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

I shall not detain the House long, but I want to say a few words about amendment No. 111, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) spoke. The only objection to the amendment appears to be that, in evidence to the Committee, the Lord Advocate said that she did not feel it was necessary. I have worked with the hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) on many Bills, and I have a high regard for him. I listened to him carefully, and I was struck by his apparent willingness to be just a little slapdash. He is famous for dotting i's and crossing t's—he often dots i's and crosses t's that the rest of us do not know are there to be dotted and crossed—but he was prepared to say earlier that the matter covered by the amendment could be left to convention and existing working relationships. The point of which the House is not properly seized is that the clause adds a new, radical dimension to that relationship. The existing convention may at some future date simply be insufficient to deal with it. Where there are cross-border elements to the planning or execution of a criminal act, criminal procedure already allows for it to be tried in the most appropriate jurisdiction. That is well established, and it works in criminal courts on both sides of the border, week in and week out. The novelty is that the Bill will for the first time allow a crime that is wholly planned and executed in Scotland to be tried somewhere other than Scotland. The only occasion when that happened was the trial of the Lockerbie bombers. It took place in Holland, which, for the purposes of the trial, was deemed to be Scotland, so the idea did not work. Full account has to be taken of that novelty. I take the views of the Lord Advocate exceptionally seriously. I hold her in the highest possible regard. As the hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield pointed out, she has quite remarkably survived regime change. She was originally nominated to her position by a Labour-Liberal Democrat Administration, and was then nominated for a slightly different position by the incoming Scottish National party Government. It is reasonably well known in some circles that she was my first boss when I was a trainee solicitor. I find it very difficult to take issue with her views. However, having considered the terms of her evidence to the Committee, I do not think that what she said constitutes a barrier to the House agreeing to amendment No. 111, if it were pressed to a Division. As I said to the hon. and learned Gentleman, the amendment will not create any particular barrier. If it is a codification of an existing convention, there is no harm in having it in the Bill. If the point came when a case was removed from the jurisdiction of the Scottish courts without the consent of the Lord Advocate, it would be not only a constitutional crisis, as one hon. Member said, but too late, because there would be absolutely nothing to stop it happening.