Ken Clarke: Compensation payments fund terrorist groups
Compensation paid to terror suspects by the British government has ended up in the hands of terrorist groups, Kenneth Clarke has said.
Ken Clarke, the former Justice Secretary Photo: PA
6:39PM GMT 12 Feb 2013
The minister told a Parliamentary committee that it would be “naïve” to think
that money given to people who claim to have been mistreated by British
security forces has not helped fund extremist causes.
Mr Clarke was explaining Government plans to change the law to allow some
terrorist cases to be held in secret.
Mr Clarke told the Joint Committee on Human Rights the government’s changes
are needed to allow judges to hear sensitive the evidence against some of
the suspects who allege mistreatment by the State.
MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service, has been successfully sued for damages
by several people it considers to be terrorists, but who have never been
convicted.
Mr Clarke said that such cases only arise because the intelligence against
suspects cannot be disclosed in open court without jeopardising confidential
sources.
Disclosure of intelligence material could also risk intelligence-sharing deals
with allies like the US, the Coalition has said.
Some Conservative and Liberal Democrat backbenchers have said they object to the very principle of secret hearings, which they say are contrary to basic civil liberties.
Mr Clarke insisted that holding so-called “closed material proceedings” would ensure that terror cases are properly handled and mean compensation payments are not needed.
“At the moment, we pay out millions of pounds. It is arguable that quite a lot of these people would not have got those damages if the defence had been called against them,” he said.
He added: “We don’t know where the money goes. You are completely naïve if you don’t think that some of that money has possibly made its way to a terrorist organisation.”
Mr Clarke, the minister without portfolio, insisted that criticism that his secret courts would be unfair were misguided because the current system itself is unfair.
“You can’t say it has been fair justice because there hasn’t been any justice” because judges have not heard all the evidence against suspects, he said. “That’s why we are moving in this difficult area.”
Mr Clarke also mounted a strong attack on the critics of his plans, accusing them of “legalistic hair-splitting” and preferring silence to justice.
The only alternative to secret hearings is the current system of Public Interest Immunity (PII) certificates, under which a judge is asked to exclude from a case altogether evidence which might damage national security.
If a PII is refused, it can result in the authorities conceding defeat and paying out compensation rather than revealing secrets, he said.
“Those who oppose my Bill prefer silence - that the evidence is never taken into consideration. You just pay out and the plaintiff gets his money,” said Mr Clarke.
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