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Counter-Terrorism Bill

My Lords, the amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer, is clearly an attempt to resolve a very serious anomaly about delayed inquests. As my noble friend has just said, another consequence is that, essentially, it pre-empts a series of processes which are currently in play. We know how serious and important an issue this has been. This House has debated the principle of the admission of intercept evidence in courts numerous times. We all recognise the importance of that. It is a serious debate and one which has to be addressed in a serious fashion. We have a clear indication that we will have before us at some stage—I hope not too far in the future—a major piece of legislation on coroners. I think we all acknowledge that the law surrounding coroners courts needs a great deal of updating and I am sure that the debates in this House and in the other place on the implications of that will be extremely interesting. We also have the work of the Chilcot committee. The report that we have already seen on the consideration of a committee of privy counsellors—drawn together to look at how this matter might be taken forward—identified a number of complicated issues that had to be addressed before we could be sure that national security was not being endangered by the admission of intercept evidence in a court. I do not see how coroners courts differ from any other court in this matter. We should wait to see whether the Chilcot committee comes forward with proposals addressing the nine principles outlined in its earlier report. If I were being cynical, I would say that this amendment is intended to be the nose of the camel under the tent: if we accepted it, before we knew it we would have the rest of the camel inside the tent, and intercept evidence accepted in every area. I am sure that the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, does not intend that, but it is the case that we would be pre-empting the twin processes that are already in track—the more important of those being the work of the Chilcot committee. It is a serious matter, and I believe that the technical issues that the Chilcot committee must address are complicated and very important to national security. I understand that when the congressional 9/11 Commission published its report, a reference to some particular intercept material was buried away 200 or 300 pages in. The fact that it was possible to carry out intercepts under those specific conditions had not previously been made public. I do not know whether the 9/11 Commission intended to make public the fact that such intercepts were possible, but the fact is that it did. I have been told that, to those who watch these things, the consequence of that was immediately noticeable. Certain types of conversation stopped happening and could no longer be intercepted—and I notice the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, nodding. The lesson is that we should be wary of the consequences of allowing these things to drift into the public domain by accident. I am aware that the amendment before us allows the coroner, who would be, "““a judge of the High Court””," to limit disclosure, or not to permit it, or to have it redacted, where that disclosure would not prejudice national security. However, there are two tests on that. One is: might the content of the intercept itself prejudice national security? The other is: would the fact of the intercept prejudice national security? It seems to me that however it is played, we are in danger of releasing the fact that some material was collected from a particular conversation, which would lead to an understanding either of particular sources or of processes. Revealing those could be prejudicial to the national interest. The noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, asked an extremely important question: what then? We would then be faced with an inquest, and there would be certain material that would be known to exist but would not be released. That situation seems unsatisfactory to me. We have to find a way to address all these issues together, but this amendment is premature and unhelpful given all the other work being done, in particular by the Chilcot committee.