HC Deb 29 November 1974 vol 882 cc1060-72

3.5 p.m.

Mr. Robin Corbett (Hemel Hempstead)

I beg to move, That this House reaffirms its commitment to extend civil liberties in the United Kingdom through a Bill of Rights and especially to guarantee and secure the right of all citizens to peaceful assembly and demonstration; to establish Parliamentary accountability over the activities and operations of the Special Branch to prohibit the use of entrapment; and to enhance the genuine freedom of the Press and publishing in the interests of making these media more easily available for the expression of differing points of view. It is signally appropriate after our night's work that we should have the opportunity, however brief, to discuss some of the issues involved in civil liberties. When the times are evil and this House is called upon to take measures to protect our freedom, we need to have all the more care and regard for any interference with the liberties of the individual in all parts of the kingdom.

I detect a fear and a growing feeling that to dissent, to challenge established views or opinions, is somehow un-British. I detect, too, a feeling that those who peacefully and legally assemble and demonstrate to try to influence or change opinion on major matters, in a peaceful way, are seen by too many people as agitators or as some kind of enemy. I wish to assert this afternoon that the right to challenge and question accepted, established and widely-held views is a precious civil liberty and that the right to assemble and to demonstrate peacefully in pursuance of those views is also a precious civil liberty.

So too, in this process, is the right to express alternative and different views in print. Of these ingredients is our freedom made. Even when and if that freedom is under attack, we should do nothing in this House or elsewhere to curtail or impede civil liberties, because by doing that we help the very forces which are mounting an attack on our freedom.

My first point today is to urge the need for a Bill of Rights, setting down clearly for every man and woman in the country the basic rights that go alongside the responsibilities of being a citizen in our society—a charter for the individual, to protect him and her from the abuses of those in authority, whoever they may be. It may be said that such a charter is not needed. I do not agree.

I will cite one instance of why I think such a thing is necessary. Concern is growing in this direction, and this is evidenced by responsible calls from responsible individuals and organisations for an independent inquiry into the events at the Windsor Free Festival. The Home Secretary has already announced that he has rejected this independent inquiry, partly basing his reply on a report by the Chief Constable of the Thames Valley Police that the report was a thorough account by the responsible chief officer of police of his own actions and of his reasons for them. I question whether this can reasonably be held to be a "thorough account" when there is in this document a bias, understandable I admit but a bias none the less.

Paragraph 14 of the report of the chief officer of police of the Thames Valley Authority states: The Festival at Windsor appears to be a gesture against the Establishment and all forms of authority. What evidence is there for the chief officer of police to make that statement? What is the value of that statement in the report which he had been asked to prepare for the inquiry which was later held by the Thames Valley Police Authority? There is no evidence at all in that report to support that statement, which is a reflection of bias. I have said that it is understandable bias but that it is none the less bias.

At paragraph 18 the following statement is made: Opinion in the Windsor area of members of the public, local organisations and the Royal Borough, has been almost unanimous in being against the festival and in favour of the police strictly enforcing the law. There is no evidence for that statement. Indeed, even if that statement be true, is that a reasonable ground for interfering with an assembly the sole purpose of which was peaceful and was known at the start to be peaceful?

I give a third illustration of what I consider to be bias which may have coloured the conduct of the chief police officer of the Thames Valley Authority when he makes the statement that known criminal elements were taking part in this free pop festival. If known criminal elements were recognised, why was none of them apprehended if they were doing anything which gave the officers concerned reasonable ground for suspicion?

The same sentence in the report goes on to make the statement and it became clear that there were several militant groups present. There is no definition of a militant group. It is based on an assumption, on a view, on a bias, on an opinion, about the people peacefully gathered at that event to take part in a festival. I could go on through the report, but I will not.

Shortly, what is of concern here is that an attempt at a peaceful gathering to listen peaceably to pop music was suddenly and without warning after several days broken up by the police authority, leading to serious allegations of breaches of the law and misconduct by the police. We are in the position that there can be no independent inquiry into this.

