My Lords, Clause 13 provides for a search power that Professor Clive Walker—who is, without much doubt, our foremost expert on counterterrorism law and not a man given to either naivety or overstatement—described in written evidence to the Joint Committee on Human Rights as “outrageously wide”. As he pointed out, the clause is to be contrasted with paragraph 6(3) of Schedule 5 to the Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Act 2011—the TPIM Act—which confines the purpose of the equivalent search power to that of determining whether there has been any contravention of the measures specified in the TPIM notice. That is essentially the approach that Amendment 39, which I support, adopts.
I echo the noble Baroness’s point that there is a human element to this. The families of convicted terrorists, through their support and influence, are often important factors in turning offenders away from violence. The extreme anxiety experienced by the wife of a control order subject whose house was subject to frequent unannounced searches, and the upset and trauma caused to her young children, were movingly conveyed in an article from which I quoted in my final report on control orders in 2012. I felt justified in doing so, not to give publicity to an unreliable witness—something which, like my predecessor as independent reviewer, the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, I was always astute not to do—but because the woman in question had recently been described in a High Court judgment by the highly experienced Mr Justice Mitting as an impressive witness and a person whose evidence he accepted without reservation.
The risk of upsetting or alienating such people is surely evident. I have never heard it suggested in several years of, I hope, careful oversight that the powers to enter and search premises occupied by potentially extremely dangerous TPIM subjects are insufficient, so I am puzzled as to what prompted this further turn of the ratchet—at least on paper, even if reassuring words are spoken about how it may be used in practice.
It is important that the power of entry and search should not be used as an instrument of harassment and destabilisation. This reasonable amendment would help to ensure that.