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Terrorism Bill

I have had the advantage of listening to this debate, as indeed I have had on a number of other occasions. I am always intrigued by how little variation there is. I agree with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, that his amendment is virtually identical to the contents of his Private Member’s Bill, which had its Second Reading 10 days ago. I will not repeat all the arguments that have been so carefully gone into by a number of my noble friends. I confess to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, that I am tempted to say, as he doubtless has said on many occasions in the Judicial Committee of this House, ““Having heard the judgments given by my noble friends Lord Robertson, Lady Ramsay and Lady Symons of Vernham Dean and the noble Baroness, Lady Park, I agree and have nothing further to add””. I know that that would do a disservice to many of the arguments that have been made and therefore I will try, if I can, to deal with them in short measure. On the point about eavesdropping or the evidence given, I say to my noble friend Lady Kennedy of The Shaws that evidence can come from, as a number of my noble friends have said, a variety of sources which are not disclosed in evidence. Interception is a single method and the evidence necessarily provides details of the capability. I was left breathless by her assertion that she either knows or has access to all the methods used and adopted by GCHQ, SIS, the police and others who are charged and entrusted with maintaining our security. If that were so, could I just say to her that I tremble? A number of noble Lords have discussed the information provided to us by the right honourable Sir Swinton Thomas. Noble Lords will know that Sir Swinton Thomas is a very highly regarded member of the judiciary. I know that is not true of all members of the judiciary, but I hope that noble Lords will agree with me that Sir Swinton Thomas is a particularly fine and revered member, and certainly much admired—and I say it without reservation—by me, and, I would hope, by all noble Lords who have had the privilege to appear before him. So, in answer to the point of the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, regarding those who are not familiar with the court procedure, I assure him that I have a little knowledge of court procedure and, having had that knowledge, I concur with the comments made by the right honourable Sir Swinton Thomas in the judgments he has made. I say that, burdened as I am as a lawyer, with a little knowledge. As my noble friend Lord Bassam of Brighton reminded your Lordships on 18 November, my right honourable friend the Home Secretary in his Written Statement to the House on 26 January on the outcome of the review on intercept as evidence, reported that the Government were not persuaded that the benefits of changing the law to permit intercept evidence outweighed the risks of doing so. I need to emphasise that this is a balancing exercise. My right honourable friend explained that the strength of the United Kingdom’s system was built on the close co-operation between intelligence and law enforcement agencies, unparalleled in the rest of the world, and that this had delivered impressive results. It is not that we do not use the intercept product—we do, very successfully—to gather intelligence to make arrests and seizures and to disrupt and prevent terrorist activity. But successive reviews have not found a way of using intercept evidentially and protecting the sensitive capabilities and techniques on which United Kingdom’s agency co-operation is predicated. That is not for the want of looking. This is not intransigence; this is not unwillingness; this is not an implacable hostility; it is that we have simply not found a way to do this safely. The Committee should recognise that we, as the Government of this country, must put the safety of the nation first. Finding a way to limit exposure of sensitive material in courts is extremely difficult because our disclosure rules rightly seek to provide the defence with all the information necessary for a fair trial. Of course, if intercept as evidence were to result in the convictions of lots more serious criminals and terrorists, our decision on whether to go ahead would have been more difficult. However, intercept evidence is not a silver bullet. Frequent comparisons are made with other countries’ use of intercept as evidence, but there is no evidence that their evidential approach produces better results than our intelligence-only approach. Indeed, comparative figures suggest that the reverse is true. That directly answers some of the points raised by the noble Lords, Lord Thomas of Gresford and Lord Kingsland. I have already said that we get very good results under the current arrangements. The review of intercept as evidence shows that there might be an increase in convictions, but that that would be modest and limited to lower-level criminals involved in serious crime—but not terrorism—and would be unlikely to be sustainable.