17 March, 2005: This web log has never been party-political, and I don't intend to start now

So, it's St Patrick's Day, and that means that in Whitehall it's National Be Beastly To The IRA Week. This time around the government have `refused to rule out' use of their shiny new house-arrest powers against the IRA; specifically, according to Baroness Amos,

The Northern Ireland Secretary has been considering carefully the application of the powers of [the new Prevention of Terrorism Act] to Northern Ireland.

Of course, the real point here is not whether the government states its intention to use the power of arbitrary detention against any specific person, but that they can be used against anyone at all if the Home Secretary feels like it; he needs only to convince a court that his application to do so is not obviously flawed. First they came for the brown people; then for Irish people, after that... who knows. Travellers, perhaps?

Quite by coincidence, I happened to receive today a letter from Anne Campbell MP, in response to a fax I sent her two weeks ago congratulating her on her remarkable and unexpected discovery of a spine during the debate on the (then) Bill, and encouraging her not to mislay this valuable extra piece of skeleton before she had a chance to get used to it. (I should say that I didn't phrase it quite like that in my letter.)

Needless to say, she caved and voted in favour of the Bill eventually, and her letter was essentially an apologia for her behaviour. She writes,

You have to balance the risk of wrongly imposing a control order on someone, against the potential risk of hundreds of people being killed by a terrorist attack. [and much more in the same vein]

Now, it is very creditable that Anne is concerned about miscarriages of justice, even if, simultaneously, she apparently lacks the imagination to realise that the Orders might be abused deliberately. Later, she continues,

... I have to conclude that detaining terrorist suspects and depriving them of their liberty is a less bad option than deportation [to their previous countries of residence] and [their] risking torture or likely death.

Well, that's a funny thing. The amendment for which Anne voted was intended to make the Bill less offensive chiefly by replacing references to `the Secretary of State' with references to `the Court'. But it also added this clause:

(11) Evidence established to have been obtained under torture shall not be admitted in any proceedings [relating to Control Orders.]

The Act as finally passed contains no such prohibition on the use of evidence obtained by torture, and yet Anne voted in favour of it.

I can, therefore, only conclude -- as might Orwell have done -- that Anne is objectively pro-torture.

Comments

Posted by Pete Stevens, Friday, 18 March 2005 10:46 (link):
I received my letter from Anne today too.

It sounds as if it might be word for word identical with yours, we should compare them.

Pete

Reply to this.
- Posted by Chris Lightfoot, Friday, 18 March 2005 11:57 (link):
  I wouldn't be surprised. The letter runs (typos mine, except as marked) as follows. I have added my remarks between paragraphs:
  
  15 March 2005
  Dear Mr Lightfoot
  Thank you for your recent letter regarding the Prevention of Terrorism Bill. I can appreciate your concerns about the use of control orders, but the Bill has now received Royal Assent.
  I do believe that control orders are necessary to help the Police and the security services fight the terrorist threat. I voted with the Government because a concession was made that will ensure that all types of orders will be initiated by a judge, and this partly statisfied some of my converns about this legislation. In earlier votes on the Bill, I voted against the Government. The Bill is far from perfect, but the Government has indicated that after the General Election, a new Bill will be brought forward to address the problem of terrorism, and this will be have [sic.] a much wider scope. MPs will also be able to review the Prevention of Terrorism Bill after a year.
  
  No such concession was made. S.1 of the Act allows the Home Secretary to make control orders which do not compromise the subject's Article 5 rights under the ECHR. Control orders which do so compromise the subject's rights are made by the court on application by the Home Secretary, but the court's only function is to check that the order is not `obviously flawed' -- that is, their power extends to checking that the forms have been filled out correctly, and not much more.
  
  I am not happy about the idea of people being detained without trial. I'm sure you must appreciate that deciding how to deal with terrorist suspects is an extremely complex issue. There is no obvious or easy solution. The terrorist threat is a real one, and therefore the Government has a responsibility to protect our society. As Charles Clarke said in his statement on 22 February, `Some believe that the absence in this country of a terrorist outrage such as 9/11 or Madrid means that the terrorist threat has somehow passed us by or failed to materialise. That view is short-sighted, complacent, ignorant of the facts and potentially cavalier in its disregard of the safety of this country'. You have to balance the risk of wrongly imposing a control order on someone, against the potential risk of hundreds of people being killed in a terrorist attack.
  
