itself will possibly deter people from being involved in such criminal activities. I think that this is a worthwhile amendment. I beg to move.
Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws
I, too, feel strongly that this is an issue of some importance and I thank my noble friend Lord Dubs for raising it. I know that it is too late an hour for us to consider voting but, when these matters are taken up in the other place, I would really like this to be considered. In any consideration, one wants a judge to recognise that there are some things that basically cannot be covered even by national security or by any control principle that operates between intelligence services.
If we were to discover that there had been crimes of such an egregious nature, such as genocide, murder, torture, slavery, and all the most horrifying of crimes that we can document, and that those crimes would be covered by some kind of secrecy, that would be a source of great shame to us. That must be something that is taken into consideration when looking at ways of introducing new procedures into our courts. In the end, any consideration of such serious human rights abuses has to trump even issues of national security.
Baroness Williams of Crosby
I also support this important amendment. We know that some countries that are considered to be relatively close allies of the United Kingdom have human rights records that are indescribably bad. It would be a tragedy to have a situation where we cannot take seriously these human rights violations because of the limits that are placed in the language of this Bill.
We are increasingly seeing human rights becoming a new, very important structure of international law, which perhaps encouraged such movements as the Arab spring, and which undoubtedly helped to release many people from the acts of coercion by their own governments. We have close relations, as does the United States and our other allies, with some countries with poor human rights records. When those poor human rights records enter into the area of international criminal action, of the kind described by the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, I hope that we recognise that we have an obligation as a country with a very strong record of supporting human rights to maintain that standard and record. Indeed we are basically the founder of the original European Convention on Human Rights legislation, which binds us all today. We therefore will expect the Government to look very closely at the wording of this part of the Bill before we get to Third Reading to ensure that it will not mean that such major acts of criminality will be disregarded because of our legislation.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, for moving this amendment. We now move on to the Norwich Pharmacal part of this Bill. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, and my noble friend Lady Williams for their important contribution on an issue that, going by the earlier debate, is of considerable importance with regard to human rights and serious breaches of human rights.
The noble Lord, Lord Dubs, highlighted two points: one relating to serious breaches involving, for example, torture; and the other part of his amendment that relates to the control principle. To put this in context, the approach taken by this Bill is consistent with other legislation that has been passed by Parliament. For example, in the Freedom of information Act 2000, Parliament explicitly ruled out a right to access intelligence material; and the Evidence (Proceedings in Other Jurisdictions) Act 1975 and the Crime (International Co-operation) Act 2003 provide for exemptions from disclosure of evidence into overseas proceedings where such disclosure would prejudice the United Kingdom’s national security.
First, I will indicate why limiting the protection offered by legislation to the control principle, which I think is what the noble Lord was seeking to do, does not go far enough. We appreciate that it is important that this is recognised and, of course, as has been said numerous times in our debates, it is essential that the originator of the material remains in control of its handling and dissemination. However, it is often the fact as well as the content of the sharing arrangements that needs to be protected. Certifying information as subject to a control principle agreement could reveal the fact that such a highly sensitive relationship exists. Countries may not thank us for revealing that fact, and might come under pressure to end co-operation with us.
Moreover, there are also some considerable difficulties in identifying what qualifies as control principle material, and these difficulties could lead to further uncertainty and litigation. Perhaps I might be allowed, even at this time of night, to indicate again evidence given by Mr David Anderson QC in June to the Joint Committee on Human Rights, when he discussed these practical difficulties. There may be correspondence between the intelligence services commenting on control principle material, or assessments based on a mix of domestic and foreign material, and it would often be very difficult to distinguish between them.
It is important that we respect human rights and that we take seriously human rights violations, and that we take measures to ensure that there are effective remedies available. I spoke at some length in Committee about what the Government do, both in the United Kingdom and overseas, to promote and uphold human rights. It bears repeating that the United Kingdom Government stand firmly against torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. As I indicated in a previous debate, we do not condone it, nor do we ask others to do it on our behalf.
We work on human rights around the world through bilateral contacts, membership of international organisations and development aid and assistance, and in partnership with civil society. Our efforts worldwide on combating torture are guided by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Prevention of Torture Strategy 2011-2015. The United Kingdom is working to strengthen legal frameworks to prevent and prohibit torture, develop the will and capacity of states to prevent and prohibit torture, and help organisations on the ground to get the expertise and training they need to prevent and prohibit torture.
