Serious Crime Bill [HL]

It has been some 10 years since we were in government. We are always entitled to change our minds. I am grateful to the noble Lord for correcting me, but this is now our policy. I can think of a number of matters on which we have changed our policy and, dare I say, I can think of a number of matters on which the party opposite, now in government, would not have recommended when it was in opposition—I have seen Home Office Ministers blush over a number of years. The noble Baroness will, no doubt, agree with me on that. Perhaps I may return to what Eric Metcalfe said in his report. Although he accepted that it was not a silver bullet, he said, "““it is a bullet nonetheless””." As the noble and learned Lord underlined, outside the United Kingdom, intercept evidence has been used in a large number of countries, including in the US to convict various al-Qaeda cells following 9/11 and the five godfathers of New York crime, as well as war criminals before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. The Justice report, published last year, highlights the fact, to which the noble and learned Lord also referred, that we are the only common-law country that prohibits completely the use of intercept evidence. The report details how prosecutors in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and the US regularly use intercept evidence in prosecuting serious organised crime and terrorist offences. The report shows also how principles of public interest immunity are used in those countries to protect sensitive intelligence material from being disclosed in criminal proceedings. It concludes that the ban on such evidence in this country is, as the noble and learned Lord said, archaic, unnecessary and counterproductive. That view was supported by Liberty. The noble and learned Lord underlined just how many other people supported this change. He mentioned the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police and Dame Stella Rimington, the former director of MI5, who has called the ban ridiculous. He referred to the remarks of our own Attorney-General, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith. I have his remarks as reported in the Guardian in September of last year, but I have not been able to dig them out for this occasion. He is yet another person who has supported this move, along with the Director of Public Prosecutions. The Minister has argued that one reason why it may not be possible to prosecute those suspected of involvement in serious crime or terrorism is that the evidence on which suspicion is based would be inadmissible in court. I ask her what assessment the Government have made of the number of criminals who avoid conviction because of the restrictions on the use of this evidence. Would the disclosure of such methods that would result from the use of that evidence damage the ability of those who protect us to go on doing so as effectively as they do? It is now time for the noble Baroness to justify why the Government, in bringing forward a Bill of this nature, will not give the prosecutors the ammunition that they need, whether it is a silver bullet or an ordinary bullet, to prosecute serious criminals and terrorists in the criminal courts. She says that she would like to see further prosecutions. Rather than supporting what the Bill seems to be doing—relying on control orders and super-ASBOs—she might take this opportunity of supporting the noble and learned Lord’s amendment and allowing a more effective method of achieving prosecutions.