Special advocates

56.  In our last report on this Bill we recommended six amendments to the control orders legislation which are designed to ensure that in the future control order hearings are much more likely to be fair in all cases.[39] These recommendations are very largely based on the evidence that we have received from special advocates expressing their concerns about the fairness of the hearings under the current legislative framework.

57.  At our recent conference on counter-terrorism policy and human rights, a special advocate spoke strongly in favour of our recommendation that the law should be amended so that special advocates could, with judicial authorisation, communicate with the controlled persons whose interests they represent after they had seen 'closed material' and without the Secretary of State knowing about the communication. She said that this would improve the fairness of proceedings involving special advocates and enhance the accountability of special advocates. She thought that judges were capable of dealing with possible breaches of national security and would rigorously scrutinise requests by special advocates to communicate with the controlled person.

58.  The Minister, Tony McNulty MP, offered to meet the special advocates to discuss the recommendations in our report concerning them. We wrote to the Minister on 16 May to follow up his offer and to express the hope that his meeting with the special advocates could be held in time to inform debate on our proposed amendments about special advocates at the Bill's Report stage.[40] We urge the Minister to meet the special advocates to discuss our recommendations and to report to Parliament on the outcome of that meeting.