In recent months the United Kingdom has made its position on torture clear in public statements on countries of concern, lobbied to strengthen adherence to the convention against torture and the ICCPR, and delivered in-country training to officials of other countries on handling complaints of torture in places of detention. In addition, the Government devote significant resources overseas to combating torture. This work is often done behind the scenes, but there is also much work in providing consular assistance as well as in lobbying and capacity-building projects.
In the Norwich Pharmacal context, however, the Government believe that such disclosure is not the most effective solution to the problem. Disclosure in a single case can have far-reaching long-term effects on the United Kingdom’s national security and international relations, making it harder for the United Kingdom to act as a positive influence on human rights world wide. It is not in any way the case that we do not take these matters seriously. I hope I have indicated that there is a very extensive programme of work and commitment on the part of the United Kingdom Government to tackle torture, but we do not believe that using the Norwich Pharmacal procedure is the way in which to do that. In these circumstances, I invite the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Pannick
Lord Pannick
My Lords, one of the main concerns with Norwich Pharmacal provisions is the breadth of the definition of “sensitive information” contained in Clause 13(3). Amendment 73 would confine the scope of the relevant information to that which needs to be protected. I entirely accept that it may be appropriate to expand the drafting of Amendment 73, but I am quite sure that what we have at the moment in Clause 13(3) is far too broad. I hope that the Government will be able before the Bill is enacted to consider this matter again; I hope that the other place will give specific consideration to this issue. I beg to move.
Baroness Smith of Basildon
My Lords, I shall speak to our amendments on this clause, Amendments 69, 70, 71, 72 and 76. I do not wish to detain the House and I shall not press our amendments to a vote at this late stage, but there are some important issues of principle that I want to put on the record and to which I seek a response from the Minister. I hope that he can take some of the points away and consider the issues.
The purpose behind the amendments is to suggest an alternative definition for the “sensitive information” ouster of the court’s jurisdiction. The reality is that less information is being shared with the UK as a result of fears that the Norwich Pharmacal jurisdiction might mean that the UK Government were forced to disclose intelligence shared with us, thereby breaching the control principle. We have heard that from the reviewer of terrorism legislation, David Anderson, to whom the Minister referred, as well as from members of the ISC and the Government. I know that we have assurances from the US that we will never be denied life-saving intelligence, but I refer the House to the comments made on this issue in Committee by the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, who said that that was no consolation to her, given the position that she has held. She went on:
“The nature of intelligence work is putting together information from perhaps five or six different countries and 20 different organisations—little bits and pieces of a jigsaw that, together, might save lives”.—[Official Report, 23/7/12; col. 553.]
The question of whether a UK court would ever in practice authorise the disclosure of such information has been widely debated. I do not intend to go into that tonight, because I do not believe that that is the question now facing this House.
Rightly or wrongly, the flow of intelligence to the UK has been restricted—we understand and accept that. The two questions for the House are: should the UK respond in order to deal with the concerns of our intelligence partners and, if so, what is a proportionate response? The Opposition’s response to the first question is emphatically yes; it is on the second question that I think we would have a difference with the Government; namely, whether it is a proportionate response. We take the view that any restriction of intelligence to the UK is a serious problem and we would agree with David Anderson QC who said of Clause 13 that there was “an element of overkill”. The ouster proposed by the Government reaches far wider than simply the control principle. While we recognise—there is no question about this at all—that there is a need to ensure the absolute protection of information related to our national security, this clause goes wider.
We therefore propose to restrict the definition of “sensitive information” to cover material whose publication would represent a clear breach of the control principle. We would amend Clause 13(3)(b) and (c) to refer only to “foreign” intelligence and to where that intelligence is such that it would jeopardise our national security or strategic national interests.
When we proposed similar amendments in Committee, the Minister described the practicalities, as he did just a moment ago, as being “challenging” and referred to the difficulties of being able to define and separate the two. We took note of what the Minister had to say and, as a consequence, the limitations that we propose in these amendments would retain the ouster for all the examples to which he referred.