I do not want to be misunderstood in this matter. My concern is twofold. My first concern is to see that the police operate sensibly within the law and, when called upon to do so, can justify actions taken. That is not to be anti-police. I am not anti-police. However, the House has put the police in the position of not being publicly able to respond to challenges when allegations of this kind are made. It is my view that some public daylight let into this procedure would be as helpful and beneficial to the police as it would to the public and it would also help the general aim of improving police and public relations.

The second point of my concern is that the right of peaceful assembly for lawful purposes should be made easier and not more difficult. As the Acting General Secretary of the National Council for Civil Liberties says on the question of demonstration, It is already the case that the freedom to hold demonstrations in this country depends on the discretion of the police—in NCCL's view an intolerable situation. The article by the acting general secretary also says this: Over the past two years, the police have developed a jigsaw of special squads—Special Patrol Groups, Commando Squads, Special Service Squads—and so on, which, although not simply concerned with industrial questions, have consistently intervened in industrial disputes and in other demonstrations. That brings me to the question of the activities of the Special Branch, a topic mentioned by my motion. I am not here questioning, and I would not seek to question, the need for a Special Branch, particularly in these days. However, we in the House are in the situation of having a body with wide powers and wide discretion which is not subject in any real sense to parliamentary accountability. The shadowy sinews of power of the Special Branch stretch into places which we do not even know about. We have the recent case of the late Mr. Lennon, where a request made at an inquest for the Special Branch to appear and be questioned about its activities was turned down. A report carried out by the police themselves was published yesterday. I know its conclusions, but again there is no public daylight let into the extremely serious concern which many people feel.

There is the earlier case of a Mr. Littlejohn, and the most serious doubts about the rôle and activities of the Special Branch in this matter are still with us. What is of concern here from the point of view of civil liberties is even the possibility, if not the fact, of the increasing use by the Special Branch of entrapment and the agent provocateur. It is not just in areas of political or security concern that there have been serious allegations about the rôle of the Special Branch in industrial disputes.

I turn quickly now to Press and public freedom. It seems strange that again this House has seemingly no means to question decisions taken by people who are not Members of Parliament or members of any elected body over such matters as the publication of the diaries of the late Richard Crossman. I am not objecting necessarily to the decision, on whatever grounds, not to publish. My concern is that if there is a valid reason to withhold consent, that consent should be properly vested in an individual who can be questioned and challenged on the views and the judgments made.

As for the Press, we need to pay great regard to what a man who is now in another place once called "censorship by omission". All of us who are concerned in legitimate, lawful, peaceful minority groupings, especially in the Labour movement, know how difficult it is to get reported in the major newspapers the views of those groupings. There is an establishment in Fleet Street which takes certain things for granted.

I do not want to open the argument about the Common Market, but it is true that most of the national daily papers were and remain in favour of Britain's entry and use acres of their space, editorially and in their news columns, to argue that case while there has been little attempt to ensure a balanced debate as part of the great debate to which the then Prime Minister had called us. Surely we should be concerned to make it easier for individuals and minority organisations to have the means to go into the publishing business on their own, perhaps through the use of some publicly-controlled printing plant and process.

There is a growing feeling among senior journalists themselves that, just as they need freedom from pressures, they also need freedom from the whims and pressures of proprietors. I am worried about what I see as straws in an illiberal wind. A concern over these matters should be the concern of everyone in these islands who values freedom. Individual freedom depends on our collective attention to the details of that freedom. We cannot allow ourselves to be indifferent to those who would rob us of our freedom or allow that freedom to be taken from us by stealth.

3.20 p.m.

