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Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism

I shall indicate clearly that this is required of the Government. Should we be in their position—we might be in it sooner than the Minister and Labour Members think—we would have in front of us, as he and the Home Secretary have in front of them, a POAC decision. They sought to challenge it in the Court of Appeal, but they did not get leave to fight another day and were thus obliged, by law, to introduce this order. We would be in no different position from the Minister. That is about as clear an answer as I can give the House, and it is a factually accurate, legally watertight answer. [Interruption.] I do not know why the Minister is laughing; I hope it is a laugh of solidarity, because we are supporting him on the basis of the reasons that he has given. The question of the merits, which is probably behind the hon. Gentleman's question—he is tempting me to opine on the substantive merits of the order—is not something that I shall address tonight, because I do not have to do so. I have to ask some of the questions that those on both sides of the argument want answered, chief of which is the one that I have just asked in relation to the report in The Times about what action may or may not be taken against the armed wing, should it exist, that is the subject of the order. The second question I have for the Minister relates to the posture of the US Government. The PMOI has been designated a foreign terrorist organisation since 1987 in the US, and I wonder whether the Minister can confirm what, if any, discussions he or his colleagues in the British Government have had with the US authorities about the decision to de-proscribe the PMOI. It is important to know whether the US has expressed any concerns about the implication of the UK de-proscription on its efforts to fight and contain terrorist organisations. I am sure that this order would have a knock-on effect. A companion question relates to the position of the European Union, which listed the PMOI as a terrorist group and froze its assets. In December 2006, the European Court of First Instance ruled that the EU had not sufficiently justified its decision on the freezing of funds, although it did not—importantly—rule on the substantive issue of whether the PMOI was a terrorist organisation. The ruling was fundamentally a procedural argument about the basis on which funds had been frozen. I wonder again what the implications of this order will be for the EU-wide proscription of PMOI. Those may seem to be dull, boring, procedural—nay, even anorak-type—questions to some, but they warrant a reply. I hope that the Minister understands that I am not pressing him to go further on the substantive issue: these are factual questions to which we need an answer. My final set of questions will attempt to probe the Minister on the judgment by POAC, which raised some questions about decision making by Home Office Ministers. I do not mean this Minister, or even the current Home Secretary, but the Ministers who were the subject of the judgment in November. On page 131, it states:"““In our view, in three respects the Secretary of State failed properly to direct himself in accordance with law. These overlap…the Secretary of State failed properly to direct himself to the requirements of the 2000 Act; the Secretary of State failed properly to direct himself that each of the criteria in section 3(5)(a) to (d) of the 2000 Act required a belief that the PMOI was presently (i.e. at the date of the decision) actually 'concerned in terrorist' activity as defined; the Secretary of State failed properly to direct himself as to the requirements of section 3(5)(d) of the 2000 Act.””" POAC highlighted in its judgment that there had been a failure to apply the relevant statutory tests and properly to assess the available evidence against those tests. As the hon. Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay) has said, POAC concluded that the then Home Secretary's decision could be ““properly characterised as perverse””. For that to be said of any Home Secretary, of whatever political party, gives one pause for thought. The statement that the Secretary of State failed to"““direct himself to the requirements of the 2000 Act””" is particularly eye-catching. In conclusion, I wonder whether the Minister could shed some light on what lessons Ministers and civil servants are learning from POAC's quite damning report. In particular, will he tell us what action is being taken to ensure that the procedural irregularities from POAC are being adequately and swiftly dealt with so that all of us, in this place and beyond, can have full confidence that Ministers are taking decisions in the proper procedural way?