Correspondence commenting on control principle material would presumably be covered by amended paragraph (c), which would remain an ouster for information derived in whole or in part from information obtained from or held on behalf of foreign intelligence services. That would allow for either the part of the correspondence that referred to foreign intelligence to be prevented from disclosure, or the entire correspondence, if it solely referred to that intelligence and would represent a disclosure of that information. As I understand it, that is much the same way as the original PII for certain redacted paragraphs in the court’s judgment on the Mohamed case argued.
Baroness Manningham-Buller
I just say that I understand the concerns about the scale of the paragraph on sensitive intelligence. Equally, I think that Amendment 73 is a bit too narrow. Perhaps the Government can table something between the two by the next stage.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, for moving his amendment and the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, for speaking to her amendments. There is recognition on both their parts and across the Chamber of the importance to us of information which we receive from other intelligence agencies. It is often crucial, and it is important that we can reassure them of its confidentiality. We have been trying—I acknowledge that this is the spirit in which the amendments have been moved—to ensure that there is a proportionate response to ensure that the information is protected.
There is the fundamental problem that the novel application of the Norwich Pharmacal jurisdiction, which has its origins in the intellectual property sphere of law, into the national security context has potentially been damaging to the United Kingdom's national security and international relations. As I have said, its very existence can erode the confidence of our agents and our intelligence-sharing partners that we can protect the secrets they share with us. Moreover, in the case of human agents—because it is not just information that we receive from other intelligence agencies; it is important to remember our own agents—there are real concerns of threat to life if there is a requirement to disclose. Each case that goes through the court has potential to cause damage, not just through the disclosure of sensitive information but by highlighting the risk that it could be disclosed.
In addressing the amendments moved and spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, I will indicate that in this sphere we believe there is a need to provide certainty and to reduce the scope for litigation. The noble Lord’s suggestion of moving to a certification model, with a narrowed definition of what qualifies as sensitive information, would allow the uncertainty and damage to remain. If we do not legislate in a way which provides sufficient clarity, we could again have the difficulty that our intelligence-sharing relationships stand at risk of deteriorating.
A certificate-only approach would only partially address the concerns of our intelligence partners and of our own agents that sensitive information is at risk of disclosure under the Norwich Pharmacal jurisdiction. It might leave them with the fear that a certificate might not be upheld and that their material might ultimately have to be disclosed. That in itself could have a chilling effect on the activities of our intelligence services and our intelligence-sharing relationships. An absolute exemption therefore provides a clearer and neater protection for this material and more certainty for our partners and our own intelligence services.
I turn to the restriction of the statutory protection to identity, which seeks to define what might be the intelligence with national security concerns. The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, illustrated this by the identity of intelligence officers, their sources and capability and to control principle material alone. We believe that is insufficient, as there is sensitive information falling outside of these two categories that also requires statutory protection. That picks up the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, that this is far too narrowly defined.
Given that the work of the intelligence services is covert, a considerable amount of material would not fall into the category of identities and capabilities but the disclosure of which could nevertheless still be very damaging. Such information includes information about operations and investigations, as well as threat assessments in relation to sabotage, espionage and terrorism, assessments of vulnerabilities of critical national infrastructure or systems, military plans, weapons systems and information on the development or proliferation of nuclear weapons overseas. It may also include operational planning and intelligence reporting, as well as material relating to national security policy and intelligence policy issues and funding, and so on. I hope that giving these examples shows that it is a much broader sphere of activity than is proposed in the amendment.
Likewise, that narrow definition can also create scope for litigation about what does and does not fall within the definition—what, for example, would be meant by the “capability” of intelligence officers? These issues alone could result in lengthy litigation, all of which would divert intelligence officers from front-line duty. The model proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, also allows no statutory protection for sensitive information whose disclosure could cause damage to the interests of the international relations of the United Kingdom. This point was also picked up on one of the latter amendments in the group by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith. The Government need to offer protection to this category of material to ensure that our international partners remain willing to talk to us in a frank way, so that we can protect and further the United Kingdom’s interests. The mere embarrassment that would be caused from disclosure of diplomatic material would be no basis to certify. Only if material would cause damage to international relations would we be able to certify.
