Terrorist Asset-Freezing etc. Bill [Lords]

It is a great pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), who chairs the Home Affairs Committee, on which I also have the privilege to serve. He did indeed visit my constituency of Cambridge this morning and he will doubtless have understood something of the expertise of some of my residents and constituents. He did not on this occasion meet David Howarth—he will be known to most hon. Members as a great constituency MP and an expert on these issues—who worked hard on this legislation and I pay tribute to him for what he did. The aim of the new revised Bill is clear, and I suspect that no Member would have any problem with it. We need to control terrorism and we need to control the flow of funds for terrorism. We support, of course, UN Security Council resolutions, particularly resolution 1373, although others are also relevant. We all share those aims, so the question is how best to go about achieving them. Earlier this year, the order was held to be ultra vires in respect of the United Nations Act 1946. Lord Phillips used strong phraseology when he said:"““The draconian nature of the regime imposed under these asset-freezing Orders can hardly be overstated.””" I suggest to right hon. and hon. Members that what he meant was not that these were draconian because they were orders, but that they were draconian because of their content. So we need to be careful before reintroducing measures that are very similar to those orders. There was a Terrorist Asset-Freezing (Temporary Provisions) Act 2010. I shall not enter into the argument over whether this particular Bill is being rushed through, but the temporary one clearly was in an effort to catch up with what happens when Government do not take account of legal processes. This Bill is better than the previous temporary one. I have no hesitation whatever in saying that. I am grateful that a number of amendments were accepted in the other place, which have significantly improved the Bill. I nevertheless have a number of concerns about the Bill, and these are echoed by organisations that are familiar to us all: Liberty, Justice, the Equality and Human Rights Commission and the Joint Committee on Human Rights, on which I also have the pleasure to serve. I urge Members to look at our short and simple report, which makes a number of clear suggestions and proposes amendments, which I, if nobody else, will table. The key issue is that we must not treat those people whose assets we freeze as effectively ““prisoners of the state””, as Lord Hope of Craighead said. That is not the correct intention; we should be careful about that. I do not wish to detain the House for long, but I shall speak briefly about the amendments that I wish to table. I hope that the Minister will be able to respond to many of the issues tonight, which will save time later on in the proceedings. Before I do so, I want to point out a few areas that I believe are missing from the Bill, which is a shame. I would not go so far as to mention the whole counter-terror review, but the Bill does not deal with the parallel asset-freezing powers in the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 or the terrorist financing provisions of the Terrorism Act 2000—despite the fact that the Privy Council recommended in 2003 that these be rationalised. Surely it makes sense to bring legislation together and make it clearer. I am also concerned that the Bill fails to deal with those designated by the European Union. Under this legislation, such people have no right to appeal or review a decision to put them on the list. I find that disappointing. I am sure that some hon. Members, particularly Conservative Members, would naturally be wary of any instruction from the EU. In this case, although not in many others, I agree with them. We should find a way to safeguard British citizens from this process and provide them with some form of appeal or review. I believe that amending provisions could be added to clauses 26 and 27. There is a fundamental issue at the heart of the matter, which I do not believe has been properly discussed—at least not in this House. It comes down to who should decide whose assets should be frozen. Should it be the Government or the Treasury, as in the Bill; or should it be a court? Do we want punishments—that is what these provisions amount to—to be dealt with by Government or by the judiciary? The appeals process is, I acknowledge, a significant improvement on what obtained before.