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Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism

I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay), who stated, with a good deal of passion, what many hon. Members feel about the way in which the Government have proceeded. I will not go over the full history of the way in which the People's Mujahedeen Organisation of Iran got on to the list of proscribed organisations. Its inclusion was controversial even at the time and its public announcements that it had disarmed and renounced violence were especially clear. It is surprising that the Government maintained their proscription in the face of mounting judicial reviews of the decision, beginning on 12 December 2006, with the European Court of First Instance and continuing with the POAC High Court decision on 30 November 2007. The hon. Member for Thurrock described fairly the Lord Chief Justice's reaction to the evidence that the Government brought to bear in secret session. Despite all that, the Government persisted in attempting to defend the proscription. That persistence suggests that other forces must have been at work in the decision. Perhaps the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Ruffley) is the only Conservative Member to give the Government the benefit of the doubt—a minority position these days. It was even suggested that the Home Office was possibly right—obviously, that is one theory—and that all the judges who examined the matter in the European Court and in the High Court had been bamboozled by the evidence that they saw in public and in secret session. I would perhaps give more weight to the second theory: when Ministers look at a document that is stamped, ““top secret””, ““highly confidential”” and ““for your eyes only””, they tend to give it greater weight than the public information that stares them in the face. That has happened in judgments about the middle east, not least those about the illegal invasion of Iraq. We could go back further. Only weeks before the Shah was toppled in Iran, I remember that a Foreign Secretary predicted firmly, on the basis of little evidence, that the Shah would be there for ever and a day. Clearly, that was an exceptional misreading of what was happening. Perhaps we are considering a case of secret information being given far too much weight. However, such information did not persuade the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales. Given that he is used to sifting evidence, whatever the source, we should give that opinion enormous weight. Some hon. Members have hinted at the final theory for the Government's reluctance to move, and I hope that it is not right. It is that, in what is meant to be a quasi-judicial matter laid down by statute, the Government have put foreign policy considerations before an assessment of the evidence. The Liberal Democrats suspect that that happened when the Serious Fraud Office's investigation into al-Yamamah was dropped, following public and doubtless private pressure from the Saudi Arabian Government. I would like the Minister's reassurance—if someone could communicate with him, given that he is showing his usual courtesy of not being bothered to listen to speeches—that there was no influence from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on the ground of Britain's foreign policy. We would also like an assurance that the Government of Iran exerted no influence, directly or indirectly.