Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism

I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman for that point. He is absolutely right: the evidentiary standard is particularly low and there is no appeal. It is particularly low because it involves merely a reasonable suspicion on the part of the Home Secretary, which is broadly the evidentiary basis that the Director of Public Prosecutions requires to charge someone with counter-terrorism offences. My party argues that control orders breach the right to a fair hearing. A person does not know what they are suspected of. They have a limited ability to challenge and defend themselves, and the Government have said that""introducing a requirement always to provide a summary is not appropriate".—[Official Report, House of Lords, 21 October 2008; Vol. 704, c. 1085.]" This is surely a truly Kafkaesque situation, in which someone is held without even knowing the gist of the suspicions held against them. That will no doubt be one of the key factors in the case going to the Law Lords, which has been reported this week. Furthermore, there is a reliance on secret intelligence, which, by definition, may be all the less reliable for being secret, precisely because sources are not open to scrutiny, cross-examination or challenge. For all we know, intelligence may have been gained through torture around the world; as we know from the recent case of Binyam Mohamed, we unfortunately cannot rule that out. Intelligence can be wrong—very wrong. Mistaken identity is a fairly common problem. The most famous example is, of course, Jean Charles de Menezes, but another is that of Lotfi Raissi, the Algerian pilot whose life was ruined by intelligence-fuelled suspicions that ultimately proved to be entirely groundless. The grand chamber of the European Court of Human Rights in A v. the United Kingdom is the highest court to have looked at these matters, and it states very clearly that its recent decision, and I quote the Joint Committee on Human Rights""leaves no room for doubt that basic fairness requires that at the very least the controlled person be provided with the gist of the closed material which supports the allegations made against them"." A second issue is the sheer interminability of these orders. There are no time limits and control orders can last for long periods. Two current cases have gone on for more than three years. Effectively, that is indefinite detention. Is that really acceptable as part of our criminal justice system? Moreover, there is a legal world within a legal world. If someone breaches their control order, they can be prosecuted and convicted. As Lord Carlile points out, three of the current 15 people affected face trials soon for breaching the terms of their orders. Although there is no evidence to bring against them in a court of law on any substantive matter, they have been made subject to a control order, and if they breach it, that becomes a criminal offence. Although they cannot face substantive charges, that is surely Orwellian. The passage of time is one reason control orders should not be continued. The danger is that the longer someone is held, the greater is the chance that they are entirely innocent.