Counter-Terrorism Bill (Programme) (No. 2)

I thank the Minister for listening to some of the representations made in Committee on post-charge questioning. Although I shall have to disagree with him in a little while on one matter, I want to make it that clear that I am the first to acknowledge that the Government did listen that and that new clauses 18 and 19 reflect that. I go further and am prepared to acknowledge that Government amendments Nos. 57 to 59 also attempt to reflect some of the concerns raised in Committee about the process. It is almost universally agreed on both sides of the House that post-charge questioning is desirable in terrorist cases. That said, there has perhaps always been a slight tendency to see it almost as a panacea that can simply be wafted in without much further consideration. Plainly that is not the case, as the Minister acknowledged in Committee. First, as I have always accepted, post-charge questioning will not necessarily deliver all sorts of remarkable results. Secondly, when a person has been charged, one cannot simply ignore the fact that that point in the criminal justice process has been reached. Within a few hours, or overnight, the person is likely to be brought before a magistrates court. Under the fast-track procedure on committal that this country now has, the person is usually also in the Crown court within a very short period. The measure envisages the possibility of a person being interviewed, or re-interviewed, right up to the moment when the trial process begins. In those circumstances, it is perfectly obvious that injustice could take place, and that the process could also be oppressive. As the Minister acknowledged in Committee, were any of those things to take place, at worse the trial process might be vitiated as unfair, in which case we would not get a true verdict and someone might escape prosecution, or it might result in the end of the prosecution process altogether. It is therefore in everybody's interests that we succeed in getting things right. In new clauses 18 and 19, the Government have done exactly the right thing in respect of video recordings and the PACE codes. I greatly welcome that, and we will support them. But the Opposition continue to have a difficulty over whether judicial authorisation should take place. The Minister thinks that judicial authorisation or scrutiny would be ponderous. My feeling is that it need not be ponderous at all. If he will consider our amendments Nos. 16 and 15, he will note that we have moved the process from the High Court, as we discussed in Committee, to the Crown court. In all probability, much of the questioning will take place when the defendant is already before the Crown court, and the Crown court judge, who might eventually do the trial or whatever it might be, will already be seized of the matter. Making an application to the court ought not to be a complicated matter; it is a matter of someone attending a Crown court for a couple of hours on a weekday morning for the sorts of applications that take place routinely in criminal justice proceedings. In most cases, I am absolutely confident that the judge, having considered and had the reasons for a further interview being required explained to him, would have absolutely no difficulty in giving the authorisation. Such a process would provide for a level of scrutiny, whereas the Government's proposals, to which I shall return, seem not to do so. Slightly more bizarrely, the Government have made a move in our direction about providing a measure of judicial scrutiny, but in a way, as I shall try to illustrate in a moment, that will not really make any difference.