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

The Minister spoke on Government amendment No. 60 and said that the non-jury court provisions in Northern Ireland are not, according to his notes, the Diplock courts. There have been changes in the past couple of years. The House passed legislation to do away with the emergency provisions in Northern Ireland in 2006 and then provided the Justice and Security (Northern Ireland) Act 2007 to bring back a number of those emergency provisions, including non-jury trials, essentially continuing the Diplock courts. They might have been on a different basis, but they were non-jury courts none the less. The Minister referred to the fact that under the 2007 Act the DPP for Northern Ireland will issue a certificate deeming that there will be a non-jury trial. That certificate is not challengeable in a court or by a court. None of that is changed by the Government's amendment. As the Minister said, the DPP has four grounds to use for a certificate and does not have to declare any of those grounds on the certificate. No one has any way of challenging it, judicially reviewing it or anything else. The person concerned, their lawyers, the general public and everybody else will not know which of the four conditions the DPP decided was satisfied and therefore warranted a non-jury trial. The first condition arises if the accused is a member of a proscribed organisation or has at any time been a member of an organisation that was at any time proscribed. The DPP will make that judgment and nobody will know where it has come from, on what information it is based or even what the organisation might be. Condition two is that"““the offence or any of the offences was committed on behalf of a proscribed organisation””" or that such an"““organisation was otherwise involved with, or assisted in, the carrying out of the offence””." Again, nobody will know any of the details. Condition three is that"““an attempt has been made to prejudice the investigation””." Of course, there is the issue of whether someone is an associate of a member of a proscribed organisation, too. None of the conditions is changed by the removal of the fourth condition by the Government's amendment. The fourth condition is that"““the offence…was committed to any extent (whether directly or indirectly) as a result of, in connection with or in response to religious or political hostility””." In so far as the amendment reduces the grounds on which the highly arbitrary certificates can be issued, we welcome it as a departure from the norm in Northern Ireland. It will mean that the DPP will no longer be able to issue such a certificate to demand a non-jury trial simply because the crime has been religiously or politically motivated. That is a small, welcome improvement, but it does not take away from the fact that we still have continuity when it comes to Diplock courts. The Minister might say that his notes say they are not Diplock courts, but we cannot believe that they are not when they are non-jury trials determined for unchallengeable reasons. The certificates do not have to state any grounds or any evidence. Indeed, when the 2007 Act was being passed, the then Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Neath (Mr. Hain), told us that the DPP could act simply on the basis of information given to him by the intelligence services. He even said that the DPP could simply say to the judge—the judge might want to ask in advance, and could be told privately—that it was based on certain information, but that nothing could be said or asked in court. Although I welcome the fact that the Government have seen fit to chip away at one bit of the provisions for non-jury trial that they belatedly added to the 2007 Act, they do not go far enough. Of course, we have the odd situation whereby as a result of the legislation passed last year—and of this Bill, if it is passed—the DPP for Northern Ireland will be able to insist on non-jury trials on grounds that are completely secret and unchallengeable if a terrorist offence is related to the affairs of Northern Ireland, but if it is a wider terrorist offence, there will be an absolute guarantee of a jury trial. That is an odd anomaly to ask the people of Northern Ireland to accept. If the group is al-Qaeda, a jury trial will be guaranteed. However, it will be a non-jury trial if it is some other group, name and link unstated and unspecified, with no evidence produced in court, with the court not allowed to ask questions and with people left to think the worst—in fact, some hon. Members went so far as to want the 2007 Act to be amended to ensure that a court could draw an inference from the fact that a certificate had been issued. Clearly, Northern Ireland needs even more revision of the 2007 Act than the Government amendment provides. The amendment is a very limited improvement. It is welcome to that degree, but we need to see a lot more. I am not in any way as hostile to or critical of amendment No. 9. We have a more chequered view of the amendments tabled by the Lib Dems and the Tories. I can see the sense of some of them, but I do not think that others necessarily add any significant improvement to the Bill. In fact, they might create some technical difficulties.