Terrorism Bill

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg), with whom I find myself agreeing far more than is good for my sense of comfort. May I start by praising the Home Secretary for his general approach to the legislation and willingness to make himself available to Members, and particularly for the many hours that he spent in front of Select Committees, including the Home Affairs Committee? The way that he has approached the issue gives me some confidence that a useful piece of legislation will be produced at the end of the process. I will certainly vote for the Bill tonight, although certain aspects of it need a rethink. It is important to get the Bill in perspective. The major changes needed to terrorist legislation have been made in previous Acts. Despite the dramatic claims that the rules have changed, this Bill is rather marginal to the issue of our security. The real battle against terrorism is not in the battle over legislation in the House but in the community and the country outside. It is in our policing, our intelligence, the development of community support, and crucially, in winning the hearts and minds of people at home and abroad. This is a long-term fight. Once terrorism is established, it takes years to get rid of. In my view, we will be extremely lucky if we are not facing attacks such as those that we have seen in London for the next 30 years. These are not, therefore, short-term, emergency measures. To all intents and purposes, they are permanent. The fight against terrorism does not lend itself to short-term initiatives. The public need to be reassured that things are being done, but they want to be safer. In parts of the Bill, the Government are betraying a serious misunderstanding of what is at stake. This is not a battle over what people are allowed to say; it is a question of how we win arguments. The key battle is for hearts and minds. We must persuade young British people from the Muslim community who feel angry about what is happening in the world, in Palestine, Kashmir and Chechnya, and who feel that in the west their Muslim lives are less valuable than others’ and their rights less valued than others’, that engagement in politics, democracy, public life and argument is the way to achieve change, not terrorism. Against us are the extremists arguing the opposite—that there is no way forward for them in western democracy; that it is a sham, an illusion and a dead end; and that terrorist violence is not only justified but the only way. We must be careful not to feed that argument. As the Bill stands, however, it is more helpful to the propaganda of the extremists than it is in winning hearts and minds. The Bill is drawn too widely. Let us draw briefly on the Northern Ireland experience. We banned the IRA but we tolerated Sinn Fein, not, in my view, because we thought that they were entirely separate organisations, but because we believed that it was better to draw the supporters of militant republicanism into a political process of democracy than to leave them supporting purely violent action. Today, there are organisations in the world such as Hamas. I hold no brief for it, and we have proscribed it as a terrorist organisation. Many people in our society, however, who totally condemn the London bombings, would see Hamas in a different light, as a product of the situation in Palestine—something understandable, and for a significant number of them, justifiable; not just a terrorist organisation but one that takes part in and wins elections.