Clause 57
Coroners and Justice Bill
8:40 pm
David Howarth (Cambridge, Liberal Democrat)
That is precisely right. However, what I am asking now—we are discussing clause 57—is would it not be better to not have the blanket immunity that the clause is offering, but to rely rather more, or exclusively, on the specific authorisations that exist under section 7? We might be in a situation where time has moved on. There used to be idea that no one referred to the Secret Intelligence Service; we pretended that it did not exist. At that time, we used to pass statutes that gave blanket immunity to those who held office under the Crown as a kind of euphemism for the Secret Intelligence Service.
We have grown up since then. We now have specific legal provision for the Secret Intelligence Service, including section 7. Should we modernise that provision by leaving out the blanket immunity and relying instead on the more recent arrangements?