Diplomacy does not work if diplomats cannot talk in confidence and no Government would, or should, sacrifice the benefits which effective diplomacy can offer. As an example, vital work that is done in promoting human rights is not always done in public. Talking to international partners in confidence about their human rights record is an important part of how we seek to influence that agenda. The possibility that such discussions could be made public could have serious consequences for our ability to influence. Clearly, if international partners do not trust the United Kingdom to keep advice and assessments confidential, this could have a serious impact on the United Kingdom’s interests in the fields of human rights co-operation—as well as on consular assistance, trade and investment, and jobs, to name just a few other implications.
The noble Baroness, Lady Smith, proposes adding after,
“held by an intelligence service”,
the qualifier,
“where that information relates to national security or the interests of the United Kingdom”.
We do not believe that that is the right approach. The Freedom of Information Act, which I referred to earlier, does not try to exclude those agencies from the operation of the Act only in so far as they hold information relating to national security. Rather, it excludes them from the Act as a whole in recognition of the fact that, as far as the agencies are concerned, their entire function and raison d’être is to do with national security and necessarily the information they hold is connected with that. The Security Service Act 1989 and the Intelligence Services Act 1994 both make express provision that the heads of those organisations are to make arrangements to ensure that no information is obtained by their agency,
“except so far as is necessary for the proper discharge of its functions”.
I am concerned that adding the wording suggested might only confuse the matter and give further opportunity for unnecessary litigation. We have heard about the canteen menu, and I think the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, referred to someone who had slipped on the floor and wanted to sue the cleaners. I do not think those examples have so far been used in Norwich Pharmacal to get information out of the security services. If that were the issue, there are many other ways that that information could be sought. We are talking about far more serious information, and I do not think that is being challenged.
The noble Baroness said that she could not find anywhere where the Government had said what they might mean by,
“relating to an intelligence service”.
The Opposition propose removing the clauses that protect information relating to an intelligence service and information obtained from or held on behalf of one of our own intelligence services, as opposed to a foreign intelligence service, or information derived from such material. Sensitive information that would not be afforded statutory protection under these amendments includes sensitive intelligence material held by, say, the Home Office, that has been passed to it by the Security Service in support of executive action, for example, deportation on national security grounds or a TPIM notice. It would also include intelligence the Security Service shared with the police in counterterrorism operations, the disclosure of which would readily compromise those operations in either preventing a terrorist attack or bringing terrorists to justice. Work done in other government departments on national security policy and intelligence policy, which relates to the intelligence services, would not be protected if the “relating to an intelligence service” clause were removed.
The Government have reflected on the constructive analysis and considered comment in the legislative period to date. Picking up the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, I have no doubt that it will be considered further when this Bill goes to another place, but we have concluded, so far, that in the Norwich Pharmacal context, we need to provide absolute exemption for intelligence services information and certification for other sensitive information, the disclosure of which would be damaging to national security or international relations. Only by this can we provide the clarity required to enable the UK to protect its sensitive information in cases of third-party wrongdoing and to restore the confidence of our intelligence-sharing partners and our own security and intelligence services.
I have tried to outline some of the responses to what I appreciate are constructive approaches to what we all agree is a difficult issue. I hope I have explained why the Government resist these amendments, and I hope the noble Lord will withdraw his amendment.
Lord Pannick
I am very grateful to the noble and learned Lord. I recognise the difficulty of defining with precision what information should be covered. I maintain the position that Clause 13(3) does not do a very good job of it. I suggest that the Minister and the Bill team would benefit considerably by having a word with the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller—although not tonight. At some stage, perhaps they could discuss a way of improving what is a very unsatisfactory Clause 13(3), but for the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
“( ) Sub-paragraph (1) does not apply to rules of court in relation to proceedings before the Supreme Court.”
