My Lords, I have spoken about internal exile, as I choose to call it, on a number of occasions in this House. I am persuaded by the independent reviewer that, because of the threat faced by this country at this time, there may be the rare occasion when one would want to disrupt the connections and associations in a particular place of someone subject to a TPIM order. It should be used on the rarest of occasions, and the standards that the courts should look to in making the decision should be high.
I support what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, has said. We should see this idea as a huge departure from what we would consider normal. For people to be taken away from their families and the place that they know and sent to live somewhere else in the country is a very hard thing. We have to recognise that sometimes it will disrupt good associations as well as negative ones, so that they are no longer with their mother or father, or with some of the people who are voices of sanity as distinct from siren voices. It surely makes sense to say that this is such an exceptional step that there should be this additional safeguard, which has been proposed by one of our most senior retired judges.
3.45 pm