Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Bill

My Lords, I congratulate the Minister on his promotion. As I am sure he has already found out, the Home Office poses challenges of an entirely different order from those of other departments. I wish him well in his responsibilities. I join in the tributes paid to my noble friend Lady Browning, who performed her ministerial duties in this House, as she did in the other place, with very great distinction. It is common ground in all parts of the Chamber that the best thing to do in respect of those who are suspected of involvement in terrorist activity is to prosecute them. We would all like that to happen. I welcome the fact that the Government are going some way towards making the process of prosecution easier by introducing post-charge questioning, which is something which I have advocated for some time. My noble friend Lady Hamwee mentioned at the end of her remarks the possibility of introducing intercept material as evidence in terrorist cases. Later in the debate the House will have the great benefit of hearing the wisdom of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick. Although I am not privy to what he is going to say, and I anticipate it at my peril, I should be astonished if he did not make at least some passing reference to the desirability of introducing intercept material as evidence. I have the dubious privilege of being a member of the advisory committee of privy counsellors charged with overseeing the work being carried out by Home Office officials in an attempt to achieve that objective. I was appointed to that committee by the previous Administration and reappointed by the present Administration. I joined the committee with a strong predisposition to making that evidence admissible. I had read the speeches of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, been impressed by them and largely agreed with them. I was extremely keen to see that the law was changed to make this possible. It may still be the case that that goal can be achieved, but I must tell the House that the difficulties in the way of achieving that objective are enormously greater than those that I had appreciated before I joined the advisory committee. Although I hope that we will be able to overcome those difficulties, I cannot pretend that I have enormous confidence that we will be able to do so. Therefore, the question the House has to consider, and the question which gives rise to the Bill, is: what do a Government and a society do in respect of people suspected of being involved in terrorist activity on the basis of material which is not admissible evidence in a court of law? I do not imagine that many people would suggest that that material can be ignored and that that society can be left at risk from those whom that material identifies as posing that risk. Of course, this is not a dilemma which is particular or special to our country; other countries face it as well. The President of the United States campaigned three years ago on a promise to close Guantanamo Bay within a year. Those who are detained in Guantanamo Bay are there because they cannot be prosecuted under the ordinary laws of the United States of America. Three years later, Guantanamo Bay has not been closed, not, I am quite certain, because of any lack of good faith on the part of President Obama, or because of any lack of desire on his part to make good his campaign promise, but because of the very real difficulties of the dilemma that I have identified, which, indeed, was posed aptly and eloquently by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford. Therefore, what every Government have to do in the face of that dilemma is to strike a balance between the need to protect the public from the risk that these people pose while at the same time minimising the extent to which there is any interference with the individual liberty of those who have not been prosecuted and convicted in a court of law, which is the course of action that we would all desire, were it possible. To that question of striking the balance, there is no single absolutely correct answer. It is a question of judgment, and that judgment is always the outcome of discussion, debate and argument. That is why I was not as impressed as perhaps he would have liked me to be by the suggestion by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, that the Bill is in some way to be regarded as less than ideal because it is the product of the coalition Government. The truth is that there will be in any Government—whether they be a single-party Government or a coalition—arguments, debates and discussions between different members of that Government as to where the balance should be struck. I was obviously not privy to the debates and discussions around the Cabinet table that led to the production of this Bill, but I would be very surprised if there were arguments simply between the Conservative members of the coalition on one side and the Liberal Democrat members on the other. I would suspect that there was a difference of view on both sides. That is the way in which our government works, it is the way in which it should work and decisions emerge as a result of those debates, discussions and arguments. Those decisions are frequently compromises between the different positions, and they are none the worse for that. So there is no merit in the point that the Bill should in any way be criticised because it is the outcome of the debates, discussions and arguments that took place within the coalition.