My Lords, in nearly 30 years in your Lordships’ House, I have never seen a piece of legislation that has made me more uneasy than this Bill. To me it is counterintuitive to give anyone the power to pre-empt the application of the criminal law .
I of course support the need to do all that is necessary to protect our national security and to detect and prevent serious crime, but it should have been possible to find other means. To choose this moment to extend in legislation the legality of law-breaking seems most unwise. This, after all, is a time when Russia is without compunction using, both at home and abroad, deadly poisons to eliminate its enemies. When it succeeds, it denies it. When it fails, its leader blithely explains that when it wants to kill, it succeeds.
I give one simple and deliberately irrelevant example. If a burglar is killed by a householder protecting himself or his family, it is unlikely that a jury will convict him of murder or even manslaughter. That does not mean, however, that we should legislate to give ex-ante immunity to householders who kill burglars.
I have one more word on journalists. I tried to persuade your Lordships to require judicial authorisation for any requirement to force journalists to reveal their sources in cases covered by the Bill. The amendment was defeated by seven votes but I was comforted by the fact that three former Cabinet Secretaries voted for it.
The Bill will now pass, and I shall vote for it, but let us agree, at least informally, that its implementation should be monitored with rigour. All societies must defend their security but open societies must take especial care of how they do so. Yesterday, President Biden told the American people that
“we’ll lead not merely by the example of our power but the power of our example.”