I do not think that is for this debate, but good try. I should follow the example of my boss and try not to antagonise the hon. Gentleman if I want him to vote with the Opposition on this matter. That may be contrary to what he said last Thursday, but it is in line with his party’s policy, what he did in Committee,
and what seems to be the current position in Liberal Democrat Voice. We have heard enough of that; let us consider the Joint Committee on Human Rights which stated in a short but telling paragraph in its most recent report:
“We also reiterate the recommendation in our first Report that the Bill provide for annual renewal, in view of the significance of what is being provided for and its radical departure from fundamental common law traditions.”
I am not sure one needs to go much further than that, and that lies at the heart of new clause 4.
Anyone who has sat through this debate, or previous debates in the other place or Committee, cannot be under any illusion that this Bill is complex, controversial and important, above all, for the reasons given by the hon. Member for Chichester (Mr Tyrie), it attacks and deals with fundamental issues of fair and open justice. It is also, I am afraid to say, confused—perhaps deliberately so—and has had a very confused birth. The Minister said that, contrary to comparable legislation, this Bill has made slow, stately and clear progress, but I beg to differ.
I do not think that anyone would quarrel with my assertion that the Bill is complex. It is complex even for lawyers, 702 of whom wrote to the Daily Mail last week saying that they would not support this part of the Bill. Views have been expressed either way on it, and I respect the views of lawyers from the senior judiciary and the Supreme Court, as well as of human rights lawyers and special advocates. We are not short of legal opinion on this matter, and it is not of one mind. Overwhelmingly, however, it takes the view that this is territory into which we should proceed with great care and great caution.
I do not think that the Minister would deny that the legislation was controversial, either. He will find similar sentiments on it being expressed in normally Conservative-supporting newspapers such as The Mail on Sunday and normally Liberal Democrat-supporting newspapers such as The Guardian. Huge amounts of thoughtful concern are being expressed across the press about the provisions.
I have heard the Minister without Portfolio say many times that secret courts were undesirable and that we would not have them if we did not need them. Where we differ is on how we should use the provisions and how far they should go. Some say that they should not go any distance at all, while others say, as we do, that they should be as closely constrained as possible.
The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire) does not agree with my view that this is a confused piece of legislation. I am not going to repeat the vaudeville act that I so enjoyed doing in Committee, in which I pointed out the four different positions that the Liberal Democrats had held on the Bill, some of them simultaneously, or the four occasions on which the Minister without Portfolio had announced that he had seen the light and decided that he was previously wrong to be so terribly authoritarian and that he now had a package of measures that would ensure full judicial discretion and that CMPs were de facto, if not expressly in the Bill, to be used as a last resort. I think we have all seen through those posturings, which were adopted primarily for political purposes.
We have only to look through the list of amendments to the Bill and at what will be in the Bill after tonight—until such time, I hope, that some of it is removed again in
the other place—to see that this is all hugely controversial. Yes, we have the six markers that were put down in the House of Lords, and I accept that two of those—the least far-reaching—have been accepted by the Government. The move from “must” to “may” opens the door to judicial discretion; there is agreement on that. There has been some peculiar dithering about equality of arms, which is a strange term to use in this context as it refers simply to the ability for both parties to apply to get into a CMP; it will have nothing to do with equality of arms once the CMP has been invoked. That proposal was put in, taken out and put in again by the Government. I am not making a point about that; it is in there now and the Government are supporting our amendments on that tonight, but—