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Justice and Security (Northern Ireland) Bill

The hon. Gentleman totally misunderstands or deliberately seeks to misrepresent the point that is being made. The certificate will be issued on the basis of intelligence. How, for example, is it known that the defendant may well be a member of a paramilitary and that his associates intend to intimidate the jury? Very often that will become known as a result of intelligence, hence the input from the intelligence services into the decision whether to issue a certificate. If the decision to issue a certificate was open to judicial review, we can be sure, given that the decision was probably based on intelligence, that anybody facing such a certificate would immediately instruct his lawyers to apply to the court for judicial review. For what purpose? To try and find out what intelligence there was about him, where it came from and who provided the information. That is exactly the reason that the Government have given—and the soundest reason, because there are already examples of it—for not providing such an opportunity in the system for those who would seek to use the issuing of a certificate as a means of trawling to find out what the intelligence services know about them or the organisations with which they are associated. To me, that is a far greater threat than the possibility that someone may have to face a non-jury trial—a trial in which they will get a fair hearing anyway.