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Queen’s Speech

My Lords, first, I congratulate my noble friend Lady O’Loan on her maiden speech. I worked with her when she was the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland and I think that her arrival in this House will be a great advantage to us. Recently at dinner I sat next to my noble and learned friend Lord Lloyd of Berwick, who is not in his place this evening. He gave me a ticking off, saying that I had not been speaking often enough in your Lordships’ House. I might say that that was not my first reprimand. As a junior intelligence officer, I was ticked off by him more than once when he was the commissioner under the Interception of Communications Act 1985 as to why I had sought an interception warrant, what it was producing and why on earth it continued to be justified. Chastened by the reprimand, I read the gracious Speech with care. I looked for legislation on terrorism on which I should comment and I was delighted that there was none. I want to applaud the Government for this particular void. Let me explain why. We have had a good deal of legislation in recent years designed, sometimes clumsily in my opinion, to help to reduce the threat to our society that terrorism offers. To be clear, I believe strongly that counterterrorist activity needs to have, as it does, a proper statutory basis, but I am suspicious of arguments, which I have heard often, that the law itself provides the solution to terrorism. The rule of law, political process, hearts and minds, economic well-being and good and co-ordinated police and intelligence work are what matter. I welcome the fact that our legal system has coped for many years with the prosecution of complex terrorist cases with the minimum of recourse to special arrangements. The most obvious exception is control orders, which were conceived by the Home Office as a kind of terrorist ASBO in 2005. Now is not the time, at this late stage in the evening, to reopen that debate, but I look forward to speaking on control orders when the House returns to them, as it will. On the constitutional side of the debate, recently I asked a taxi driver to bring me to the House. He said, "Are you one of those?". I had a St Peter moment and was tempted to lie but recognised in time that that would only prove his point. I have been a Member of your Lordships’ House only for a short time and do not fully understand it or its arcane procedures, but I have been impressed in particular by its detailed scrutiny of legislation, by the quality of some of its debates—this evening’s debate has been no exception—and by the detailed and thoughtful scrutiny work of some of its committees. However, I do not always want to have to travel on the Tube to avoid tiring rants about this House and Parliament. I want to continue to be proud to belong to this House. That means substantial reform. The recommendations of the leaders’ group under my noble and right reverend friend Lord Eames, which we are to discuss next week, the forthcoming recommendations of the Senior Salaries Review Body under Mr Cockburn and the minor changes in the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill are an important start but not the end of the process.