Judgment Approved by the court for handing down.
Miranda v SSHD
35.
The second error identified by Mr Ryder is that Laws LJ appeared to take into account
a purpose advanced by Det Supt Stokley that was “wholly speculative”. This is a
reference to para 36 of his second witness statement in which the officer said that the
NSJ reinforced his view, reached independently of the case made by the Security
Service for the stop, “that the value of the material that Mr MIRANDA might be
carrying to a hostile state….was enormous and its disclosure to agents of a hostile
state….or a terrorist organisation…..would be catastrophic” and that this justified the
use of the stop power. Mr Ryder submits that this was mere speculation. He says that
it was not derived from any information from the Security Service and was not
communicated to the officers who exercised the stop power. It could not properly be
included in the assessment of the purpose of the exercise of the powers let alone
support the predominance of a permissible Schedule 7 purpose.
36.
I would reject this criticism for the reasons advanced by Mr Beer QC. Whether Det
Supt Stokley communicated the details of his thinking to the examining officers does
not matter. It is sufficient that his assessment was a relevant part of the decisionmaking process which led to the stop. The examining officers are not required to
carry out their own assessment. It is sufficient that their superior police officers do
so. The criticism that the assessment of Det Supt Stokley was “wholly speculative”
seems to be based on the idea that, in reaching his assessment, the officer was not
entitled to rely on information provided by or assessments made by the Security
Service. But as Mr David Anderson QC (the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism
Legislation) said when considering the utility of Schedule 7 at para 9.46 of his report
dated June 2012:
“It is fair to say that the majority of examinations which have
led to convictions were intelligence-led rather than based
simply on risk factors, intuition or the “copper’s nose”. Indeed,
despite having made the necessary enquiries, I have not been
able to identify from the police any case of a Schedule 7
examination leading directly to arrest followed by conviction in
which the initial stop was not prompted by intelligence of some
kind.”
37.
I do not find this in the least surprising. The police are plainly entitled to rely on
intelligence emanating from the Security Service in exercising their powers under
Schedule 7, unless it is unreasonable for them to do so. In my view, Det Supt Stokley
was entitled to rely on the Security Service assessment contained inter alia in the
fourth paragraph of the NSJ. He had no reason to disagree with it.
The meaning of terrorism in section 1 of TACT
38.
The third error alleged by Mr Ryder is that the court failed properly to analyse
whether Det Supt Stokley erred in his approach as to what could, in law, be defined as
an act of terrorism.
39.
I do not believe it to be controversial that section 1(1) and (2), when read together,
define “terrorism” as (i) the use or threat of action which (ii) (relevantly for the
present case) “endangers a person’s life, other than that of the person committing the
action” where (iii) the use of threat is designed to influence the government or an
international governmental organisation or to intimidate the public or a section of the
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