Hansard

I do not dispute that there is a need for covert work, and I acknowledge that that may involve some lawbreaking. I am referring to dangerous work such as that which colleagues have outlined. Scottish Greens would welcome legislation in the area—just not this legislation—that, as other members have said, aimed to provide an express statutory power to authorise a covert human intelligence source to participate in criminal conduct when it was necessary and proportionate to do so. However, most people would not see it as reasonable, necessary or proportionate for torture, murder and sexual violence to be included in any such authority.

This is about the express limits of legislation. Amnesty International, of which I declare I am a member, says:

“Without express limits”—

good grief, even the United States has express limits on what can be authorised—

“at the authorising stage, we worry that even improved oversight would leave too great a scope for abuses.”

There was also talk of oversight by commissioners. According to Amnesty, the Investigatory Powers Commissioner has said that

“MI5 systematically kept vital information from him to falsely justify surveillance warrants, and suggested that the agency is failing to reliably record the kinds of crime in which their agents become involved.”

As others have said, the Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Bill relies on the Human Rights Act 1998 as a safeguard, but the UK Government, which is seeking to sanction crimes committed by armed military abroad, does not believe that the act applies to abuses committed by its agents.

Mr Pat Finucane, a human rights lawyer in the north of Ireland, was murdered by the UK state; the UK Government’s inquiry, led by Sir Desmond de Silva QC, confirmed that and the UK Prime Minister at the time, David Cameron, apologised for it. We know that members of the public still have grave concerns about the untimely deaths of others such as Hilda Murrell and Willie McCrae. We know that UK state agents have stolen the identities of dead babies and have formed intimate relationships that have rightly been referred to as state-sanctioned rape. We also know about complicity in rendition—the use of Highlands and Islands airports for abduction and torture.

Judicial oversight, prior or otherwise, would not be enough to secure Scottish Green Party support for the legislative consent memorandum, simply because we do not trust the UK’s state agents. Greens do not want potential human rights abuses including murder, torture, punishment shootings, kidnap and sexual offences or conduct that would interfere with the course of justice being

“rendered lawful for all purposes”.

For all those reasons and more, we oppose the granting of consent and will support the Scottish Government’s motion.