I mention again that I am not a lawyer, but I have the greatest respect for the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, who has done a very great service to this country in the excellent work that he and others have done in the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Extraordinary Rendition.
I want to underline what the noble Lord said about Amendment 66 and to ask my noble and learned friend on the Front Bench whether the wording could not be less sweeping than that in the Bill. Clause 8(4) states that,
“a special advocate is not responsible to the party to the proceedings whose interests the person is appointed to represent”.
I understand some of the problems and appreciate that there are difficulties here, but I ask my noble and learned friend to look again at the wording of the Bill. In particular, my understanding is that a special advocate is responsible for everything short of something that might put at risk national security; it does not mean that the special advocate has a way out of in any serious sense representing the interests of the person whom he has been appointed to represent. I think that that is the meaning of the wording of the Bill. Will my noble and learned friend consider wording that is less likely to raise any questions about the obligations of a special advocate for the people before them who have no other way to get across their case? I suggest that some wording that more precisely defines a special advocate’s duty and where it begins and ends would be much better than the wording currently in the Bill.
5.30 pm