Press Release Summary = Lord Carlile, the independent reviewer of terrorist
legislation, has warned that the Government could put itself on a collision course with judges if it looks to introduce control orders which ignore the European law on human rights.
Press Release Body = Lord Carlile, the independent reviewer of terrorist
legislation, has warned that the Government could put itself on a collision course with judges if it looks to introduce control orders which ignore the European law on human rights.
The Liberal Democrat peer said there was a real challenge to develop "ethical"
terrorism legislation, rather than going down the route of some other European
countries where terrorist suspects could be detained indefinitely, interviewed
without lawyers present and in some cases kept incommunicado for up to 12 months.
Speaking at the Counter Terror World conference in London this week, Lord Carlile told delegates that citizens in the UK enjoyed sometimes conflicting civil liberties. "National security is a joint and several civil liberty which each of us is entitled to enjoy, and which affects every citizen, whatever their religious beliefs, however strong their religious commitment," said Lord Carlile. He said that citizens also had another civil liberty - the right to freedom from arbitrary executive action - and added: "The challenge I face is the dynamic tension between those two civil liberties.
Turning to the continuing debate over control orders and the calls for terror
suspects to be detained for longer than 28 days before charge, Lord Carlile said: "I do hope that we will not be looking at the introduction of control orders which require derogation from European law. If the Government wants to pick a fight with the judiciary, derogation will be a sure fire way of getting it.
"We have to make a choice about how far we go down the road that departs from civil liberties. My own view is that although there is an argument for detention for periods of longer than 28 days, there is currently not the evidence to support that argument. A debate about detention for more than 28 days - without the evidence to support it - is not a debate we should be having."
Lord Carlile described the UK as a "particularly porous" terrorist target, having traditionally welcomed immigration and with an extensive border, and also criticised the apparent lack of action by religious leaders in thrashing out agreements and standards for their own faith communities on what was considered acceptable behaviour. He also argued that it should be possible to use interception evidence in court, although he believed it would "add a weapon to the armoury in the fight against crime" without being used in a "huge number" of counter terror cases.
Lord Carlile added: "The challenge is to produce ethical counter terror law. Ethical is a dangerous word to use in the political context, but in relation to the laws addressing counter terrorism, we do have the ethical basis for producing it - the European Convention on Human Rights. It's quite a small document, but it's stood the testimony of time for almost 60 years."
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