The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. Alexander W. Lyon)

My hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mr. Corbett) has canvassed in his interesting speech a wide variety of his concerns about the threats to liberty as he sees them. He was not able even within the space of that canvass to cover all the matters that he raised in his motion. Some of the detail to which he referred is not in the motion. I make no complaint about that, but it makes it rather difficult for me to deal with the points that he raised in any detail. However, I shall do my best.

Anyone concerned with civil liberties is concerned about the way in which authority exercises its power at any time. Equally, at present we all have to be concerned about the manner in which minorities exercise the power and influence that is open to them in the purveying of their views. My hon. Friend said that there had to be acknowledgement that in a civilised society those who assemble and demonstrate peacefully have the right to do so. There is no question about that. It would not be my task to bring that issue into question.

The real issue is whether in the specific cases which come to light from time to time and which cause complaint, the right to assemble and demonstrate has been exercised, or whether that right has been abused in seeking to exercise it in name only because there has been a resort to violence or some breach of the law which indicates that it was not a peaceful demonstration.

In determining whether that is right or wrong in any given situation there are bound to be conflicting views. The cases which can be referred to over the years which have been controversial have been assertions between either the minority group itself and other groups involved in the incident or the minority groups themselves and the police exercising their powers on behalf of us to keep law and order.

I do not pretend to suggest that there will not be mistakes made by the police or any other body of authority. One of the reasons for my right hon. Friend being anxious to introduce an independent element into complaints against the police is to ensure that the public are satisfied that where the complaints are raised they are genuinely and dispassionately considered. In most cases, even under the present system, there can be little doubt that the attention which is given to these matters by the investigating officers is thorough and impartial. However, there have been cases where that assertion has been called into doubt.

It is for that reason that the independent element will be introduced as quickly as possible in legislation which I hope will be coming before the House in the not-too-distant future. It may be that when that legislation is introduced much of the concern that has been voiced by my hon. Friend about the exercise of authority as it relates to the police will be quietened. At least I hope that that will be the result.

My hon. Friend went on to talk about specific cases such as the Windsor pop festival. It fell to my task to meet a deputation from Release which came to the Home Office to discuss the matter. Like my hon. Friend, I have seen the report which was prepared by the chief of police of the Thames Valley Authority for the purpose of explaining the reason for taking certain actions. It cannot properly be regarded, and was never intended to be regarded, as an independent inquiry into the actions of the police. It was an attempt to show why the chief constable took the action that he took in the course of the Windsor pop festival, and it allowed the Thames Valley Authority, which is the appropriate body, to consider the matter, to examine his version of events against the complaints by Release and other organisations, including the people who organised the festival.

Having seen both sides of the question, I recognise that there are differences of view about what happened. But I do not think that it would be right to accept that the chief constable's view was wholly unsympathetic to the right to hold a pop festival. He had co-operated in previous years in the holding of the pop festival in Windsor, allowing the festival to continue to the end.

On this occasion, the owners of the land had said, under their statutory powers, that the festival could not be held, and its holding breached the regulations applying to the Windsor Great Park, in that, for instance, the setting up of tents or playing music is an offence. Although there were a number of specific infringements of the law, the chief constable had made arrangements that the festival should not be stopped by the police, as he indicates in his report. It was only in the middle of the week in which it was supposed to continue that he came to a different decision.

My hon. Friend takes issue with the chief constable about the grounds on which he took that decision. It is a matter of judgment between those who take one view and those who take another. The chief constable sets out in the report the reasons why he thought that there were likely to be breaches of the peace and why he thought it necessary to exercise those powers.

Release and a number of other organisations have suggested through my hon. Friend that in the light of that report there should have been an independent inquiry. There have been a number of complaints involving specific allegations of the abuse of police power in individual cases. These are being investigated under the existing procedures of complaint against the police.

It was suggested that my right hon. Friend should have set up a public inquiry, somewhat akin to the Red Lion Square inquiry. There were two difficulties about that. One was that the power under Section 32 is rarely used, and now that we have seen it used in relation to the Red Lion Square incident we can understand why. It takes an enormous amount of time. It involves the activities not only of the police but the people involved for many weeks, and takes up a good deal of time of those appointed to conduct the inquiry. Before we could envisage that allocation of resources, men, time and money, we should have to be assured that the result would be worth while in terms of reassuring public opinion and establishing justice between those different complainants.

In this case I do not think that there is much dispute about the facts relating to the main actions of the police. What they did is fairly self-evident from the report of the chief constable as well as from the complainants. Therefore, what is in issue is the judgment of the chief officer in deciding to close down the festival when he did. That judgment has been considered by the appropriate authority, the Thames Valley Police Authority, which came to the conclusion that it did not wish to censure the chief officer. Though there were dissenting voices, the majority were in favour of accepting the report he had put before them.

My hon. Friend has indicated that he disagrees with that judgment. That is his right in a free society. However, since the facts are known, what a Section 32 inquiry would contribute to the further extension of his knowledge is difficult to see. It was not thought right therefore that we should authorise such an inquiry. All the specific complaints against specific officers for specific abuses of power will be considered under the existing procedure.

My hon. Friend went on to raise doubts about the activities of the Special Branch. Just because the Special Branch must inevitably conduct its activities in some degree of confidentiality and secrecy, there is always likely to be some apprehension about exactly what the Special Branch does. In fact, it is simply a group of police forces in an area and is made up simply of police officers carrying out special duties. The special duties refer to the security of the State and to investigations necessary for the security of the State, but they are conducted by ordinary police officers who have no greater powers than any other police officers.

The term Special Branch suggests a national organisation which is distinct from normal police authorities. It is no such thing. There is a Special Branch of the Metropolitan Police, but there are Special Branches of other police forces and they are composed simply of police officers who have been recruited and trained and who serve in the police forces which they originally entered. There is therefore no particular national organisation.

The officers are under the control of their chief officers and they are responsible for the prevention and detection of crime and the preservation of public order in their area. They are mainly concerned with offences against the security of the State, with terrorist or subversive organisations, and with certain protection duties, keeping watch on seaports and airports, and making inquiries about aliens. Because that is their normal rôle, there must be some degree of security about what activities they engage in.

All of us who have anything to do with the control of police powers and police authority are concerned that that authority should be used properly within the limits of the law. We investigate thoroughly any complaints brought to our notice to ensure that those powers are not abused. So far as one can see, there have been no substantiated abuses of power in ways which would give my hon. Friend alarm.

My hon. Friend has referred to the report on the Lennon case. The police version of what took place in relation to Kenneth Lennon was different from his allegations to the National Council for Civil Liberties in the statement prepared and published some time ago. Comparing one with the other, one finds grounds for believing that the police version of what took place is more credible and more cogent. But these matters are now laid before the public, because both versions are available publicly. That decision was made by my right hon. Friend to allay the kind of anxiety which my hon. Friend feels. It was precisely due to the fact that he wanted to show the company that the Special Branch had nothing to hide in its activities that he made these investigations public.

I accept that there will still be room for dispute about who is telling the truth and where the truth lies. But from my point of view, having read both sides of the story, I reiterate what I said before—namely, that there seems to be cogent ground for believing that the police version of what took place was more credible than the version produced by Mr. Lennon.

I do not say that with any air of complacency and we shall continue to investigate with scepticism any suggestion by the Special Branch that it has conducted its inquiries wholly within the law if there are reasons for doubting the correctness of that suggestion. But it must be said here and now, and quite firmly, that the only reason for having a Special Branch is that there are real threats to the security of the State. It would be wrong in seeking to control the way in which it exercises police power to inhibit in any way its activities in its defence of the security of the State.

We could not be talking at a more dangerous time in our history in relation to threats to the security of the State, and it would be wholly wrong to undermine the work which the security services and the Special Branch carry out for our protection. If there is any abuse, we shall pursue it vigorously to see that it does not occur again.

My hon. Friend turned to another matter, namely the publication of the Crossman diaries. I hope that he will not expect me to dilate at length on that topic. He suggested that there should be some person who was capable of being questioned here in the House on that subject. I, too, think that there is some person who is capable of being questioned, and who indeed has been questioned on this issue. I suggest to my hon. Friend that he addresses his question in that regard, not to me, but to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, who has ministerial control over whatever consent is given for the publication of the diaries.

My hon. Friend referred finally to the possibility of the establishment in Fleet Street of some kind of publishing concern, perhaps with Government backing, to allow minority views to be published in a way in which he said they are not published in Fleet Street at present. This matter raises serious issues about the freedom of the Press, and it would be wrong for me to canvass any view at the end of a reply of this nature. This is a question for the Royal Commission on the Press which at present is investigating all these matters, particularly the financial structure of the Press, to see in which ways it could be improved or helped possibly with the result which my hon. Friend contends. However, this is a matter that is best left to the evidence to be given to the Commission.

I can see serious objections to what my hon. Friend suggests and I would not have thought that the matter was as serious as he indicated in his speech. It seems to me that the minority groups to which he is referring get a substantial slice of Fleet Street space, although I accept that all of us who from time to time canvass matters that are dear to our hearts feel that Fleet Street gives us a bad time in properly allocating space. But if my hon. Friend looks at this morning's papers, he will see the amount of space allocated to the Lennon report, and he will remember the amount allocated to the Windsor pop festival. No one can say that they were not fully covered by most of the major newspapers.

I end with a matter which my hon. Friend raised in passing. It is one which has been of considerable interest to me over the years. It is whether all these matters would be improved if in this country we had a Bill of Rights.

I am bound to tell my hon. Friend that I take a different view. My hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General shares some of my hon. Friend's views. We have discussed these matters in the past in public. But my concern about a Bill of Rights is that first the Bill of Rights has to be passed by the House of Commons and the House of Lords as normal legislation. Equally, it can be amended as normal legislation within our constitution. There is nothing within our constitution to provide that it can be entrenched, as it is for instance in the American Constitution where there are safeguards against easy, quick amendments to the Constitution.

A Bill of Rights would be no greater protection than any other legislation on the statute book that was passed in the present Parliament. If it were suggested that this Bill of Rights by its limiting scope might have some effect upon the way in which the courts interpreted legislation, as a lawyer I should be bound to warn my hon. Friend that the courts have not always been radical or sympathetic in their interpretation of legislation involving social changes.

The English common law and English courts and our legal system in particular have always been very astute to protect the individual liberty of the subject. That is written deep in our English legal history, and our lawyers understand what to do in relation to that problem. Therefore, where the question is a dispute between the State and the individual the bias in our English legal training tends to be in favour of the individual.

Where we are talking about social legislation, about the rights of groups and about the balance in society between different economic forces and the way in which Governments try to redress imbalances between those groups, the English courts have not always been very helpful when it came to interpreting legislation because of their preoccupation with individual liberty.

In many ways a Bill of Rights might turn out to be a fairly reactionary and conservative approach to the problem of establishing freedom and justice within our society. Therefore, I have always had some hesitation about our ever passing a Bill of Rights. It is a matter which is sometimes approached by Conservative lawyers with a good deal more zeal than it is by lawyers on our side of the political fence. One wonders why that should be, unless it is as I have indicated.

I cannot suggest that I could ever support that part of my hon. Friend's interesting dissertation. But I have been grateful to him for raising these issues, and I have attempted partial answers to them.

3.44 p.m.

Mr. Corbett

I thank my hon. and learned Friend for the courtesy and patience of his reply. I am sure that our hearts are in the same place even if our heads lead us in somewhat different directions as regards some of these problems. I thank him sincerely, especially after a harrowing night in which he played no small part.

In the circumstances, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I shall seek leave to withdraw. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.