Clause 57
Counter-Terrorism Bill
4:00 pm
Tony McNulty (Minister of State (Security, Counter-terrorism, Crime and Policing), Home Office; Harrow East, Labour)
Good afternoon, everybody. Good afternoon, Mr. O’Hara.
I rise to answer the debate on amendment No. 213. As I said earlier, special advocate procedures are available in other contexts, notably the Special Immigration Appeals Commission and the Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission. The general objective is to keep the special advocate provisions in the Bill as close to those existing procedures as possible. The clause reflects corresponding powers in the SIAC and POAC provisions—for example, paragraph 5(c) to schedule 3 to the Terrorism Act 2000.
As I indicated, it might be useful if we spoke in more general terms about asset freezing as it is now. In that context, unless the Committee needs greater clarification, I am happy to forgo my contribution to a clause stand part debate.
The Committee will know that asset freezing aims to help prevent terrorist acts by preventing funds, economic resources or financial services from being used or diverted for terrorist purposes. The clause reflects the fact that the United Kingdom does that in accordance with United Nations obligations. The police and security services have noted the positive disruptive impact that asset freezing can have, and have made it clear that the regime is essential for counter-terrorism operations.
In a document published in February 2007 by the Home Office, the Treasury, the Serious Organised Crime Agency and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, entitled “The financial challenge to crime and terrorism”, we noted that the Treasury had agreed on the advice of the law enforcement agencies to use closed-source evidence in asset freezing cases if there were strong operational reasons to impose a freeze but insufficient open-source evidence was available. The document stated:
“In order to ensure the fairness of any court challenge to the imposition of a freeze, the Government will introduce a procedure for the appointment of special advocates to represent the interests of the applicant in respect of the closed evidence”.
It should be noted that the Bill’s provisions are not about the Treasury’s decision to freeze a person’s assets; they deal with subsequent challenges by the designated person or another affected person to that decision or a related licensing decision.
With regard to some of the concerns expressed this morning, these are enabling powers. As such, they should be drafted broadly, with the rules of court giving the details. However, I assure the Committee that the provision has been drafted to ensure that all cases are dealt with in a consistent and fair manner, with regard for the rights of the appellant and the Government’s need to withhold material in the interests of national security.
The amendments seek to make provision for a level of detail that is not appropriate to be included in the Bill. Many of the concerns are about the detailed operation of the system. In general, I support the underlying concerns for protection and fairness for all parties. Those will be addressed in the rules of court, which will be put to Parliament for approval. I hope that the Committee understands that the vagaries of time do not allow me to say absolutely, but as I have said about assorted codes of practice and other secondary matters that follow on from the Bill, I hope to make the draft rules of court available before Report.
It may be stating the obvious, but I want to clarify the meaning of certain provisions. First, the words “in the absence of” a party or a legal representative of that party in clause 57(4)(b) exclude the designated person and his open advisers. However, they do not exclude the special advocate, who is appointed to represent the interests of an excluded party in exactly those circumstances. Earlier references to the designated person or his agent—in this case, the special advocate—not being able to be at the closed session are not accurate. They were not a part of the process as I understand it. The interests of the designated party were absolutely excluded from the proceedings.