Counter-Terrorism Bill (Programme) (No. 2)

These amendments relate to three distinct provisions in the Bill: UK-wide jurisdiction, aggravated sentencing and forfeiture. Clause 28 creates UK-wide jurisdiction for terrorism offences. A number of concerns about the clause were raised in Committee, and I hope that the House will agree that Government amendments Nos. 60 and 9 respond to those. It was pointed out fairly in Committee that there was at least potential for the clause's provisions to mean that an individual could be transferred to the Northern Ireland jurisdiction and fall straight under the non-jury trial provisions there. As I said in Committee, that was never the Bill's intention on jurisdiction, which is why I undertook to examine the matter further. Perhaps I may explain some of the background to this matter. The non-jury trial arrangements in the Justice and Security (Northern Ireland) Act 2007 are extremely narrowly drawn, not least in the wake of the peace process, which is happily unfolding. They are designed to deal solely with the residual risks to the administration of justice created by community and paramilitary-based pressures on jurors in Northern Ireland. Sadly, jurors in Northern Ireland remain vulnerable to threats to the safety of themselves and their families, and bribery and blackmail are used to influence jurors to reach particular verdicts. Those issues are exacerbated by the small, close-knit nature of communities in Northern Ireland, and they remain so acute that the special arrangements in the 2007 Act were put in place to ensure that fair trials could be delivered and that the safety of jurors could be protected. There is a presumption for jury trial in all cases, and non-jury trial will be available only in exceptional cases. That is the opposite of the Diplock arrangements, whereby the default was non-jury trial for certain offences. I have been told, nay upbraided, by the Home Office lawyers that I cannot call this Diplock by shorthand and that I must refer to non-jury trial. A non-jury trial can take place only if the Director of Public Prosecutions for Northern Ireland issues a certificate on the basis that he is satisfied that one or more of the conditions in the legislation is met and, in view of that, there is a risk that the administration of justice might be impaired if the trial were to be conducted with a jury. The conditions are the following: first, that the defendant is a member, or associate of a member, of a proscribed organisation connected with the affairs of Northern Ireland; secondly, that the offence was committed on behalf of a proscribed organisation connected with the affairs of Northern Ireland; thirdly, that an attempt has been made to prejudice the investigation or prosecution of the offence by, or with the involvement of, a proscribed organisation connected with the affairs of Northern Ireland; and fourthly, that the offence was committed as a result of, in connection with, or in response to religious or political hostility—the serious sectarianism that still prevails, happily only in some small part, in Northern Ireland. As the House will have noticed, the first three of the conditions are expressly limited to proscribed organisations connected to the affairs of Northern Ireland. Although the fourth condition implicitly refers to Northern Ireland, not least because it is in a Northern Ireland-related Act, it could be interpreted as allowing the transfer of cases to a non-jury trial in Northern Ireland where the terrorism is not connected to the affairs of Northern Ireland. I appreciate—rather laboriously—that amendment No. 60 would thus ensure that a case could not be transferred to a non-jury trial solely on the basis of that fourth condition. In other words, a prosecution could be transferred from Great Britain to a non-jury trial in Northern Ireland only where it was connected to the activities of a proscribed terrorist organisation in Northern Ireland and where the other conditions set out in the 2007 Act and clause 28 are met. The likelihood of circumstances arising where all those conditions would be met is extremely low, and, as such, I believe that the amendment provides sufficient reassurance that a defendant could not be transferred to Northern Ireland under the jurisdiction provided by clause 28 with the result that he be tried without a jury—the Committee mentioned that—unless his offence was connected with a Northern Ireland terrorist group, in which circumstance we feel that it is appropriate to preserve the DPP for Northern Ireland's discretion to provide for the trial to take place without a jury under the regime that has been put in place to take account of the particular challenges facing the administration of justice in Northern Ireland. The non-jury trial system in Northern Ireland is risk-based, which means that only those cases where non-jury trial is necessary to ensure that the administration of justice is not impaired are tried by a judge sitting alone. I thought that the reasons outlined in the Committee's debate were perfectly fair, and, as I indicated, it was not the Government's intention to have people presented to a non-jury trial in Northern Ireland, erroneously or otherwise, in that context. The amendment is a laborious if elegant way—that might be a contradiction in terms—to get round that and to ensure that what the Committee did not want to happen does not happen. Amendment No. 9 arises from the deliberations of the Committee. It proposes to remove subsection (7) of clause 28 to ensure that measures providing UK-wide jurisdiction for terrorist offences cannot have retrospective application. The Committee was, quite fairly, at pains to express that point. Although we could envisage a cross-border incident occurring before the jurisdiction provisions are implemented, that is unlikely, and if it were to occur there could be separate prosecutions, as at present. I am therefore content to remove the subsection, and I ask hon. Members to support the amendment. If I may, I shall speak just to the Government amendments. I shall, of course, respond to hon. Members as they propose their own measures. I might, thus, have some time to get rid of this fly, which has been pestering me for the past half an hour.