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Terrorism Bill

I respect the noble Baroness enormously, as she knows, and her experience in the Foreign Office. But really the debate turns into those who know something about court procedure and those who do not—who have no idea what goes on in court or what the safeguards are. It is ridiculous to say that the defence can demand to see everything and everything will be revealed. That is just not the case. I think I said in the debate on the Bill introduced by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, that in the last bugging case I was involved in—the bugging of a car, a house and so on—the languages concerned were Turkish and Albanian. They were translated. There was no problem. We heard all about that. I asked the prosecutor whether there was any intercept evidence that would help the defence. He said, as he was perfectly entitled to do, ““I know my duty under the Act and I have performed it””. That was the end. I could not ask him any more. If he felt that there was nothing to be revealed, that was it. I could not challenge it. There was nobody to whom I could complain. That is what happens. The new clause that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, seeks to insert states specifically that only the prosecution can ask for permission to introduce such evidence, and:"““Unless and until an application has been made by the prosecution . . . the provisions of section 17 shall continue to apply in connection with those proceedings””." Even then the prosecution would have to apply to the judge to get permission for this evidence to be disclosed, if he wanted to. If there were any danger at all of these very secret things that do not apply in other countries—these techniques—becoming known, the prosecutor would not ask for that evidence to be introduced. The noble Baroness herself—I do not want to direct all my remarks to her because I can say the same to the noble Lord, Lord Robertson—has drawn a distinction between the dangers of revealing evidence that comes from overseas sources, where we may have somebody planted in some organisation or in some government whose safety would be at risk, and the ordinary evidence that may arise from an intercept where no such risk exists. It is 13 years since I prosecuted a case involving letter bombs. In that case—and it was all admitted in court—the security services planted a probe inside the suspect’s house and all his conversations on one end of the telephone were recorded. We did not hear what was on the other end of the telephone. I regarded that as ridiculous 13 years ago and I still regard it as ridiculous. In other words, there are areas in which the conversation—as with our Albanian and Turkish friends whom I mentioned and whose conversations, incidentally, took place abroad—can be recorded and we hear all about it, and there are areas where we do not. Nobody has to reveal anything to us if the national interest is involved. I refer to the people who gang up at the behest of GCHQ and overrule Sir David Calvert-Smith. The noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, has been mentioned a great deal. He seems to have access to this information and says that intercept evidence should be admitted. All those people know what goes on in court and what protections exist; but that is precisely what the speakers tonight do not know.