Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Bill

My Lords, this clause gives the Home Secretary power to impose measures for terrorism prevention—so in many ways she is acting like a judge—and investigation, so she is behaving like the DPP. That is not right. You cannot combine functions that belong to the courts and the Director of Public Prosecutions into one person. That is always going to be problematic. In this country, one of the greatest joys is that no one is deprived of their liberty unless they have committed an offence defined in law, been investigated and gone before a court, which in the end imposes the deprivation of liberty. Of course, you tell me, ““This is the United Kingdom; the Home Secretary could never be near this””. In Uganda, if the President felt that you were committing treason, he made an order and you found yourself arrested, locked up and deprived of the possibility of any defence. Of course, you would say, ““That is terrible; it should not be like that””. Friends, it happened to me. Therefore, I feel where you are going at the moment, if you are going to deprive and impose specific measures on a person, surely it should be by application to the courts, and it would be the duty of the Home Secretary to present evidence that persuades a judge. Of course, we will be told that the Home Secretary will act very quickly. As the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, said, it can be done ex parte, very quickly; there is no reason that cannot happen. For the sake of those of us who came to enjoy the separation of the Executive from the judiciary and still see it as the greatest defence for the liberties of people, I hope that the Government will accept that this will be an improvement to the Bill if this separation is made. There should be no doctrinaire stuff about it. In the end, it cannot really be the same person who does all this. Thank God, I will never be Home Secretary. If I were, I would find this clause terrifying, because in my conscience I would not want to be the judge, jury and executioner all in the same place—and the DPP as well, all combined into one. For the sake, therefore, of keeping this fantastic balance of the Executive and the judiciary never meddling with one another, this legislature would do well to accept all of the amendments that have been tabled by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick. This is what I rejoice about in this country—its liberty and its separation of powers.