Civil Procedure (Amendment No.4) Rules 2010

My Lords, I am scripted to say that this has been an interesting debate, but it has been a short, focused and to-the-point exchange. I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Davidson of Glen Clova, for being short, sharp and to the point in asking me some key questions about these new court rules. The noble and learned Lord asked about the distinction between suspicion and belief, and what, if anything, that says about our underlying concern for national security as balanced with proper safeguards on grounds of civil liberties. As the noble and learned Lord will know, various court judgments define the difference between reasonable suspicion and belief. In summary, for suspicion, one believes that something may be so and, for belief, one believes that it is so. I am certainly not in a position to second-guess the courts, which have judged that there are significant differences. The Government certainly believe that national security requirements can be met by this combination of interim freezes for up to 30 days on the basis of reasonable suspicion, during which time further investigations can be made to determine whether the belief can be met. We believe that this balance between the national security and the civil liberties imperatives, which was extensively debated in your Lordships’ House, achieves what is intended. The court rules merely flow from that. I certainly do not think that the court rules in any way cut across or work against that construct. On the role of the courts and judicial review versus appeal, the question was asked whether these instruments will result in a strengthening or a lessening of the protection of the public or, indeed, of the appellant. As a non-lawyer, I understand that what has been striking in the way that the courts have interpreted judicial review recently is that—in a national security context and, specifically, in relation to control orders—courts have increasingly approached judicial review in a way that is substantively similar to that of an appeal process. When considering the control order in the MB case, the Court of Appeal made it clear that it could substitute its own view for that of the Minister when deciding whether reasonable suspicion existed. We had expected the court to take a similar approach in relation to asset freezes, which would bring judicial review and appeal, in substance, close together in this area. In part, the approach we took in the 2010 Act was to formalise, in effect, what the courts were moving towards. It is better if, in reality, the substance of what the courts were moving towards was an appeal, but we actually put in the legislation, as Parliament has seen fit to do, a full appeals process and then the court rules follow from that. The noble and learned Lord’s question, in a sense, falls away because the courts have been bringing the two processes increasingly closer together. On the role of the European Court of Human Rights, we do not think that the rules we are looking at here and the thresholds for suspicion and belief will mean any material change as to whether, why and how the ECHR can intervene in any particular case. Without commenting on the discussion on these issues over the weekend, I do not think that anything we are doing in the Act or the rules which we are considering today touches materially on those concerns. I hope I addressed the less than perfect drafting in my opening remarks. The first of the two issues is a stylistic point that is an omission, but it does not have substantive effect. In the second case, it is clear from the context that the words, ““the application”” refer to the application to the Court of Appeal and so I think there is no question of possible misinterpretation of the statutory instruments and no substantive risk of being challenged in court. In any event, it will be up to the Civil Procedure Rule Committee to be able to amend the rules should that committee deem it necessary. I hope I have been able to deal adequately with the noble and learned Lord’s points as I believe it is important that these rules are approved today. They provide the framework for those designated under the Terrorist Asset-Freezing etc. Act 2010 to challenge their asset freeze designation under the new appeals procedure. The court rules will ensure that rigorous scrutiny is given to the relevant decision, while at the same time protecting sensitive material from damaging public disclosure. Therefore, I commend these rules to the Committee. Motion agreed.