Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism

I was referring to the inspection by Her Majesty's Crown Prosecution Service inspectorate. The Government say that, on the basis of that inspection, there""does not appear to be any need for another inspection."" However, the CPS inspectorate has not conducted the qualitative analysis that we recommended in earlier reports. We therefore reach the same conclusion that we reached last year on the question of the need to go beyond 14 days to 28 days—namely, that we are unable to reach a view as to whether the Government have made their case. In our report, we repeat our call for a thoroughgoing review of all those cases in which the power has been exercised, with a view to ascertaining whether those released could have been released earlier, and whether those charged could have been charged earlier, on the threshold test. We simply do not know the basis of those charges. The Minister for Policing, Crime and Counter-Terrorism has made much of the safeguards available through judicial hearing and oversight. We have grave reservations about that, however. A person who has been arrested on suspicion of terrorism has a convention right, under article 5(4), to a judicial hearing to determine the lawfulness of their detention. They have the same right to a judicial hearing under the common law principle of habeas corpus. In a number of our reports, we have expressed our concern that the current arrangements for judicial authorisation of extended pre-charge detention are not compatible with the right to a judicial hearing. We are concerned that the hearing of an application for a warrant for further detention is not a fully adversarial hearing, because of the power to exclude the suspect and his representative from the hearing, and to withhold from the suspect and his lawyer information that is provided to the judge. We are also concerned about the adequacy of the judicial oversight at such extension hearings, because the judge is empowered to consider only the future course of the investigation and whether it is being conducted diligently and expeditiously by the police, rather than whether there is sufficient evidence to justify the suspect's original arrest and continued detention. Since the last annual renewal of the 28-day measure, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights and now the House of Lords have held that the requirements of a fair hearing under article 5(4) include the requirement that the detained person must be given sufficient information about the allegations against him, to enable him to contest those allegations or to give effective instructions in relation to the allegations to the person representing his interests. The statutory framework for the extension of pre-charge detention expressly provides for the withholding from the suspect and his lawyer of information that is seen by the judge, and for the exclusion of the suspect and his lawyer from parts of the hearing. There is no provision for special advocates in the closed part of extension hearings, and even if there were, it is now clear that the essence of the case against a detained person must be disclosed to that person to enable them to contest the allegations. The decisions of the Grand Chamber on the Belmarsh regime, and of the House of Lords on the control orders regime, concerning the minimum that is required for a judicial hearing to be truly judicial in nature, make even clearer the risk of breaches of article 5(4). Unless amendments to the statutory framework are made, renewal of the maximum extended period of 28 days risks leading in practice to breaches of article 5(4). Our report also notes with interest that our concerns about the compatibility of the pre-charge detention framework with the right to a judicial hearing following arrest are shared by the Eminent Jurists Panel on Terrorism, Counter-Terrorism and Human Rights in its recent report. The panel also comments on the example that this sends to the rest of the world, stating:""It is distressing to see how the slackening of procedural safeguards in countries like France, the UK and the USA, has been exploited by other States with less well-entrenched legal systems and human rights safeguards."" My right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz), the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, asked about the impact of the measure on communities. Last year, we recommended that the Government seek and make available to Parliament independent advice assessing, in general terms, the likely impact on individuals of being detained without charge for up to 28 days, and—this point has not yet been raised—the actual impact, including the psychological effect, on individuals who have been detained for more than 14 days pre-charge. We should look not only at the collective impact on a community but at the impact on the individual people concerned. Every person has their own individual human rights. Human rights are personal, not collective.