  ``There is no obvious or easy solution.'' There is. Let me outline it again. There are three possible situations we have to deal with:
  1. A `terrorist suspect' is illegally planning or executing terrorist acts.
  2. A `terrorist suspect' is planning or executing terrorist acts which are not illegal, and is not doing anything else illegal either.
  3. A `terrorist suspect' is not planning or executing terrorist acts and is not doing anything else illegal either.
  My prescription runs as follows. In case 1, try the terrorist suspect. If they are found guilty, send them to prison. In case 2, decide whether the terrorist acts the suspect is attempting to execute are serious enough to make them illegal. If they are, do so, and treat as case 1. In case 3 let them the fuck out of prison already.
  
  It is useful to remember the context of these proposals. Part 4 of the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act which allows the detention of non-British terrorist suspects was introduced in response to a very particular problem. A terrorist suspect may pose a grave risk to UK security, but there may be insufficient evidence to convict him in a criminal trial. The Government would wish to deport such a person to their country of origin -- and would be entirely entitled to do so. However, in many cases, this individual may come from a country where the individual risks torture or inhuman treatment if they were returned there. In such a case, the UK's commitments under the European Convention on Human Rights (article 3) prevent the Government from deporting such an individual. The Government could not take the risk of allowing such an individual to continue to use the UK as a base for conducting terrorist activity, and this is the reason for the detention. Despite my reservations about detention without trial, I have to conclude that detaining terrorist suspects and depriving them of their liberty is a less bad option than deportation and risking torture or likely death.
  
  As I have noted above, this bit is not to be taken very seriously.
  
  On 26 January, Charles Clarke made a statement in the House regarding the replacement of the [sic.] Part 4 in the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 with a new scheme of Control Orders. The Home Secretary fully accepted that parts of the Acti were incompatible with the ECHR, and that new legislative measures must apply equally to nationals as well as non-nationals. He also expressed the view that prosecution is the preferred way forward, but that it is important to recognise that this isn't always possible, given the highly sensitive sources and techniques involved in the terrorist threat. He has agreed to involve the Director of Public Prosecutions in a decision about prosecution at an early stage.
  The Lord Chancellor has offered reassurance that the Control Orders are not internment, and will not impact on the traditional rights and freedoms that citizens enjoy in this country. It is important not to over exaggerate the proposals -- the UK is not a police state, and we place a high value on our civil liberties here. The Bill makes provision for a range of controls to be imposed, and the order that would require an individual to remain in a particular place at all times is at the top end.
  
  Firstly, `impact on' is not a verb. Secondly, the Lord Chancellor may offer what reassurances he likes, but this is still a power of arbitrary detention at the orders of a politician.
  
  It is very likely that the most extreme form of control orders will only be used in a very small number of cases, and only if required for the purposes of protecting the public from risks of a public emergency associated with terrorism.
  
  ``This may be a very bad idea and inimical to our rights and liberties... but don't worry -- it'll only be used on other people, and not very many of them.'' Well, that is reassuring, then.
  
  The public may be sceptical about the risk of global terrorism, but it does exist, and we have to acknowledge that new ways to confront the threat muset be introduced. This is a challenge that other European countries also face. The current situation is far from satisfactory, but we cannot allow people who have been involved in planning terrorist activities to freely walk the streets, and risk the chance of something serious happening that would jeopardise the safety of the country.
  Thank you for letting me know your views.
  Yours sincerely,
  ANNE CAMPBELL
  MP for Cambridge
  Reply to this.
  - Posted by Mike, Friday, 18 March 2005 16:20 (link):
    It strikes me that the only likely outcomes when (if?) the Bill is reviewed will be
    
    1) In the event that no terrorist attack occurs - "Look, it's working!", the Bill is kept on the books
    
    2) In the event of a terrorist attack in the UK - "Well, obviously the powers are not strong enough, we need more!", an even harsher Bill is introduced
    
    Is there are plausible scenario in which this Bill will be repealed if and when it is reviewed? The only possiblity I can think of is a highly-publicised case of an order being wrongfully imposed upon someone (most likely on a woman or non-muslim if the tabloids are to care about it), but is there any realistic chance that any wrongfully-imposed order would (or even could legally) be publicised?
    
