Coroners and Justice Bill

I must first correct the Secretary of State. He said that I was a member of the Chilcot committee, but I was not a member of the original committee. The Conservative representative on that committee was Lord Hurd of Westwell, and I took his place when the committee changed its responsibility and began to supervise the work of the officials in the Home Office who have sought a way to meet the nine tests set out by the original committee. Although we have not yet achieved the objective of finding a scheme that meets those tests, those officials have been carrying out their work thoroughly and conscientiously in their attempt to meet that objective. I decided that I should contribute to this debate because of my membership of the committee and I am therefore primarily concerned with the question of the admissibility of intercept evidence. Until the contribution by the hon. Member for Cambridge (David Howarth), it looked as if I need not trouble the House with my contribution, because—in sharp contrast to what happened in the other place—there seemed to be a splendid degree of consensus this evening on this subject. Indeed, until this happy consensus descended on the House, I thought at one point that I would be in the very unfamiliar position of voting with the Government against my own party. Happily, that will not be necessary. It is worth setting out the history of the matter, partly to excuse the fact that my contribution lacks all novelty. I am here to repeat the arguments that I put before the House on the Second Reading of the Counter-Terrorism Bill on 10 June 2008 and the Second Reading of this Bill on 23 March this year. After I made my intervention on the former, the provisions that would have made intercept evidence admissible at coroners' inquests were removed from the Bill. I do not lay claim to a causal connection between my intervention and the removal of the provisions: I merely set out the facts. I was therefore somewhat surprised when this Bill appeared and those provisions reappeared. Once again, I voiced my opposition on Second Reading, and once again—this time at Committee stage in the other place—the Government removed them from the Bill, and I was happy to see that. It is noteworthy that on that occasion they were removed from the Bill without a Division. It therefore came as an even greater surprise that, on Report in the other place, those amendments designed to provide for the admissibility of intercept evidence were put back into the Bill, this time against the wishes of the Government but at the behest of both the principal Opposition parties in the other place. I am especially grateful to my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) for accepting the Government's view that to put those provisions in this Bill would have damaging and profound consequences for our intercept regime, which makes it unnecessary for me to take the very unfamiliar position of supporting the Government in the Lobby this evening. It is important that the House understands that I do not take this position because I object in principle to the admissibility of intercept evidence. On the contrary, I have made it clear on numerous occasions, both in the House and outside, that I would very much like to see provision made for intercept material to be admitted in evidence, especially in cases of those accused of terrorism and other serious criminal offences. But things are not as simple as that. They are certainly not as simple as was suggested by the hon. Member for Cambridge. The work that has been carried out by the officials in the Home Office, and which has been supervised by the Chilcot committee in its present form, has been exhaustive, and it continues. The nine tests that were set out by the original Chilcot committee were necessary if we were to protect a capability of the greatest importance in keeping the people of our country safe. It is one of the frustrating things about the argument that one cannot go very far into the details of justifying the need for those tests without getting perilously close to putting the capability at risk. I am sure that the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), who sits on the committee with me, would agree, although I must point out that I do not speak for the committee. It would be foolhardy to retain in the Bill the provisions that were inserted on Report in the other place. They do not meet the tests of the original Chilcot committee and, if they were to remain in the Bill, they would be a risk to this country's strategic intelligence capability that no responsible Government should take.