Downing Street Says

Asked if amendments to the Terror bill had been discussed at Cabinet, the PMOS said that Charles Clarke had been absent which perhaps indicated that the issue had not been a significant one at today’s meeting. What was said in passing was an explanation as to why we continued to believe, given the House of Lords ruling, that Control Orders were the answer. This was because they gave the Police and the Security services the range of tools they needed to address this very difficult issue. As the Prime Minister had outlined in his article in the Daily Telegraph today, we believed these measures were necessary for the security of the country.

Put to him that it seemed like the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) was the problem, so why didn’t we just derogate from that because what the Government was proposing didn’t lead to any terrorists being locked up, the PMOS said that what we should take cogniscence of was the unanimous view of the security service and the Police which disagreed with that point. They said that Control Orders were a way of achieving the necessary level of security. On the other hand we shouldn’t rubbish a document in which the first article recognised individual human rights, which also safeguards the interests of our citizens when they are abroad, and safeguards the international reputation of this country. Put to him that the point remained that the Government policy didn’t put anybody behind bars, which was surely what we wanted, the PMOS said that the Government policy was designed to achieve the level of security which the security services believed was necessary. By having a range of measures which the security services believed were a more sophisticated approach it did that. Asked if the Government preferred that these suspected terrorists were under house arrest than behind bars in Belmarsh, the PMOS said that we would rather that we had the measures in place which the security services and the Police believed were necessary to achieve the right level of security.

Asked why the Prime Minister had concluded that the Belmarsh prisoners would be released on March the 14th, when they could, under the new laws be detained under house arrest, the PMOS said he would not comment on individual cases. What was important was that people recognised that first of all we were responding to the House of Lords judgement. Secondly that action that would be taken on individual cases would be that which would be advised by the Police and security services as necessary. That was why, as he had already said, we recognised that house arrest was an extreme matter, but in extreme circumstances we believed it would be necessary.

Put to him that the Prime Minister had said that the leader of the opposition, as a former Home Secretary, knew full well the arguments against using intercept evidence, and asked how the Prime Minister had known that. The PMOS said that as he had said before, there had been about half a dozen reviews of the use of intercept evidence over the years. While people started off from the premise that it would be good to have such evidence going before the courts each review had come to the same conclusion. These conclusions were that because of the nature of the evidence and because the way such evidence would be used in the court, they wouldn’t actually result in additional convictions and would have the detrimental effect of putting our intelligence sources at risk.

Asked about the judicial review aspect of the terror bill, the PMOS said that in terms of legal technicalities people should speak to the department. What he would say was that the important thing was to understand why webelieved it was necessary that the Home Secretary had a role. Firstly because the Home Secretary was responsible for national security and secondly because of the need to act with speed in certain circumstances. That was key. If there was information from the security services or the police you needed to be able to act with speed. Asked if there were not judges who could fulfil this role, the PMOS said that some of the information by its very nature was very sensitive, as he had made clear yesterday.

Asked again why we couldn’t just derogate from the ECHR, the PMOS said that because you couldn’t just treat the ECHR as something you could junk when you wanted to. That was not an example that we wanted other countries to follow. Put to him that it was the Government who was saying that the threat was so great they were prepared to break with 800 years of British judicial tradition, the PMOS said that that was a generalisation giving the history of, for instance, exclusion orders in the past, which had had no judicial scrutiny. Secondly it was important that you stood up for human rights and applied it in this country, because then you had greater moral authority in asking other countries to do the same. It was something that you should not do unless you felt you had to, in terms of achieving the objective which was safeguarding the national security. If it was the unanimous view of the police and the security services that what we were doing achieved that, then that was the best way to do it. They would not have given that view unless that was how they genuinely felt.

Asked if we would recommend similar measures for Russia, for instance, the PMOS said that what other countries did was a matter for them. He would underline the principles of the ECHR.

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» Thursday, February 24, 2005

Terror

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