HL Deb 15 March 1984 vol 449 cc882-4

4.52 p.m.

Lord Elton

My Lords, perhaps we may now return to the Bill. I beg to move that this Bill do now pass. The work of your Lordships on this Bill has been concentrated and effective. It has not, for once, resulted in great changes in the way the Bill is drafted. It has resulted in considerable changes in the way its use will be supervised. Moreover, your Lordships have given Parliament itself more power to supervise the working of the Act. When it comes before your Lordships again, well before the date of renewal, your Lordships will have more information about how its provisions have been operated and more information about the guidance given to the police about it than has been the case in the past.

Parliament does have a very important role in monitoring the operations of this legislation and the undertakings which have been given to your Lordships will play a significant part in informing this process. I should like to acknowledge the contribution which noble Lords all round the House have made in formulating the undertakings which I have given from this Dispatch Box. They reflect great credit on those who have taken part in these exchanges and I think that they show that your Lordships' House is effective in the way that it influences the course of events. In view of the long exchanges that we have already had on the Bill this afternoon I will not detain your Lordships longer with rhetoric. I think we have done a good day's work and I thank your Lordships for your help.

Moved, That the Bill do now pass. —(Lord Elton.)

Lord Mishcon

My Lords, I have a strong suspicion that the concluding words of the noble Lord the Minister constituted a strong hint that anyone who spoke from these Benches should speak with the same brevity that he did and with the same clarity; if one could copy his clarity, which is exemplary. I will try to do so.

Nobody enjoyed this Bill. The Government did not enjoy it. The Opposition felt that it was their duty, consonant with what the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, said in his report that unless we were sure all this was necessary and that it had public support then we were achieving nothing, to put to the House, as was done in another place, what the problems were and why it was felt over the years, although this had been a necessary, unpleasant experiment by way of extraordinary legislation, that one might wonder at this stage whether or not it was a good thing to pass yet another Bill.

Democracy spoke in the other place. Democracy spoke in your Lordships' House. The Opposition therefore tried to carry out their duty by putting before the House amendments which they thought should be included in order to preserve as much as we could of our very sacrosanct principles of civil liberty and rights. I hope we fulfilled that purpose. We were certainly met with a courteous response, as always, from the noble Lord the Minister. I am getting a little tired of paying him compliments and I have an idea that he is equally tired of hearing them. I am thinking of saying at the end of every other Bill on which I have the honour of addressing your Lordships in answer to a Bill which has been fathered by the noble Lord the Minister. "May I say the same, please, as I said on previous occasions". That will shorten proceedings.

Of course there were some disappointments. I mention them but briefly. There was the disappointment, for example, that the exclusion procedure in Part II of the Bill had to remain. We opposed it and we argued against it, but your Lordships decided that exclusion orders have to remain. In many parts of the House we did not find it acceptable that the crime of failing to give information should be made a criminal offence, if one had some knowledge of a terrorist attack which was about to take place or which had taken place. We tried. We failed. Again, we attempted a battle on Clause 12, which your Lordships renewed this afternoon, in regard to international terrorism. On Clause 13 we dealt with the crime of failing to pass on information.

Our battle is over, and one can only pray that the battle against terrorism will soon be over. With that hopeful remark and again with appreciatory words from this Front Bench to the Front Bench opposite, and to all your Lordships who have been courteous enough to listen to the arguments on this Bill, I now sit down.

Lord Wigoder

My Lords, may I on behalf of noble Lords on these Benches who supported this Bill in principle—that means the noble Lords on the Liberal and SDP Benches—but who sought to strengthen and make the Bill more acceptable, say now grateful we are to the noble Lord the Minister for the care with which he has listened to all our suggestions and the genuine efforts which the Government have made in order to meet the improvements that we proposed. We are grateful to the Minister and we believt .hat as a result of our deliberations this Bill and the undertakings that have been given now make it far more acceptable than it was when it first came to your Lordships' House.

Lord Henderson of Brompton

My Lords, as a Cross-Bencher who has taken part in the proceedings from Second Reading until this Motion. That the Bill do now pass, may I say that as a supporter of the Bill I am also extremely grateful to the noble Lord the Minister for the concessions he has made in response to arguments advanced in the House. In my view the House has rightly concentrated on four areas: exclusion orders: Clause 11—that is, information about acts of terrorism—the powers of arrest and detention, which we worried at right to this very stage today: and, last but not least, parliamentary control. I believe that this House has extracted (if that is the right word, although I think I used another word earlier) or the Minister has vouchsafed three important undertakings.

I would only observe before I sit down that the success of this House as a revising Chamber should not be judged solely on the number of amendments made to a Bill during its passage. In this case it should be judged on the number of undertakings which the Minister has given. In my submission, there having been no amendments made, the undertakings are of no less value than if amendments had been made.

Lord Elton

My Lords, in a minimal reply to that brief debate, may I respond to the kind things which noble Lords opposite have said? I think that your Lordships are perhaps too modest in taking so little credit for the quality of the work which has been done. Had it not been for the contributions of all noble Lords who have spoken and of some others, we should not have come to such a fortunate conclusion so swiftly. Having said that, as we have done our work and as there is other work to do, I commend the Bill to your Lordships.

On Question, Bill passed.