My Lords, first, I join in the congratulations that have been expressed on the outstanding maiden speech of my noble friend Lord Paddick. We can tell from his speech not only that he has a great contribution to make in future to the matters covered by this Bill, but that he has a tremendous sense of humour which we will welcome in any debate in which he chooses to engage.
Like my noble friend Lord Dholakia, I welcome the changes that have already been made by the Government in this Bill to the extreme powers that were formerly in Schedule 7 to the Terrorism Act, but they do not go far enough. The case referred to by my noble friend Lord Faulks—of David Miranda, the partner of the Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, who was stopped and detained for nine hours while transiting Heathrow in August—is now the subject of an inquiry by David Anderson QC. My right honourable friend the Deputy Prime Minister has said that if Mr Anderson recommends further restrictions on the Schedule 7 powers, the Government should use this Bill for that purpose. We understand that his report may be delayed because of ongoing legal proceedings. I would be grateful if my noble friend the Minister could elaborate on that,
because ideally the report should be available while it may still be of assistance to your Lordships during the passage of this Bill.
As far as I know, Mr Miranda has not been arrested or charged with any offence. However, the police are examining the tens of thousands of documents stored on his laptop, mobile and other electronic devices, to see whether they constitute evidence that he,
“has been concerned in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism”.
I ask my noble friend: would the mere possession of material acquired by former NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden related to the monitoring of telephone calls by the agency amount to terrorism? I understand that the Guardian had copies of all the files, and so did other media, so if there is an offence that could be used to charge Mr Miranda, it could be used against the Guardian and other media as well.
GCHQ obviously knows, from its general monitoring of communications, that Mr Miranda is a person of interest to it. It flags up his passport so that when he presents it to a scanner at a port of entry to the UK, he is detained and questioned under the powers of Schedule 7, even if at that point there is no reason to suspect that he has been engaged in committing, planning or instigating terrorism.
I am afraid that he is not the only person to have been stopped under Schedule 7 because his passport triggers a warning. A friend of mine, a British citizen of Bahraini origin, has been stopped three times, once at Heathrow and twice at St Pancras, within a 12-month period. I wrote to the Security Minister, James Brokenshire, in August and he replied a month later referring me to the police. I wrote to the Metropolitan Police and had an acknowledgement a week later. The matter was taken over by the IPCC on 1 October. On 15 October I met two police officers for a discussion on the case. That discussion consisted almost entirely of me giving them further background on the case, underlining the fact that a black mark existed against my friend’s name on the computer and that he wanted it removed.
Knowing how friendly we are with the Bahraini autocracy, and that the regime had asked us to consider an extradition treaty with it to enable it to harass Bahraini dissidents in the UK, I suspect that the use of Schedule 7 against my friend and other Bahraini exiles in the UK is politically motivated. This is a good illustration of the need to amend the power so that it can be used only to detain a person when there are reasonable grounds for suspecting his involvement in terrorism, as the Liberal Democrat autumn conference recommended.
Last week I had a meeting with senior officials of the Muslim NGO, ENGAGE, to discuss Schedule 7 among other matters. In their submission to the consultation they had detailed what they regarded as evidence of disproportionately large numbers of Muslims being stopped and searched—a concern which needs to be addressed for the sake of good community relations. I took up the case of a distinguished British imam who was stopped at Heathrow Terminal 1 in December 2008, detained and compelled to give a DNA sample and fingerprints. There was no reason
why he should have been suspected of terrorism, but it took me 15 months and 57 rounds of correspondence before I could persuade S015 counterterrorism command to destroy the sample and fingerprints. It is such cases that provide grounds for Muslims to believe they are being singled out.
We have an excellent blueprint for reform of Schedule 7 in the shape of the JCHR’s report on the Bill. The other place unfortunately did not have the time to consider its recommendations on this, as on other matters, because they were only published four days before Third Reading, with a weekend in between. Why did the Government not publish the responses to the consultation in full, as the JCHR had already recommended in its report on the Justice and Security Green Paper?
Do they accept that the powers that continue to be available under the amended Schedule 7 are still too widely defined, and will they publish their responses to each of the further amendments proposed before we get to Committee stage? On the code of practice, are they going to discuss paragraphs 15 to 18 with the EHRC with a view to reducing the danger that the powers are used disproportionately against Muslims and other minority groups? Do they agree that records of examinations should include the self-declared religion of the person examined? It would save time in Committee if the Government would respond positively to the JCHR recommendations in the Minister’s winding-up speech this evening.
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