My Lords, I rise to support these amendments for a very fundamental reason. The separation of powers is crucial for the freedom of all our people and I find it very distressing that the Government have not understood how deeply offensive this element of these proposals is.
It is deeply offensive simply because it purports to say that something is true which is not true. It suggests that the sovereignty of Parliament extends to the decision on whether something is or is not. That is a decision which has always been the purview of the courts, simply because the courts have a structure that enables them to listen to the evidence on all sides and make a decision at the end.
I fear that the Government have presented this because it is inconvenient that the courts should take a part in it. The price of liberty is inconvenience. You cannot be a free nation unless you accept that there are processes that are embarrassing to Governments, to Oppositions, to people of standing, to people who have got other views. You have to accept that it is the price we pay. This Government are suggesting that, because they have got to get something through before the end of the year because they said they would, they can claim that inconvenience is something they will not accept.
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Down this route, if we go it, we move towards losing freedom not just of the people we talk about today but all the rest of us. That is why I appeal to your Lordships to accept this fact: by doing this to these people, we do it to ourselves. No man is an island—it is true that we are all part of the same human beings. I am not surprised that the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury has put his name to this. There is a deeply important religious, as well as secular, truth. Once you distinguish in the rights between people, you say about people as a whole that they are not each worth something. It is fundamental, and inconvenience is no excuse. We should insist that the Government restore to the courts the rights that people have fought for down the ages, which we have held in this nation as sacrosanct for hundreds of years, and which they have the gall to suggest we should throw aside because it is inconvenient.