Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Bill

It is an enormous pleasure, as always, to follow my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood). It has also been an enormous pleasure to listen to the contributions from other right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House. At the outset, I want to make it clear that the issues with which the Bill grapples are not, as I suspect many Members have found, necessarily easy. I have not found them easy. For my part, during my consideration of the measures proposed by the Government I have from time to time changed my mind, or at least changed the direction in which I thought I was travelling, before finally alighting on the position that I intend to set forth this evening. What, then, is the dilemma for all Members? On the one hand, it seems plain from the responses to the Government's consultation that there is general agreement among the majority of those who offered their views that in the case of a very few individuals there is a continuing need for the Government to have access to the sort of powers proposed in this Bill to protect the public from potential harm. One simple reason for that, as the responses make clear and as I, at least, am persuaded, is that in the case of some of those very few individuals prosecutions are impossible for either security or legal reasons. By the same token, not every threat to national security is or has yet become a criminal offence. Are such threats to be ignored, as some would urge us to do? I venture to suggest not. On the other hand, the suggestion that the sort of powers that we see in this Bill should exist at all—they effectively permit the Executive to detain individuals without trial—is naturally abhorrent to Members of this House and is regarded as such on both sides, as it is by all right-thinking people. It is said with force that we now have, and that within the memory of this House we have always had, a system of open justice and it is legitimate to ask, as many Members have done, why in those circumstances we should make even one exception, no matter how carefully hedged about with safeguards, to the principles that have long underpinned our democracy and the rule of law in this country. The question, then, is how that dilemma is to be resolved. That is essentially the question faced by the House in deciding whether to give the Bill a Second Reading. Differing from hon. Members of all parties and some people outside the House who advocate the complete revocation of any system of civil measures that interferes with the rights of the individual, I have come to the view that what the Government propose, subject to the amendments that will no doubt be made in Committee, strikes the right balance for reasons that I shall come on to. That is, I accept, my judgment. It is my opinion, consistent with the position that my conscience dictates, but that is not to say—and I do not say—that it is the only view that it is possible to take. This is very much one of those issues where reasonable people may come to completely contrary conclusions and where Members have come to contrary conclusions. My task, if I have one at all, is to explain in the course of this debate how I have come to my conclusion and my reasons for having done so. The starting point—I suspect that all Members would agree that this should always be the starting point for any Government, but it is one which might perhaps have been lost sight of from time to time during the course of the debate—is that the primary duty of the state to its citizens is to keep them safe. National security and public safety are and must always remain the first duty of the Government, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State made clear in her statement on 23 May 2011 and as the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), the shadow Home Secretary, acknowledged in her opening remarks in this debate. If one accepts, as I think one must, that that is the starting point, it must in my judgment follow that if there are circumstances in which those who threaten the United Kingdom from within her own borders cannot, for whatever reasons, adequately be dealt with by a system of open criminal justice, which I accept should remain the norm in the vast majority of cases, their rights cannot override those of the majority to the safety of their existence, which the Government are bound to protect. In one sense, of course, this is a question of degree. Is the derogation from the ordinary principles of the rule of law and the rights of the subject that this Bill entails justified given the threat that we know we face at the beginning of the 21st century? In my opinion—I stress again that it is my opinion and that others are driven to a different view by their consciences—it is. We have merely to look at some of the events that we have witnessed during the past decade, such as the bombings of 7 July 2005 in London, to know what may happen when the balance is poorly or inappropriately struck. Of course I do not for a moment suggest that the mere existence of the measures in the Bill—of TPIMs—or even of the existing regime of control orders can ensure that such events will never happen. However, if one wonders, as I do, whether future atrocities might be prevented by proportionate derogations from generally accepted minimum standards regarding the rights of the subject—derogations that can and must be kept to a minimum, as I think all Members accept—it is my belief that they might. It follows that the existence of a regime that is necessary to protect the public, such as that contained in the Bill, cannot be avoided given the world in which we live. The matter can be viewed in this way: many Members on both sides of the House will quite properly oppose the Bill's Second Reading, or will at least have indicated that they will not give it a Third Reading in its current form. However, let me posit an eventuality that I hope will not occur—circumstances in which someone who might have been subject to a TPIM is instrumental in a future atrocity that results in our fellow citizens being maimed or killed. Would it, in those circumstances, be right that the Bill fell today or in future? I suggest not, for that would be to strike the wrong balance between the rule of law and the first duty of the Government, which I have already outlined. I accept that none of this is easy. My view, I am perfectly prepared to accept, may be wrong. It may even, as the courts will be able to inquire given that there will now be no possibility of derogation from the law relating to the rights of the subject, be unlawful, although I think not as the Bill has been carefully drawn. However, it is the view to which I am driven by a consideration of the issues I have outlined and by the horrendous possibility of being wrong and, in being wrong, of failing to prevent a potential terrorist outrage. The second argument that drives me to support the Government's proposals and therefore to lend my support to the Bill's Second Reading is the very fact that there are certain rights that I and the vast majority of people consider to be inalienable, the most important of which is the right to life. That this right is inalienable seems to me naturally to entail the proposition that it should, by the nature of the law as it should be framed, be protected—if necessary at the expense of other lesser rights, which are not necessarily inalienable. Schedule 1 identifies a series of measures that the Secretary of State may take, should the Bill become law, which would undoubtedly interfere with the second of those groups of rights. It enables the state to obstruct the liberty of the citizen, to oblige him or her to comply with the directions of those who exercise its authority and to disturb the free enjoyment of property rights. However, not one of those rights is, or at least should be, regarded as absolute and inalienable. The right to life and to security, in the sense of freedom from hurt or injury, is in a different category altogether. As the Bill makes clear throughout, particularly from the safeguards with which it is hedged, it is that right that is being protected and the other, lesser rights that are being obstructed. That cannot but indicate, as many Members on both sides have noted, that a balance is being struck. Whether it is the right balance will be a question that future historians will no doubt assess.