In the short time available to me I wish to raise an issue relating to a citizen of this country, Mr. Matthews, and his treatment in the United Kingdom recently. I understand he was arrested in relation to the recent bombing in London on the basis of what proved to be flimsy so-called identification evidence and detained for a period of ten weeks. The identification evidence proved not to be evidence at all, and when his case came before the relevant court for further processing it transpired that the Crown proposed to offer no evidence. Accordingly, he was ordered to be discharged at a preliminary stage. That is welcome and nobody can quibble with the fact that he was discharged. However, one must query why it took ten weeks for a decision to be made by somebody in authority that there was no evidence against Mr. Matthews.
During that ten week period a number of Deputies here, including myself, and public representatives on both sides of the Irish Sea, including the leader of the SDLP, John Hume, who is acquainted with Mr. Matthew's family, queried the basis on which he was detained and called for some form of public accountability in relation to the absence of evidence warranting such detention. We now have the extraordinary situation where, as soon as he was released, he was rearrested under the Prevention of Terrorism Act and detained in Paddington Green police station in London in order that an exclusion order should be made against him.
The United Kingdom's rules on exclusion orders are most extraordinary. There is no other major country within the European Community or within the Council of Europe which arrogates to itself the right to describe itself as a united jurisdiction and at the same time, on an administrative basis and without any adequate judicial review, excludes citizens from travelling freely within its confines, particularly citizens of one portion of the United Kingdom who can be excluded from travelling through the remainder of that country. Those provisions are repugnant to reason. They amount to a form of internal internment, an internal exile of sorts. If it were not for the fact that the rest of the island existed, it would mean that people in Northern Ireland could effectively be confined to that corner of that country by a process which is neither accountable nor justiciable and is in no way reviewable by any transparent process.
It is incumbent on the Minister for Justice and on the Minister for Foreign Affairs repeatedly to raise with the British authorities in the Anglo-Irish process the use of exclusion orders in circumstances where people are released on the basis that there is inadequate evidence against them. The presumption of innocence is entirely subverted by a process which puts somebody on hazard as to their liberty and then, when that process proves to be fruitless from the point of view of the prosecutor it is transformed into a process of internal exile without any justiciable or reviewable content. I ask the authorities here to raise this device again and again with the UK authorities through the Anglo-Irish process and to question the way in which it is deployed to save embarrassment on the part of those who have deprived people of their liberty on the pretext of claiming to have evidence which would warrant their charging and detention in the first place but which pretext proves to be insubstantial on close examination. It is invidious and wrong that ordinary people, whatever country they come from, but particularly when they are people over whom we claim some form of protective function, should be excluded from earning their living, excluded from travelling within a country which claims their loyalty and their fealty under English jurisdiction. It is wrong and it should be challenged by our Government. I ask the Minister to explain what he proposes to do to underline our displeasure at these steps taken by the British authorities.
