Discussion on Terrorism and Human Rights

Of the keeping things secret, I'll just give o-o-one very obvious

example. I watched repeatedly and experienced

repeatedly this process.

Treasury, uh, sorry, um, terrorist incident X happens.

Meeting with the Prime Minister in Number Ten.

Explain blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Clearly, there's a rabbit off.

I ask questions. People look at the ground

and don't answer.

Da, da, da. Have another meeting afterwards with the

same officials, and you say,

"You let

a guy out of jail after MI5 warned that he would

almost definitely go and blow up something again.

Obviously, you kept the guy under surveillance,

right?

Because you were warned by MI5.

You kept him under surveillance in jail before you let him out, so you could see

who he was talking to." Everyone's head looks at the floor.

"Oh, you didn't keep him under surveillance.

Aha!

Is that because there's Cabinet Office legal advice that says that because

of ECHR rights to privacy, you're not allowed to keep even

convicted terrorists under surveillance inside jail?" "Yes, Dominic."

"Why didn't you s-explain that to the Prime Minister?

Why didn't you explain to the Prime Minister that we let out a guy who we

thought

was going to do another terrorist act, and we didn't even keep him under

surveillance because

the legal advice is that it's unlawful under the Human Rights

Act and the ECHR?"

So that happens routinely.

I would ev-- I would say the majority of terrorist

offenses that you see, there is

an ECHR human rights angle. Close to zero

percent

are ever explained

publicly. It's never discussed publicly.

And part of the reason for that is officials do not want

ministers asking questions, and the ministers don't want it raised

either. We had Buckland in charge at the

Minis-Min-Ministry of

Justice, right? And all the officials know

that Buckers didn't want

anyone raising difficult questions about that, so therefore it's not,

it's not raised. So again,

you can blame officials in one sense, but also fundamentally these questions are

political, and the reality is Conservative MPs for

fourteen years did not want to face the reality of

ECHR terrorism border control, and officials get

the message. I had meetings with this now deceased

former

head of MI6 about various things inside

MI6,

and a very basic issue there is that

MPs of both parties

rolled over, abandoned intelligence services on various

aspects of these

things, and made clear that we don't want--

we're not gonna back you up in

difficult situations.

Now you could say in all sorts of questions, you'd think, "Oh, well,

MI6 must be

doing X, Y, and Z." And I'll tell you that they're not doing X, Y, and Z.

You'd say, "Well, that's crazy. What would we-- Why would, why,

why would MI6 not

be doing X, Y, and Z?" The answer is because MI6 knows that the

ministers will not back up doing X, Y, and Z.