Terrorist Asset-Freezing etc. Bill [HL]

Perhaps I may be permitted to start the ball rolling before my noble friend Lord Pannick speaks. I am sure that your Lordships are waiting to hear his views, but as I did not have an opportunity to take part in the Second Reading debate, perhaps I may express my views on the amendments first. The government amendments were published only on Monday, so I saw them only yesterday. We have not had long to reflect on them, but one thing that is clear is that the Government have listened to what was said on Second Reading, they have studied carefully what was said in the excellent report of the Constitution Committee and they may even have had a preview of what the Home Office review will say on the subject. On any view, the Government have kept an open mind on the matter up till now, which should surely be a subject for congratulation. If I may say so from the safety of the Cross Benches, that makes a welcome change. The amendments now proposed are so fundamental that at this stage we need another Second Reading debate, particularly in relation to what is proposed in the appeal to the High Court on fact as well as on law. That is a fundamental change of huge importance, and we will come to that later. On the matters covered by this group of amendments, I start with the new interim designation order. That seems to be the logical starting point, although of course it will come later chronologically as we go through the Bill. There may be those in the Committee who will object to ““reasonable suspicion”” in relation to the interim designation order. Some may prefer ““reasonable belief”” in that context, as well as in the context of the final designation order. I do not share that view. Reading the new clause took me back to what I wrote in 1996 on page 86 of my report. I have many spare copies of that report at home if anyone would like to see one. That was of course long before 9/11 and long before Resolution 1373. I said then that there should, exceptionally, be a power to freeze assets before the suspect is arrested or charged. It should be open to the police to go before a judge ex parte—that is, without notice to the defendant—and satisfy him that they have reasonable grounds for suspecting that the defendant is about to commit a terrorist offence. I recognised then that that would be a radical step to take but I said that it was justified because of the paramount need to neutralise terrorist funding before the terrorist offence is committed. Therefore, I have no difficulty at all with ““reasonable suspicion”” in relation to the interim designation order. The problem as I see it is somewhat different. If the designee, if I can call him that, is able to go before the judge as soon as he has notice of the order, as is now intended, would it not be altogether more sensible for the judge to make the order in the first place? That is how it is done in other branches of the criminal law, so why not here? What is the reason for the Treasury making the order itself rather than applying in the ordinary way, with which we are all familiar, to the judge? So much for interim designation orders. I turn to the final designation order. Of course I welcome the change from ““suspect”” to ““believe””, although in practice there may not be quite as much difference between those two things as is sometimes supposed. The real problem here, as indeed in the case of interim designation orders, is that, a fortiori, if we are to impose a permanent designation on the individual, we surely need something much more solid than either suspicion or belief. We need fact. Before we impose a final designation order or final freezing order on all his assets, the defendant must surely have been arrested or charged with some criminal offence. That was certainly my view in 1996 and it is certainly Liberty’s view today in its, as always, excellent briefing paper. However, more important than either of those, it was the view of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Phillips, in Ahmed. In that case, he referred to paragraph 1(c) of Resolution 1373 and then went on as follows: "““Thus what the Resolution requires is the freezing of the assets of criminals. The natural way of giving effect to this requirement would be by freezing the assets of those convicted of or charged with the offences in question. This would permit the freezing of assets pending trial on a criminal charge, but would make the long-term freezing of assets dependent upon conviction of the relevant criminal offence to the criminal standard of proof””." As I understood the noble Lord, Lord Sassoon, he does not accept that, and he does not accept that that is the view formed by the Supreme Court. But with great respect, it seems to me that that was its view. It comes to this. The noble Lord has gone a very long way to meeting all the problems that we raised on Second Reading and that have been raised elsewhere. But I ask him to go one step further. Can he agree between now and Report that the final orders should be made by a judge on the application of the Treasury? If so, he will have my complete support on that occasion. And more importantly, it will be in line with what I believe was the intention of the Supreme Court in Ahmed.