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Justice and Security (Northern Ireland) Bill

I do not want to get too involved in the terminology. I am inclined to agree with the noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General that this is not a complete ouster clause. It ousts in certain circumstances the jurisdiction of the court, but it maintains circumstances where applications can be made to the court. That I think undercuts the argument the Attorney-General was making about the need to ensure that sensitive information is not disclosed. If the argument the Attorney-General puts is as important as he indicates, that points towards a complete ouster. He is not ousting; he is still enabling applications to the court in these circumstances, the third provision of which, as he pointed out, is not clearly defined. I had doubts about it. I was not altogether comfortable with that third one. But the situation he was worried about—that of people going into court and seeking information that should not otherwise be disclosed—can happen under the clause as he has drafted it. He still enables people to go into court and say, ““I want to challenge this on the grounds of some exceptional circumstance”” and then in the course of those proceedings try to get at the information that the Attorney-General wishes to protect. The point that the Attorney-General was making is undermined by the fact that this is not a complete ouster.