Clause 27
Counter-Terrorism Bill
2:15 pm
Dominic Grieve (Shadow Attorney General, Law Officers; Beaconsfield, Conservative)
These are probing amendments, so my right hon. and learned Friend might find that they facilitate a more general debate on the clause. The Committee will recollect that, in the course of our preliminary deliberations, we received evidence from the Lord Advocate, who provided a great deal of reassurance. She said that there was little anxiety among the Scottish Government about the clause, which was designed to facilitate trials taking place with maximum flexibility in relation to the United Kingdom. In her judgment, it was not intended to be used, and would not be used, to try to remove cases from Scotland or, for that matter, vice versa.
Nevertheless, we cannot simply allow clause 27 to pass without taking a closer look. When I look at the clause, two issues spring to mind, on which I would like a response from the Government. First, the clause lists a number of offences under the Terrorism Act 2000 that will be caught by the provisions, which will enable a trial to take place anywhere in the United Kingdom. For the most part, they did not cause a great deal of trouble, although I must confess that I was struck by the reference to
“section 51 (parking a vehicle in contravention of an authorisation or restriction)”.
I accept that that might have an intimate terrorist connection, but I am not sure that it is so serious—unless accompanied by other factors—as to be an area in which I would wish to depart from the ordinary rules on where a matter is tried. I flag that up with the Minister, and it would be helpful if he could provide an explanation, because the Government have been quite careful in selecting the provisions covered by the clause.
Secondly, it is also provided that the Secretary of State may by order amend the subsections to add to the list anything that he likes. I accept that that must be done through the affirmative procedure, but, as the Minister knows, I have a rather old-fashioned dislike of it partly because individual offences tend not to be put to the House to be added to a list. The chances are that we will get six or seven, one of which we might dislike, while having no problem with the remainder. In such circumstances, we can do nothing except vote against or in favour. Given that I would have expected the Government to have covered in the clause all existing terrorism legislation that they felt needed to be subject to this unusual provision, in reality nothing else should need to be added, except under subsequent legislation, which could be done without any problem by virtue of tabling the suitable consequential amendments.
I find subsection (6) somewhat surprising, because it purports to have a retrospective effect, and that might bother me more than any other part of the clause. I do not want to make too big a fuss about it, and on one level I can see that provisions already exist for offences to be moved from Scotland to England for trial under certain set circumstances, particularly in cases of conspiracy, for example. Nevertheless, we have two distinct legal systems and it could be argued properly that individuals are entitled to the protection of the legal systems under which they live and certainly to certainty under the law. That is different from the accused suddenly being told that even though the law did not operate at the time the offence was committed, they will be tried in a jurisdiction other than that in which the alleged offence was committed. Although I derived a great deal of reassurance from the Lord Advocate’s evidence, which removed much of my anxiety over the clause, it still seems to me that some issues need to be teased out.