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Terrorist Asset-Freezing (Temporary Provisions) Bill

My Lords, my Amendment 1A is in this group, and as the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, said, it would replace the sunset date in Clause 1(1) with 30 April, rather than 31 July as she has put forward in her amendment. The key issue for the Committee is when we can scrutinise primary legislation, because there is agreement on all sides of the Committee that the previous regime of orders under the 1946 Act has to be replaced by primary legislation. Not even the Government will claim that if the Bill completes its passage in your Lordships’ House this evening there will have been full parliamentary approval for the three orders that were damned by the Supreme Court’s judgment. Our support for the Bill is linked exclusively to the consequences of dealing with terrorism if the vacuum caused by the Supreme Court’s judgment is not filled immediately. Both the structure of the Bill and the timing constraints of our deliberations mean that parliamentary approval is more formal than substantive. We cannot realistically debate the contents of the three orders, and it is pretty certain that we would not want to approve the 2001 or 2006 orders if they were before us on a stand-alone basis. We might have less difficulty with the 2009 order, in that it has taken on board some of the criticisms made in the courts, but it, too, has problems, or at least substantive issues that ought to be debated. The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, has tabled amendments to the Long Title of the Bill in order to accommodate some substantive amendments which we will consider later. As I said earlier, however, I do not believe that that is an ideal way to proceed. The Government have laid Command Paper 7806, which contains a full draft Terrorist Asset-Freezing Bill, complete with Explanatory Notes and an impact statement. As I explained on Second Reading this afternoon, we had agreed timing with the Government such that the Bill would have had two days in the other place—today and in the week after Recess—followed by three days in your Lordships’ House, over a period ending roughly in mid-March. The chairman of the Joint Committee on Human Rights confirmed that his committee could have handled that March timing. The Government have now put that longer Bill on the back burner and proceeded only with this temporary provisions Bill, which is not entirely unsatisfactory. We, like the Liberal Democrats, believe that the Bill should not remain on the statute book any longer than necessary. Amendment 1A says that the Bill can stay on the statute book until the end of April. My honourable friend Mr Mark Hoban moved a similar amendment in another place yesterday, with the date of 31 March. The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, accused me of having my tongue in my cheek when I moved that date to 30 April. Perhaps I might explain that I have used that slightly longer date because of the Government's decision not to proceed along the lines earlier agreed; that has set back the timetable of getting the Bill through. If a general election comes along before we have concluded our deliberations on a longer Bill, I would hope that we could have completed sufficient scrutiny to allow that arcane process known as wash-up to deal with the rest of the Bill. That might have to stretch into April, depending on when the election is called—assuming, of course, that an election is held on 6 May. I think that that is most people’s working assumption, although it could be later. The date of 31 July, proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, causes real problems in the context of the general election, which is why if she chooses to test the opinion of the Committee, we will not support her on it. If the Government do nothing in respect of the draft Bill in Command Paper 7806, a new Government formed in early May would not have enough time to process the Bill in the ordinary way—that is to say, using the normal intervals and processes by 31 July. I would hope that if my party formed that Government, we would review and amend the draft before putting it before Parliament. A July sunset would be the most undesirable outcome in that context. If we cannot deal with the issue this side of an election on an expedited process, then, as I explained, we will need a longer period—quite possibly until the end of this year—to prepare legislation and then subject it to scrutiny in the normal way. I could have done as the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, has done and tabled detailed amendments to the Bill in order to debate the substantive concerns that remain with the formulation that appears in the 2009 terrorism order, but that is merely to tinker with an interim solution. Our strong preference is for Parliament to scrutinise the detailed legislative proposals in the context of draft legislation set out in Command Paper 7806 or something like it. I cannot force the Government to bring a draft Bill to Parliament, but if the sunset clause is set at a modest end-April date, that would require the Government to act now by introducing a draft Bill or something else, rather than sit on their hands and wait for another Government to clear up the mess. Of course I hope that my party will form the next Government and that Treasury Ministers will be led by my honourable friend Mr George Osborne. If we come to power, those Ministers will have quite enough to do to clear up the economy and the mess that it is in without having also to deal with the aftermath of a decade of incorrect use of statutory powers. That is why I hope the Government will think again and put proper primary legislation through the House as rapidly as possible.