Found at: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,252-2001550599,00.html ==================== TUESDAY NOVEMBER 27 2001 Blunkett's anti-terrorist Bill is a load of baubles MICHAEL GOVE A massive extension of state power with no benefit to the citizen's security "Deck the Bill with purest folly, tra-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-lah! Tis power makes our masters jolly, tra-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-lah!" There’s a festive air in the Blunkett household, for the Home Secretary is to get a marvellous bundle of new powers in time for Christmas. He has asked Parliament to wrap up the Anti-Terrorism and Security Bill, and hand its provisions over to him, before the holidays start. So urgent is the need for this massive piece of legislation that the Commons has been allowed only three deliberating days before Christmas. And, looking at the Bill, one can see why ministers have been Scrooges with time for scrutiny. For, in the jargon of Parliament, this legislation is one of those Bills which is known as a Christmas tree measure. That does not mean, as it should, that it is discarded when no longer timely and useful. Rather, it means that the Government can hang on to it any bright thing which takes its fancy. And ministers have indeed been garlanding the Bill so heavily that it is now practically all bauble and no tree. The speed at which Parliament is being asked to assent to a huge array of new powers for the executive is the mark of a Government uncomfortable with scrutiny and impatient to add to its powers. And what powers! If it is passed as it stands, this Bill will overturn the principle of habeas corpus to permit the detention of foreign nationals, on the basis of ministerial fiat. This will occur after a hearing before a tribunal never designed to decide on detention, without individuals knowing the evidence against them and with only the most limited powers of appeal. It will make it easier for state agencies such as the police to scrutinise information currently considered confidential. They could conduct speculative trawls without having to seek the permission of a court and the subject of any mistaken, or malicious, abuse of these powers has no practical recourse for the invasion of his privacy. The police do not even need to entertain a reasonable suspicion that their trawl will yield evidence for a terrorist prosecution, merely that their fishing expedition will land any information that may help them in the investigation of any crime. What, it must be asked, are such widespread new powers for the police doing in a specifically anti-terrorist Bill? And one which is being allowed such a brief time for scrutiny? The Home Secretary is trying to smuggle in an obnoxious load of balls on his cherished Christmas tree. Cannot the scope of these new powers be limited until Parliament has had a chance to determine whether it is right in principle and practice to cast them so wide? There is something peculiarly troublesome, of course, about cavilling in the face of the honest urgency with which the Home Secretary wishes to set traps for terrorists. It is impossible to doubt the sincerity of his intent. And even the briefest survey of his arguments shows that he has thought deeply about the balance between liberty and security before bringing his legislation forward. But surely it is right to object that we are being allowed only the very briefest time to survey the Home Secretary’s arguments, and since even Homer nods, even Blunkett may err. There is no doubt that he errs in his proposals to make incitement to religious hatred a new criminal offence. It is already, and has always been, a criminal offence in common law to incite another to commit a crime. But under the proposal as outlined it will be bodies of ideas, rather than the bodies of individuals, which are protected, no matter how foolish those ideas are, how exclusive their claims or how deserving of robust criticism. The bizarre doctrines of L. Ron Hubbard’s creation, Scientology, would be protected and the artistic endeavours of a genius such as Salman Rushdie open to prosecution. How can such a new law be defended? But the Home Secretary is guilty of a greater error still in a scarcely regarded clause of this Bill, one which has so far received only 14 minutes of legislative scrutiny. As the backbench Tory MP David Cameron has pointed out, Clause 109 would let British ministers pass into law any measure they happened to agree in secret with the EU’s justice ministers, with no need for full parliamentary legislation. New criminal measures, leading to the arrest and jailing of UK citizens, could pass into law by means of "secondary legislation". That means after only 90 minutes of debate in a Commons committee with no prospect of overturning the new law, and no possibility of amending it. We don’t even have to imagine what might be introduced under this clause. For the EU already has an urgent shopping list, including new powers for an EU-wide police force, Europol, such as an EU-wide arrest warrant. But even if such plans didn’t exist, the principle of Clause 109 would be offensive. We should not blithely abandon full democratic scrutiny of the laws which could jail our fellow citizens. In the words of the Shadow Home Secretary, Oliver Letwin, "our predecessors fought a civil war to try to prevent the executive from introducing legislation under the prerogative power that would put our citizens in jail. Now, as long as the executive take themselves off to Brussels, they will be able to do just that in a 90-minute debate. That is a monstrosity." This Bill is a monstrosity. It does not even contain the one change to our law which is urgently needed--effective reform of extradition procedure. Unless the illiberal, unnecessary and counter-productive measures with which it is festooned are stripped away, the Lords should tell Mr Blunkett that his Christmas tree is only fit for the fire.

michael.gove@thetimes.co.uk
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