Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism

I rise to speak to my Committee's report—the 14th to be published in this Parliament on counter-terrorism policy. Like every other report, we begin by agreeing with the Government on the importance of the obligations imposed on them by human rights law to take effective steps to protect the public from the real threat of terrorism. However, we have consistently raised a number of human rights concerns about the legislation on control orders. Those concerns include:""The lack of opportunity for proper parliamentary scrutiny","""The severe extent of the obligations imposed, which have appeared to us to be so restrictive as to amount to the deprivation of liberty"," as well as the lack of due process, particularly""the lack of opportunity to challenge closed material"." They also include:""The seriousness or otherwise of the Government's commitment to prosecution"," and the lack of an exit strategy. The only thing that we welcome is the fact that we got the reviewer's report a month in advance of this debate, following our recommendation—which had been repeated on many occasions—that we should be allowed time to give proper consideration to it. The concluding observations of the United Nations Human Rights Committee on the UK's compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights included a recommendation that the Government should ensure that the judicial process for challenging the imposition of a control order complies with the principle of equality of arms, which it clearly does not. Mention has been made of the ECHR judgment in the Grand Chamber of 19 February. That concerned Belmarsh detainees, but the issues in that case are exactly the same as those affecting control orders. The Court said that special advocates could not perform their function of safeguarding the detainee's interests during closed hearings in any useful way unless the detainee was provided with sufficient information about the allegations against him. We also drew attention to the report of the Eminent Jurists Panel on Terrorism, Counter-terrorism and Human Rights, published on 17 February, which expresses concern about a "parallel legal system" developing, so undermining the rule of law. The orders are punitive. We have seen curfews of up to 16 hours and, on average, they have gone up on from running for 10 hours last year to 13 hours in this report. Lord Brown, who ruled on this, has been misquoted. His actual view, as reported, was:""It may be… that 16 hours it is too long. I would, however, leave it to the Strasbourg Court to decide upon that"." The Government have interpreted that as if he was saying that 16 hours is the benchmark, but that is not what Lord Brown said at all. I have many concerns about the issue of due process. We produced a whole series of recommendations when we debated the Counter-Terrorism Bill in the last Session, but, unfortunately, the Government did not accept any of them. I nevertheless urge the Government to consider again at least providing a statement of at least the gist of any closed material in accordance with the decision of the European Court—and, I hope, the forthcoming decision of the House of Lords—as that is the key issue in the case being tried today. The Minister's predecessor offered to meet the special advocates who planned to describe to him the inherent potential unfairness in the regime, but, unfortunately, that Minister did not keep his promise, as he was shifted to another position before, I suspect, he had the opportunity to do so. I hope that the current Minister will undertake to keep that promise.