Clause 4
Serious Crime Bill [Lords]
6:45 pm
Vernon Coaker (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Home Office; Gedling, Labour)
I thank all hon. Members who have contributed to debate and discussion of this part of the Bill for their comments. The hon. Member for Reigate makes the point that this is an extremely important issue that all of us want to see resolved, and I think that we all agree. He stressed the importance of the issue and the need to present it to the public in the most appropriate way. I thank him for his comment.
I apologise to the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs if the Government have made a commitment to do something and have not done it. I will check that and reply to him. I can only apologise if it is the case. We will check the commitment, see what has not been done and try as far as possible, although we cannot rewind the clock, to see what we can do.
I shall make a couple of remarks. The hon. Gentleman raised all sorts of issues, as did his hon. Friend the Member for Rugby and Kenilworth and other Members. The Government are absolutely committed to a review of the use of intercept. We are also committed to using intercept as evidence if we can find a workable model and the necessary safeguards can be put in place. That is the Government’s position. It is clear, and there is no rowing back from it. As the Prime Minister-designate and others have said, we will pursue that review on Privy Councillors’ terms.
I cannot say what form the review will take, what the membership will be or any of the other things that have yet to be resolved—as I understand it, those discussions are still going on—but I make in this Committee the commitment, to be recorded in Hansard, that that review will take place. We expect and hope that it will not take too long. If the review concludes that the use of intercept evidence is appropriate, a working model can be identified and the necessary safeguards can be put in place, it might be possible to include it in a counter-terrorism Bill in the autumn. Those commitments have been made. That is what we have said, and that is what we are trying to achieve. We cannot guarantee that it will happen, but that is how we propose to take the matter forward.
I shall share a couple of points with the Committee to identify the difficulty. To be fair, the hon. and learned Member for Torridge and West Devon, as well as his right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham, raised issues about the drafting of clause 4 and schedule 13 that will need to be overcome. Many hon. Members’ questions involve the very issues that need to be resolved if we are to find a workable model built on consensus that allows us to use intercept as evidence. That will include Parliament, as the hon. Member for Reigate said; it will include law enforcement, the intelligence services and everyone else involved, but issues still remain to be resolved. We would be deluding ourselves as a Committee if we did not appreciate that.
The hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs said—I know that he did not mean it—“a police officer said”. It was not a police officer. I shall repeat it, because it is very important. It was not a police officer; it was a deputy chief constable speaking on behalf of the Association of Chief Police Officers in evidence to the Joint Committee on Human Rights. Not 10 years ago but a couple of months ago, in March 2007, he said:
“If we reduce our capacity in order to serve the evidential regime, there is a possibility...that we will lose that capability to disrupt some potentially catastrophic scenarios.”
If the Government were to ignore that and say, “We will proceed irrespective of what one of the most senior police officers has told us”, I do not think that the Committee would be saying, “Why are you not using this intercept as evidence?” If, as a consequence of doing that, some catastrophic event was not prevented, which could have been prevented, Parliament and hon. Members on both sides would rightly ask, “Why did you not take any notice of what the senior officer said?”