My Lords, like my noble friend Lord Dubs, I can be short in the light of some outstanding contributions that we have heard from Members of your Lordships’ House. The more I listened to those arguments, the more I was convinced that there needs to be some kind of limit on the nature of criminal conduct that can be authorised with—and I repeat—total advance immunity from criminal liability or civil suit. If in Canada, why not here? It was the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, who dealt with the so-called Sopranos argument on testing with particular dexterity.
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If, as the Minister has now said more than once in Committee, performing fraudulent but otherwise so-called consensual sexual relationships with a subject of surveillance will no longer be permitted and cannot under any circumstances be authorised under this legislation, how can it be permissible for crimes such as murder, torture and rape be authorised? If the Minister is going to reassure us in her remarks that those crimes cannot be authorised, why not place such a reassurance in the Bill? Why rely on administrative
arrangements on Pepper v Hart reassurances in your Lordships’ House, rather than, in the interests of the rule of law, place such restrictions and reassurances in primary legislation?
The noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbots, was right to remind us that the Bill has extraterritorial effect and of the abuses of the recent past, not just in relation to undercover policing in the UK but to the horrors of the so-called war on terror. It is not just the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, who brings so much to these debates. I hope noble Lords will all agree that the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, spoke with particular wisdom and balance. I shall stop there and look forward to, no doubt, further wisdom from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd.