- '(1) If the Secretary of State is satisfied that any person—
- (a) is or has been concerned (whether in Northern Ireland or elsewhere) in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism, or
- (b) is attempting or may attempt to enter Northern Ireland with a view to being concerned in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism,
- (2) In deciding whether to make an order under this section against a person who is ordinarily resident in Northern Ireland the Secretary of State shall have regard to the question whether that person's connection with any territory outside Northern Ireland is such as to make it appropriate that such an order should be made.
- (3) An order shall not be made under this section against a person who is a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies and who—
- (a) is at the time ordinarily resident in Northern Ireland, and has then been ordinarily resident in Northern Ireland throughout the last 20 years, or
- (b) was born in Northern Ireland and has, throughout his life, been ordinarily resident in Northern Ireland, or
- (c) is at the time subject to an order under section 4 of this Act.
§ Paragraph (a) shall be construed in accordance with Schedule 2 to this Act'.—[Mr. Roy Jenkins.]
§ Brought up, and read the First time.
§ 4.8 p.m.
§ The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Roy Jenkins)I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
§ Mr. SpeakerI think that it will be convenient if the right hon. Gentleman himself indicates all the various amendments that he wishes to be considered with the new clause.
§ Mr. JenkinsI hope that I can accomplish that fairly complicated task. With the new clause, I believe that there are associated 14 consequential amendments, which are as follows:
Government Amendments Nos. 9, 14, 17, 19, 20, 25, 28, 30, 45, 46, 59, 60, 61 and 62.
It will also be convenient to consider at the same time certain amendments tabled by Opposition Members before I tabled my proposals. They are:
Amendment No. 11, in Clause 4, page 3, line 20, leave out 'Great Britain' and insert 'United Kingdom'.
Amendment No. 12, in page 3, line 23, at end insert 'or Northern Ireland'.
Amendment No. 13, in page 3, line 27, at end insert:
'or Northern Ireland as the case may be'.Amendment No. 16, in page 4, line 2, at end insert:'(4) When an order is made under this section prohibiting a person from being in, or entering Northern Ireland, subsection (2) and (3) of this section shall have effect with the substitution of Northern Ireland for Great Britain'.There are also amendments to the proposed new clause:I hope I can say with a fair degree of confidence that the Opposition will not wish to press their amendments in the circumstances, because I think that my new clause and the consequential amendments cover fully the point which they had in mind.
- (a) in paragraph (a) to leave out "whether";
- (b) in paragraph (a) after "elsewhere", insert "in the British Isles".
The purpose of new Clause 1 and the amendments is to introduce into the Bill the concept known as reciprocity in the making of exclusion orders. I shall explain what is meant by "reciprocity". At present, a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies can be excluded from Great Britain only if he or she has been concerned in acts of terrorism or is attempting to enter Great Britain for that purpose. A non-citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies can be excluded from the whole of the United Kingdom. Probably in practice it means the Republic of Ireland, although there could be cases when it might mean elsewhere. However, 443 at present there is no power to exclude a citizen of the United Kingdom from Northern Ireland if, for example, he went from Great Britain to Northern Ireland to commit acts of terroism or there was reason to suspect that he was doing so. There is no reciprocal power of this sort.
We have discussed this matter throughout the, happily, fairly short history of this emergency prevention of terrorism legislation. I recollect the right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell) putting the point to me fairly early one morning a year last November. As I recollect it—no doubt the right hon. Gentleman will confirm this—I indicated to him then that I had no objection in principle to the matter, but I did not think that it had any practical import and, therefore, at that stage, I did not wish to change the position. Equally, in Committee my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary said that we would consider the matter further. Indeed, I understand that there was a Division. I was told that it was put forward in the spirit of helping us to consider the matter with even greater concentration. I do not know whether that affected our concentration, because I have always regarded this as a rather open point.
The position as I now see it is that I do not believe that this clause is likely to have any practical effect. We know of no example recently in which we should have wished to make an exclusion order of this sort. However, I am quite aware that, should a case arise in which it was right to make such an exclusion order, there could be objections of principle to our not being able to do so. This could arouse a feeling of grievance, lack of equality of treatment or lack of proper respect for the unity of the United Kingdom in Northern Ireland. Therefore, after consultation with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, who, like me, does not see it as a practical issue but equally sees no objection to it, I think it would be proper in the interests more of logic than of practice to bring forward the new clause. I therefore do so.
There is one other point which I should perhaps mention relating to the consequential amendments. In general the drafting of the new clause follows the wording of Clause 4 of the Bill—that is, 444 the exclusion clause—apart from the inclusion of a new subsection, (3)(c), which ensures that an order under this clause shall not be made against a person who is already subject to an order under Clause 4. I believe that it would be clearly ludicrous and unacceptable for us to take the view that a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies could be excluded from both Great Britain and Northern Ireland and turned, as it were, into a Flying Dutchman or that we should endeavour to export our own terrorists to a totally different part of the world. I do not believe that that would be reasonable. I think that, whether we be one side of the water or the other, regrettably we have to try to digest these people. Therefore, I think that this is a necessary saving provision. In my view, that is the only consequential amendment which I need explain to the House because the other amendments are essentially technical and drafting.
§ 4.15 p.m.
§ Mr. John Biggs-Davison (Epping Forest)The Opposition fully endorse the saving provision which the Home Secretary mentioned at the end of his speech. I am glad to see that the Under-Secretary of State is in her place, because I recall that towards the end of the proceedings in Committee she undertook to convey the feelings and arguments of members of the Committee to her right hon. Friend and to the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. She promised that the issue of reciprocity would be re-examined. We are grateful to her for redeeming that pledge, and we are grateful to the Home Secretary for accepting the case which right hon. and hon. Members from the Conservative and Unionist Party have made in full accord with right hon. and hon. Members who represent Northern Ireland constituencies.
The Home Secretary has the satisfaction of righting a wrong and removing an enormity from the statute book. He knows his Irish history and is aware that it yields many examples of fellow subjects across the Irish Sea being treated unfavourably and as second-class citizens. He mentioned the principle, the practicality and the logic of the matter. We consider that the principle is very important and has a practical application partly because of the effect that there has been on the morale of the brave and battered people of Northern Ireland.
445 Without the new clause, the people of Northern Ireland would be required to put up with those people whom authority over here was not prepared to put up with, and citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies could not be prevented from entering Northern Ireland even though they might be as dangerous to the peace as non-citizens.
Northern Ireland is the main theatre of terrorism. It is easier for terrorists to operate with impunity in Northern Ireland than in Great Britain. It could be said that the Belfast Lough had been deemed to be a type of Botany Bay with the difference that those who were in former times transported to Botany Bay were kept under constraint.
The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, although wisely retaining the power to detain, has brought detention to an end, and perhaps that fact has reinforced the argument upon which the right hon. Gentleman has based his change of mind. It was surely completely inequitable that suspects in Northern Ireland with their origins on this side of the water—for example, the former Londoner John Stevenson alias Sean MacStiofain—could not be excluded from the Province and sent back over here for us to deal with.
Therefore, the official Opposition are completely at one with the Ulster Unionists and other hon. Members in resenting the state of affairs—which the Home Secretary is now putting right—in which Northern Ireland is treated as a dump for unwanted, or perhaps sometimes wanted, men. We are glad that good sense and justice have prevailed.
§ Mr. J. Enoch Powell (Down, South)The Home Secretary has fairly recorded that from the very beginning of this legislation it has been the view of my hon. Friends and myself that it should contain such a clause as the one we are discussing. We are very glad and very relieved that it is now to be inserted in the Bill, and certainly I shall not take the opportunity of attempting to belabour the right hon. Gentleman for the fact that it has not been in the legislation previously.
It is, of course, intolerable, except for what one hopes will be a very brief period, that there should be any power to remove persons compulsorily from one 446 part of the United Kingdom to another or to exclude them and prevent them from moving from one part to another.
However, if there is to be such power there are strong reasons both of practice and of principle why it should be a two-way movement or, to be more accurate, a two-way prevention of movement.
The right hon. Gentleman is aware that on the issue of principle it has in the past 15 months been deeply felt, and certainly fully stated in Northern Ireland, that many people believed that the intention of this legislation was to use Northern Ireland as a dumping ground for the unwanted terrorists in Great Britain. However exaggerated that language may be, it represented real resentment which it is all to the good that we should now be removing.
There are, however, and have accumulated in recent days, practical grounds which certainly reinforce the view of the Home Secretary that it is by no means out of the question that practical use might be made of this power. We have seen cases proved in the courts and leading to conviction of persons belonging to Great Britain for taking steps to send the materials of terrorism to Northern Ireland. It is certainly a very short step from organising such a transfer of the material to actually going or wishing to go to Northern Ireland to participate in its use.
The right hon. Gentleman can therefore feel that he has not only considerations of principle but sound practical grounds to support the clause, which we welcome.
§ Mr. Andrew F. Bennett (Stockport, North)Some hon. Members on this side would have preferred my right hon. Friend to try to remove this anomaly by removing exclusion orders altogether rather than extending them to Northern Ireland. However, when we first read the new clause some hon. Members on this side were a little concerned that my right hon. Friend was perhaps extending the power further in relation to Northern Ireland than was provided for in the original Order. That is why we tabled Amendments (a) and (b), so that it was clear that this provision related to acts of terrorism within the United Kingdom and that it did not refer to acts committed elsewhere in the world.
447 There is a consensus about what constitutes terrorism in relation to Northern Ireland but not always about what is terrorism in other parts of the world. On many occasions in the past there has been considerable political controversy about whether someone, usually a non-British citizen, should be allowed in. But it is still possible that a British citizen will be involved in another part of the world in an act which some people would call terrorism and others would call freedom fighting. We were therefore concerned that the new clause should be tied specifically to acts relating to Northern Ireland.
Having considered the Bill carefully, it is at least my impression that the new clause will be inserted somewhere in Part II, which relates to exclusion orders, and that the final words of Clause 3(1),
with respect to affairs in Northern Ireland",will govern the new clause. If that is so, we will accept that our small amendments are completely superfluous. I should like an assurance that the new clause will be governed by that provision.
§ Mr. Roy JenkinsI think that I can give my hon. Friend that assurance. The Bill is closely circumscribed in the sense that it applies to acts of terrorism occurring in connection with Northern Irish affairs. There is no intention that it should apply more widely. I suppose that if a terrorist whose connections were with Great Britain and who went from Great Britain were to commit an act of terrorism in connection with Irish affairs in the Republic and then to retreat to Northern Ireland, that would be covered and it would be reasonable to exclude him if it were right on other grounds. But this would not cover acts of terrorism committed except in the Northern Ireland context.
§ Question put and agreed to.
§ Clause read a Second time, and added to the Bill.