    Reply to this.
    - Posted by Chris Lightfoot, Saturday, 19 March 2005 14:27 (link):
      So far as I can tell, the chances of repeal are pretty minimal. When it comes up for review, I predict that the Home Secretary will say,
      that not very many people are subject to Control Orders;
      that off those, very few are actually under house arrest as such;
      that he has real and very concerning information (which, of course, he cannot reveal) from the Police and the security services about the nature of the ongoing terrorist threat;
      that while prosecution remains `the preferred option', it sadly turns out that ~~none of the suspects has actually done anything wrong~~ because the evidence against the suspects has been gathered by sophisticated electronic surveillance, it would be impossible to bring them to trial; and
      that it is completely out of the question to allow surveillance information to be used in court, because... err... just because.
      
      I predict also that just prior to whatever Parliamentary proceedings there are on the review of the Act, a (possibly retired) senior Police officer, spook, ex-Home Secretary or similar grand personage will give an exclusive interview or leak to a Murdoch newspaper, in which they will claim, among other things,
      that there is some large number (hundreds or more) of `trained al-Qaeda terrorists' roaming the streets of Britain;
      that the only way to deal with these trained terrorists is by putting them under house arrest; and
      that anyone who disputes this lacks common sense or some other indispensable piece of mental apparatus and whose opinions should therefore be disregarded entirely.
      Reply to this.
  - Posted by Matt Freestone, Sunday, 20 March 2005 22:09 (link):
    I haven't checked the whole thing, but that is pretty much the same letter I got from Mrs Campbell after a few letters back and forth. I don't blame her for that though - she must get a lot of roughly identical letters.
    
    I'm still not sure I understand why the Government was so keen on this bill - they must have known the anger it would provoke from a lot of people (even if it is superficially popular), and I find it hard to believe that ministers don't believe in some way in civil liberties. It seems a bit glib to say that Blair just doesn't give a damn about the right to trial etc, even though that's the most obvious way of looking at it.
    
    The most plausible thing I read was in the Indie (I think) - that Blair is terrified of a Madrid-type attack during the election campaign which could upset the election when it's practically in the bag. That's in some ways an even more cynical view of his beliefs, but I can imagine it preying on his mind for good reasons and bad.
    
    Reply to this.
    - Posted by Chris Lightfoot, Thursday, 24 March 2005 00:58 (link):
      But the legislation would be able to prevent a Madrid-type attack only if:
      the ex-Belmarsh detainees would, if released, be able and willing to plan and execute such an attack (despite in one case having no arms, and in others be suffering from serious helth problems); and
      the Police and security services would be unable to watch them and arrest or otherwise prevent them from doing so; and
      putting them under Control Orders would prevent them from being able to execute such an attack; and
      there is nobody else who could execute such an attack.
      
      These conditions seem a bit implausible to me.
      
      My guess is that Blair has been so seduced by intelligence material that he's started believing it all uncritically.
      Reply to this.
      - Posted by dsquared, Thursday, 24 March 2005 08:11 (link):
        It is amazing how often people, at the very highest and lowest levels, simply don't think critically about the connection between means and ends. My advice to any young man embarking on a career in business is to always ask the question "What do we expect will happen as a result of this?", and then when you get the answer "It will protect the security of our homeland" or "We will maximise synergies, achieve Total Customer Involvement and become a global thought leader", ask the question "No, I mean, what specific physical actions will occur as a result of this", then when you get the same answer restated, explain that you are looking for something expressed in terms of the movements of human bodies and other physical objects relative to the surface of the earth. You will almost always get a reputation as an uncommonly sharp young man with your superiors and will usually become extremely unpopular with your colleagues.
        
        Reply to this.

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