Unlike many of my colleagues I am more sympathetic to the Government’s position than others, although I respect the deep concerns felt across the House about broad issues of civil liberties. I have less concern about the temporary exclusion order being down to Executive authority, and in many ways the accountability of any Minister to come to the House and justify their actions counts for quite a lot.
The right hon. and learned Member for North East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell) referred to the protection only of judicial review. If it were still down to old-fashioned Wednesbury principles I could accept that, but judicial review is now a rather broader body of law than was perhaps the case in the 1940s. It is now pretty substantial, which provides enough comfort—at least to my mind—for us to go down that route, rather than requiring the oversight that would come through David Anderson QC.