Justice and Security (Northern Ireland) Bill

The noble Lord’s amendments deal with two connected but separate matters. One, as has just been apparent from the intervention by the noble Lord, Lord Trimble, relates to Clause 7. I shall deal with that first before coming back to Amendment No. 14 and the following amendments, which provide a new potential procedure to deal with DPP certificates. I anticipate that we will shortly be coming to deal with Clause 7 in more detail, so I will simply say this at this stage: Amendment No. 16, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Glentoran, would add two further grounds for challenge to Clause 7—lack of jurisdiction and error of law. While I recognise that those are common grounds for judicial review, I am at something of a loss to see how quite they would arise in relation to our provisions in a way that would make them fall outside the guidelines of bad faith, dishonesty and other exceptional circumstances, which are laid down in the clause. Certainly I have difficulty seeing how lack of jurisdiction arises. I am not sure that it would be necessary to put those in, because if a court were of the view that there was an error of law—at least, such an error of law as to vitiate the certificate, as it were—it would regard that as falling within the category of ““exceptional circumstances””, which is undefined. The noble Lord may have some particular examples in mind, and at some stage he may want to give me those. I see the noble Lord rising.