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
“3A (1) An order under section 15(2) may, in particular, make provision about the application of section 12, and paragraphs 7, 8 and 10 of Schedule 2, to any direction or decision of the Secretary of State which—
(a) is of a kind falling within section 2C(1)(a) and (b) or (as the case may be) 2D(1)(a) of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission Act 1997, and(b) was made before the section 12 commencement day.(2) Provision of the kind mentioned in sub-paragraph (1) may, in particular, provide for—
(a) the Secretary of State to certify under section 2C(1)(c) or (as the case may be) 2D(1)(b) of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission Act 1997, on or after the section 12 commencement day, any direction or decision falling within sub-paragraph (1),(b) the termination of any judicial review proceedings, or proceedings on appeal from such proceedings, which relate to a direction or decision which is so certified (whether such proceedings began before, on or after the section 12 commencement day).(3) In this paragraph “the section 12 commencement day” means the day on which section 12 comes into force.”
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My Lords, noble Lords will know by now that Clause 12 of the Justice and Security Bill amends the Special Immigration Appeals Commission Act so that the commission—SIAC—is able to consider applications to set aside exclusion or naturalisation decisions, which have been made on the basis of sensitive material.
Currently, we have a rather unsatisfactory arrangement whereby the only course of action open to an individual who wishes to challenge the decision to exclude them from the United Kingdom, or refuse to allow them to naturalise as a British citizen, is to seek judicial review. The problem is that our High Court does not have the capacity for closed proceedings. Where the decision in question has been made by the Secretary of State on the strength of sensitive evidence, the court cannot consider it. The JR claim is therefore stymied, to the satisfaction of neither party, nor to the interests of justice.
In the case of AHK, the High Court called upon Parliament to remedy this situation through legislation; hence, Clause 12. The Joint Committee on Human Rights has also supported this approach. The amendments before the House are intended to ensure a tidy transition from the old arrangements, towards the new arrangement in which SIAC will consider the application to review decisions such as these.
First, there is a jurisdictional matter relating to the United Kingdom’s Crown dependencies. Officials in the Isle of Man and Channel Islands have requested the power to extend the provisions in Clause 12 to their own territories by way of permissive extent. Accordingly, we should allow for these sections of the Bill to be so extended, with or without modification. The Government and our friends in the Crown dependencies are quite sure that we would not want inadvertently to create a loophole on the Isle of Man or Channel Islands whereby justice is done differently from the UK mainland.
These amendments also propose that the Bill’s rule-making power shall include provision for “transitional” exclusion and naturalisation cases. The Government are keen to allow for a seamless and fair transition from old arrangements to new. It would not do to have a two-tier system in operation, in which judicial review proceedings already before the courts would continue to be heard in the imperfect setting of the High Court, while decisions made after the commencement of Clause 12 would benefit from being heard in SIAC. There are a number of JRs already on the books of the High Court, with judges unable to consider key evidence on which the Secretary of State’s decision was based. Accordingly, it seems right and proper that, in these cases, the claimant be given an opportunity to apply to have their case heard afresh in SIAC, where a decision can be made that takes into account all of the relevant evidence.
There will also be a number of cases in which, for instance, a decision has been made to exclude someone shortly before the commencement of Clause 12, leaving them a window of opportunity for applying for a JR which runs over into the new arrangements. It would be untidy to allow these claims to be considered in the High Court, and would create a two-tier system. It would be preferable for the Secretary of State to be able to certify material as sensitive on or after commencement, thereby transferring the venue of redress to SIAC. I should add that the amendments will allow for the rule-making power to take effect—commence—from the day that the Bill receives Royal Assent. This is consistent with the rule-making power already set out in the Bill.
These amendments, while not altering the fundamental purpose of Clause 12, will ensure that we are fair when offering individuals a suitable avenue of redress in respect of decisions that have been made against them, and will eliminate the possibility of inconsistency as to how we go about that. I beg to move.
(a) section 1 and Schedule 1, (b) sections 2 to 14,(c) section 15(1) (except so far as relating to paragraph 3A of Schedule 3),(d) Schedule 2, and(e) Schedule 3 (other than paragraph 3A of that Schedule),”
(a) section 15(1) so far as relating to paragraph 3A of Schedule 3,(b) paragraph 3A of Schedule 3,(c) ”
“(4A) Her Majesty may by Order in Council provide for section 12 and paragraph 7 of Schedule 2 to extend, with or without modifications, to any of the Channel Islands or to the Isle of Man.
(4B) An Order under subsection (4A) may, in particular, include (with or without modifications) transitional provision of the kind permitted by paragraph 3A of Schedule 3.”