Lord Anderson of Ipswich (CB)

My Lords, as the final Back-Bench speaker, I echo all noble Lords who have wished the noble Lord, Lord Alton, a speedy recovery. He is, for so many of us, the outstanding example of a successful campaigning Cross-Bench Peer. I look forward to his speedy return. The Joint Committee on Human Rights has been doing some important and visionary things in recent years, this report included. I thank it for its work, and will touch on citizenship deprivation, terrorism prosecutions and the prosecution of international crimes. First, on deprivation of citizenship, I was delighted to see the strong recommendations regarding both transparency and oversight. They reflect recommendations made by the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, Jonathan Hall KC, and indeed by me when I occupied that post. In their response, the Government point out quite correctly that the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration published independent reviews of the deprivation power in 2018 and 2024. Successive chief inspectors have done an excellent job and I hold them in high regard. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Murray, will forgive me when I say that, having read the chief inspectors’ reports, I am less easily satisfied than him. The purpose of those inspections, in the words of the 2018 report, was only to examine “the efficiency and effectiveness of the Home Office’s processes”. Even that procedural examination had its limits. The 2024 inspection looked only at the Status Review Unit, which deals with deprivations prompted by fraud or related to serious organised crime. What were described as “‘conducive cases’ where sensitive intelligence is relied upon to make a decision” are handled by the Special Cases Unit and were said to be out of scope. Those cases, of course, are relevant here, so I cannot agree with the Government that existing independent oversight is sufficient. Deprivation of citizenship on grounds conducive to the public good is a power used for national security purposes. As a measure devastating in its effects on the individual and yet exercised on the basis of secret intelligence assessments deferred to by the courts, it requires the same sort of review as is given by the security-cleared independent reviewer, in the service of Parliament and the public, to the other powers exercised by Ministers and the police in relation to terrorism and state threats. Published figures are welcome but afford only the outline of what is needed, and many questions have gone unanswered. To take an example raised in evidence by the independent reviewer, what was the intelligence case for the sudden surge in deprivations in 2017? What was the make-up of those subjected to it? What happened to them and why was deprivation used in preference to all the other tools? This House will soon be asked to look at the Deprivation of Citizenship Orders (Effect during Appeal) Bill, which seeks to reverse the effect of the judgment of the Supreme Court earlier this year in N3 and ZA v the Secretary of State for the Home Department. To do our job effectively, we need to know more about how the deprivation power is exercised; the independent reviewer is the person to tell us. One possible reason for the unusual prevalence of citizenship deprivation in the UK, and for the various executive orders that can be placed upon unconvicted persons, is the difficulty in bringing such persons to trial. Reference has already been made to the remarkably low proportion of Daesh returnees who have been prosecuted in the UK for terrorism offences. When I used to look closely at those figures during the heyday of Islamic State, much higher rates were being achieved by our continental neighbours, and I am not aware that this has changed. Thanks to the development of the counterterrorism division of the CPS and the terrorism list in the Crown Court, the prosecution of terrorists in this country has markedly improved since 2006, when Charles Clarke, as Home Secretary, could say to the Home Affairs Select Committee: “I think that an investigating magistrates regime is very superior to the system that we have in this country … I do not think the adversarial system has been a particularly effective means of securing justice”. As is shown in Frank Foley’s informative book, Countering Terrorism in Britain and France, we continue to place a comparatively high premium on fairness. We do not have an offence as broad as the French “association de malfaiteurs”. We do not have investigative magistrates who can spend months or years building a case while a suspect is in custody, who face less exacting disclosure requirements and who have regard to sensitive intelligence that could never be placed before a jury in coming to their decisions. All this speaks well for our traditions of justice and our unwillingness to compromise them, but it does not make it easy to convict foreign fighters, even for terrorism offences. That brings me, finally, to the shaming fact, which noble Lords have heard already, that no Daesh fighter has been successfully prosecuted in the UK for committing international crimes, including genocide, crimes against humanity or even war crimes. I agree with the noble Baronesses, Lady Kennedy and Lady D’Souza, that this amounts to a failure of this country to acknowledge the true nature of the criminality that Daesh presented, particularly in relation to the Yazidi. Without question, it would be hard to prosecute these crimes, but surely that is all the more reason for seeking to remove such obstacles as can be removed. After all, the Government, in their response to the report, indicate agreement with the committee’s conclusion that, where the UK has jurisdiction over international crimes, it should seek to investigate and prosecute them. Desirable, even preferable, as it might be for these crimes to be prosecuted in international or hybrid tribunals, the prospects—from what I have heard—do not look promising. I commend the Government for the support they gave to UNITAD and that they give to the IIIM in Syria and the NCIJC in Iraq. However, like other noble Lords, I would like to know why more cannot be done to ease the path to prosecutions here. Echoing in part the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, I end with three practical questions. Is it right that we have never requested evidence from UNITAD, or joined a joint investigative team for Daesh, and, if so, why? Why have we not signed or ratified the Ljubljana-Hague Convention on Mutual Legal Assistance? Why should we not remove the requirement of citizenship or residency in Sections 51 and 58 of the International Criminal Court Act 2001?