Clause 6
Counter-Terrorism Bill
12:15 pm
Dominic Grieve (Shadow Attorney General, Law Officers; Beaconsfield, Conservative)
These are probing amendments so that we can tease through what the clause provides for. Perhaps I can come back to what I said a moment ago when I was getting befuddled about the question of the copying of documents. The matter concerns me and I have been raising it as a recurrent theme throughout the morning. I think that this is now the right time to discuss it.
In clause 6, provision is made for a person to have access to the seized documents. It is obviously an important principle because those documents belong to the individual concerned. I can envisage that there may be circumstances in which, although the seizure of the documents may not yet have taken place, the police’s suspicion that the documents are terrorist related is such that they may be reluctant even to allow the person to have access to them. As I understand it, the architecture of clause 6 and its subsections is to provide circumstances in which access can be denied.
I want to highlight a few points. If the person involved is not under investigation for any offence, what is subsection (3)(b) aimed at? One would expect the measure to be covered by subsection (3)(d), which is deals with facilitating the commission of an offence. That is really the nub of the two amendments.
Perhaps I could flag up something else for the Minister to explain. Access to a document may be required for different purposes. What is envisaged by the word “access” in that context? Does it mean that one may go and look at the document; that one may, if it is possible, photocopy the document so that one can use the copy even though the original might be retained; or simply, that one may go and look at it behind a glass screen so that one can see that it is still there?
There is a lack of clarity in clause 6, which is not tackled by my amendments. Perhaps we could deal with that in clause stand part, or, if we want to avoid a stand part debate, we could deal with it here. Talking about the rights of access brings me back to one of my earlier points. In many cases, a person may be completely comfortable—or may not make a big fuss—when a document is taken away as long as they have a copy from which they can work. As far as I can see, I do not think that there is a provision that allows the person to have a copy even if the original has to be retained, but I may be wrong about that. Will the Minister take the opportunity to deal with those points?