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Justice and Northern Ireland

We published a number of concordats and protocols relating to these measures, including one on the independence of the judiciary and another on the independence of the Public Prosecution Service. Let me remind the Minister of a statement made on 13 December 2006 by the then Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Neath (Mr. Hain), about the question of the issue of certificates for no-jury trials by the Director of Public Prosecutions. The right hon. Gentleman said:""if the DPP judges that there is a risk to the safe administration of justice because of information that he has received, the source of which is a matter for national security in terms of intelligence and so on, he is entitled to go to the judge and say, 'This is a certificate for a juryless trial.' I am not trying to suggest anything else, anything more or anything less than that."—[Official Report, 13 December 2006; Vol. 454, c. 903.]" Matters that are surely perfectly plain—the independence of the judiciary and the independence of the DPP—are clearly qualified, in that strings can be pulled when there are national security and intelligence considerations.