Part of the debate – in the House of Commons am 12:00 am ar 21 Mawrth 1979.
I should like to refer first to the Shackleton report. I regretted the need for Lord Shackleton to have to report at all, because the fact that he was asked to do so revealed many deficiencies in the way that the Prevention of Terrorism Act was working. I hope that one day, probably long after we have all gone, the House will produce legislation that works properly and does not need inquiries to be set up after it has been operating for some time.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, West (Mr. Fitt) said, Lord Shackleton had to do his job with one hand tied behind his back. His investigation had to be based on his acceptance, as the person carrying out the investigation, of the continuing need for legislation. There is a growing number of hon. Members on the Government side who do not accept the need for the legislation to continue and who intend to vote against the renewal order.
However, Lord Shackleton's recommendations have been helpful and I am glad that the Home Secretary has accepted most of them. Unfortunately, he has not accepted the recommendation relating to section 11. Lord Shackleton said:
Section 11 was not thought necessary in 1974. It has an unpleasant ring about it in terms of civil liberties. I recommend therefore that it be allowed to lapse forthwith.
It is important to note that Lord Shackleton went on to say:
No doubt the Government will wish to consider whether the needs of the security situation in Northern Ireland are such that its continuation there could be justified.
He was even envisaging it going beyond the shores of this country to Northern Ireland.
I suppose that it is an advance that the Home Secretary is willing to look at expulsion orders after three years to see whether they should be revoked. However, that assumes that the Act will go on for ever. It is called a temporary provisions Act. It started in 1974, was brought to adulthood in 1976 and is still with us in 1979. How temporary is"temporary "?
The three-year review is better than nothing, but I can foresee that the House will still be referring to the 1976 Act, perhaps in a different context, in 2076. Statutes in this House have a habit of lingering on long after the need for them has disappeared.
The right hon. Member for Belfast, East (Mr. Craig) referred to the necessity of maintaining the rule of law. We all accept that. It goes without saying that we all condemn terrorist activity, wherever it takes place and by whomever it is perpetrated. However, when we talk about the rule of law, we must go a little further and make sure that the law is extended to those who come under suspicion so that their pre-trial rights are also protected. That is where my hon. Friends and I differ from most other hon. Members in our assessment of the operation of the Act.
The general view seems to be that if someone is suspected of terrorist activity, he is not entitled to proper pre-trial treatment and a proper trial. I do not hold that view. Such people are as entitled to straightforward human justice as anyone else.
Exclusion orders deny suspects a trial and do not allow them or their accusers to know whether they are innocent or guilty. We put those suspected of terrorist activity in a different category and bypass altogether the requirement for a trial. In many cases, the Act results in the exclusion of those who are innocent. At least, we must assume that they are innocent because we have never had the chance to find out whether they are guilty.
A further assumption made by many in this country is that suspects are got rid of quickly because their guilt could not be proved by a court. I have never really understood the business of deportation and exclusion. If someone is suspected of a misdeed or terrorist activity—as in this case—it seems strange to say"We shall not gather the evidence against him or bring him to trial. We shall not allow him to have the normal rights we allow other people. We shall simply export him." We are simply exporting, in this case, a suspected terrorist—suspected in the eyes of the police—from one country to another. That is a crazy way of behaving.
We had the same argument over the deportation of Philip Agee and Mark Hosenball. If either of those two Americans was guilty of any offence against this country, or against any of the international agencies, we simply exported them to another country to continue what they had been doing. Why is it not right to state clearly what people are suspected of having done, or to give them their proper rights in terms of defence and then bring them to trial in the ordinary way?
Few hon. Members will have heard of the third Russell tribunal. It is a tribunal set up by the Russell Foundation—that is Bertrand Russell—which, in the last 18 months, looked into the violation of human rights in West Germany. I was a humble member of a distinguished panel which formed a jury. We looked at a number of different aspects of human rights, which was fascinating. But in many ways it was shocking for me to look at another country and compare it with my own. In many respects, some of the avenues we pursued and the evidence given were such that I could hold my head up and say that the situation in Britain was very much better than in other countries.
West Germany is also facing a wave of terrorism. People who are arrested there for suspected terrorism face extremely bad conditions indeed. Many people arrested there are not given their proper rights when awaiting trial. Lawyers are not allowed proper access to their clients and so on. While I listened to all this—and deeply shocking it was—I found myself thinking of the emergency powers which exist in Northern Ireland, and the Prevention of Terrorism Act, and wondering whether what we were doing was very much different.
I should like, very briefly, to highlight how the Prevention of Terrorism Act is operated in a very nasty way against some families. I shall give a brief reference to three cases. First, I refer to the cases of two gentlemen, both of Belfast, whom I shall call Mr. H and Mr. Y.
These two men had been working on North Sea oil rigs and were en route to Belfast to spend Christmas with their families. They were detained at Stranraer on 20 December last year, and exclusion orders were served on 23 December—after three days. Neither of those men contested the exclusion order as, naturally enough, they did not want to spend three or four weeks in prison when the alternative was three or four weeks at home with their families.
Mr. H's wife was expecting a baby on 24 December. Nobody knows whether these men were innocent or guilty. Nobody will ever know. There is no encouragement for people to fight exclusion orders. Indeed, no way is open to people to contest exclusion orders, and most of them would not know how to go about it.
Another case concerns a young man aged 21, who also comes from Belfast. Having worked in London with a charitable trust for about six months, he wanted to go home to see his parents. He was detained at Liverpool and served with an exclusion order after three days. He had originally left Belfast to get away from the troubles. That young man is now condemned never to return to this country. He must now go back to the troubles from which he was trying to get away. Of course, he has now lost his job.
The last case I want to refer to is one of which I do not know the final result. It concerns a young woman aged 24 who was five months pregnant at the time. Her husband was an ex-internee and did not accompany her to England, because he was certain that he would be arrested when he arrived. His wife, however, wanted to go to see her mother who lives in Peckham. She arrived with her three brothers, a small sister and her own two children, both aged under three years.
The whole family was taken to Paddington Green police station. They were all arrested, except the grandmother whom they were visiting. What is absolutely appalling about this case is that the two small children, aged under three years, were kept in Paddington Green police station from 10.30 a.m. until 9.30 p.m. before any relatives were allowed to take them away. [Interruption.] As my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Mr. Litterick) has just muttered, they were"dangerous characters ". Are we really to regard children of 3 or 7 years of age as dangerous characters who should be kept in custody? Did we, in that case, take the fingerprints of those young children, and will those fingerprints remain on the police computer record for the rest of their natural lives, even though two of the children were under 3? In spite of the difficulties faced at the time of the introduction of the Act, it is a very dangerous and corrupting thing that we have enacted.