I hope the fact that, with Roy Jenkins, I helped produce the first anti-terrorism Bill, which became the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act 1974, illustrates that I take national security at least as seriously as the noble Lord, Lord Reid—if not perhaps quite as seriously, because no one could take it as seriously as he does.
Neither the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, nor my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford were present when I explained earlier today that the origin of the closed material procedure, which they both deplore, comes from suggestions made by civil society—that is to say organisations such as Justice, Liberty, the AIRE Centre and Amnesty International—both in the Chahal case and later, through me, in the Tinnelly case. They both deplore the procedure as criminal lawyers, and I quite understand that as a criminal lawyer you regard everything in terms of the context of criminal trials and that the CMP is seen to be totally incompatible with their concept of justice. I understand and respect that. However, they have to face the fact that the procedure came in because the Strasbourg court could not find any other way of weighing the needs of national security with the interests of justice. It had regard to the Canadian procedure, because that is what Liberty, Justice and the AIRE centre—and perhaps also Amnesty, although it denies it—suggested to the Strasbourg court.
When Lord Williams of Mostyn was responsible for the SIAC Bill in 1997 I was one of those who spoke in favour, because although it is imperfect justice, I could not think of a better way of weighing the needs of national security against the interests of justice. I believe that it has worked pretty well in the context of SIAC, and we, as the Joint Committee on Human Rights, have recommended that SIAC’s jurisdiction be extended. I do not think that the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, as a party to the report, will disagree with that. I do not think that she has so far.
The short answer to the supporters of this amendment is that we have today incorporated into Clauses 6 and 7 almost all the safeguards that the Joint Committee on Human Rights advocated. We did so in order to strike a better balance between fairness and national security. If the supporters of this amendment succeed, they would remove Clauses 6 and Clause 7 altogether. That would mean that the Bill would go to the House of Commons with no safeguards. The Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary, the Home Secretary and others would have little difficulty in ridiculing what we had done. They would find that, having spent the period before the dinner hour putting in the safeguards, we had spent the period after it removing them. I can be accused of being over-logical, but it seems to me that to walk upon your head is a very strange thing to do. It makes me realise the wisdom of the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, when he once rebuked me for making a serious point after the dinner hour. I now realise that all the serious points were made before the dinner hour and what we now have is a kind of tragic comedy. I very much hope that we do not as a House approve amendments that will have the effect of undoing all that we have been doing since 3.30 pm.