My Lords, I hope that Clause 11(5)(c) is not troublesome because it is intended to be the opposite. As we have already heard in our deliberations in Committee, concern has been expressed, even a short while ago by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, about Article 6. The clause seeks to give reassurance and I hope that my noble friend will be satisfied with that. No doubt there may be something on which I can give further reassurance. I think I am right in saying that what is there follows what is in the TPIM Act and the Counter-Terrorism Act. Questions might be raised but it is there to make matters absolutely clear.
My noble friend Lord Hodgson said that he hoped that we would not allow a situation where citizens would be swept up by a wide definition of national security. My noble friend Lord Deben gave a graphic illustration of his son walking the dog. It will not be a constable or a high-ranking officer in Whitehall but a judge who will make the decision. Nor indeed—I shall make this very clear—is the intention to avoid embarrassment. In fact, an important purpose of the Bill is to allow material to be considered by the courts in cases where to exclude it may mean that a case has to be settled. The purpose is actually to allow a court to be able to consider it; this is far from wanting to sweep things under the carpet. If it were the case that, at some date in the future, a Secretary of State tried to use the provisions for the purposes of concealing embarrassment rather than to prevent damage to national security, that is something the court would be entitled to take into account when deciding whether the gateway test in Clause 6 was passed.
There is another point I would make to my noble friend Lord Hodgson, who said that the possibility of someone going to prison was important here. I would like to reassure both my noble friend and the Committee that the provisions in this part of the Bill relate to civil, not criminal proceedings. There would not be a situation, therefore, where a person would go to prison as a result of the provisions in this part of the Bill.
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