Terrorist Asset-Freezing etc. Bill [HL]

My Lords, in the debate on Second Reading on 29 July, I supported the noble Baronesses, Lady Hamwee and Lady Falkner, and the noble Lords, Lord Pannick and Lord Myners, in suggesting that ““reasonable suspicion”” provided too low a threshold for action that would violate a person’s liberty, privacy and financial interests. I prefer the term ““reasonable belief””. The difference between the two is that reasonable suspicion means that something may be so, whereas reasonable belief means that something is so. To me, the distinction is important. However, I congratulate the Government because at least they listened to the debate. The noble Lord, Lord Sassoon, argued in his reply that the test of reasonable suspicion was necessary to allow preventive action to be taken before any terrorist acts were actually committed. He cited the freezing of assets in connection with the transatlantic bomb plot in 2006. However, he indicated that he had listened to the arguments. Last Friday the Government tabled their amendments, which essentially create a distinction that I think is probably reasonable. The amendments create an interim designation that would expire after 30 days and a final designation that would be made subsequently. New clauses inserted after Clause 5 state that the test for an interim designation would be that of reasonable suspicion, while Amendment 2 amends Clause 2 to provide that the test for a final designation would be that of reasonable belief. This provides a way of allowing preventive freezing through a lower threshold of proof for a limited period. The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Hamwee and Lady Falkner, have tabled an alternative set of amendments that would apply a more rigorous test by substituting the test of reasonable belief in Clause 2—Amendment 3—and by providing that designation should expire after 30 days unless confirmed by the High Court. This would bring judicial review forward to an earlier stage in the proceedings and make it automatic rather than dependent on the lodging of an appeal. I have only just seen these amendments with the publication of the Marshalled List, but my initial inclination is to think that they do not meet the point about preventive action, which is at the heart of the Bill. Noble Lords will remember that UN Resolution 1373, adopted in 2001, required member states to prevent the financing of terrorist acts, including the freezing of funds, and to prevent their nationals and those within their territories from making funds and resources available: so it was intended to prevent actions. On that particular bit, I am happy with this two-pronged approach: first, an interim designation, and then after 30 days an actual designation. But I am not sure why the final designation is not to be made by the High Court. Why have we not gone that little bit further? I understand the interim designation because we need to stop people, as the United Nations requires us to do. Indeed, we are here today simply because the Supreme Court has ruled that the orders that have been made by Order in Council should not have been made in that way. It said not that they were not right but that they should have been made through an Act of Parliament. I suggest that, in keeping with UN Resolution 1373, and with Resolution 1452 in December 2002, the interim designation that is being attempted here goes a long way to meet my concern last time, but I am not so sure why, after a period of 30 days, the designation will not be made by the High Court.