Justice and Security (Northern Ireland) Bill

The hon. Gentleman might remember that I acknowledged that I had been sparing in some of my interventions. We must recognise that the Bill involves some serious issues. Ministers have presented it in the name of normalisation, but much of it normalises the abnormal. Features such as the provisions for no-jury trials, for which only annually renewable legislation previously provided, will be permanent under the Bill. That is a significant problem. Why make a provision permanent when, throughout the worst of the troubles, it was subject to annual renewal and justification by Parliament? A certificate from the DPP, which cannot be questioned or challenged, will provide for such trials. We cannot be comfortable with that. The Bill similarly recycles powers for the police, and others—which are in some ways less challengeable—for the British Army. Again, those powers were part of the emergency provisions in Northern Ireland that were annually renewable during the worst of the troubles. The House repealed them last year—the Government explained and justified their repeal. They were fulfilling commitments that were made in the joint declaration in 2003. Yet all that has been reversed—what was repealed has been recycled. Those of us who welcomed the initial commitment to repeal and voted for it must obviously question the reintroduction of those powers. We discussed the extended powers for the Human Rights Commission. We regret the qualifications and restrictions on them. We welcome some of the steps forward but we would have liked more. We believe that the commission’s work will work for us all in Northern Ireland in future. We do not share some hon. Members’ views that the commission is somehow congenitally subversive. On Second Reading, I said that the Bill was pregnant with implications and complications for the devolution of policing and justice. In his remarks on Third Reading, the Minister considered the administration of justice and policing. I simply want hon. Members to understand that a future devolved Minister for justice and policing—after May 2008, I hope—could be in an invidious position. Let us consider what will happen if MI5 has primacy in intelligence and policing, is beyond the accountability of the police ombudsman, and the meaning of primacy and national security continues to change, courtesy of the UK Government—it has changed significantly in the past few years. At the same time, the DPP—who will supposedly be an officer of the devolved Administration but will act, as the Secretary of State told us, on the basis of information that the intelligence services give him or her—can issue certificates for no-jury trials. The defendants and lawyers in those cases may well say, ““We can’t accept this. We want to challenge it.”” People may write and make representations to the devolved Minister and members of the relevant Assembly Committee asking for the ruling to be changed. Yet the measure is likely to remain under the control of the Secretary of State and the House, and not be devolved. A devolved Minister could therefore say, ““Yes, my Department and I might provide the budget for the Court Service and the broad administrative cover, but all the powers and practices have nothing to do with us—they’re beyond our control. As devolved Minister for justice, I do not have the right to propose an amendment or review to remove the provision for no-jury trials. As Minister for justice, I am not privy to the advice and information given to the DPP, even though he is meant to be an officer of the devolved Administration.”” The police and the Army will continue to have special powers, and the Army will not be subject to the police ombudsman’s powers. A devolved Minister will simply not be in a credible position. If a serious problem arises with activities associated with MI5 or information that it did not pass on or sat on, the entire devolved Administration, not only the Justice Minister, could be caught in an invidious and impossible position. I hope that the Government will address that. That sort of scenario or vista is not what we envisaged when we considered the fullest possible devolution of justice and policing in the context of the fullest possible devolution of everything in the context of the Good Friday agreement. I would be very surprised if the provisions square with the standards that Sinn Fein says that it has set. Before its members take up their positions on the Policing Board, Sinn Fein says not only that the DUP must clearly agree a date for the devolution of justice and policing, but that if devolution of justice is to be meaningful, there must be no ongoing or continuing British involvement or ““securocrat”” influence that is sometimes exercised in respect of policing and justice. This legislation may mean that we do not reach that position. It may provide excuses for Sinn Fein not to move on policing and it may present further real difficulties that stand in the way of implementation of devolved justice and policing. That is why we have a number of sensitivities and why we have raised a number of serious issues as well as specific points about the amendments. Overall, we would like to leave hon. Members thinking about the key questions of political context and political impact. We ask the Government to address those key questions and hope that they will do so by reflecting positively on some of our suggestions about useful changes that could be made to the Bill. We hope that that will help to unlock the deadlock that will continue to exist on the devolution of justice and policing.