Terrorism Bill

I imagine that the shadow Home Secretary’s argument is that that would be the holding charge in the first instance. That was much the argument of the Liberal Democrat spokesman, who said that he had the answer to the 90-day problem: if people were brought in on suspicion of responsibility for some terrorist incident, some lesser charger should be made against them. I do not like that option, because, in effect, we would be giving the police a wink and a nod to concoct some holding charge in order to keep the suspect in custody. That is a worse set of circumstances, because the police are unlikely to withdraw that charge later, whereas if they find, as the Home Secretary suggests, that the person is not of value to them, they can be released. They will end up being charged with what might be, in Northern Ireland language, the duff charge. I have not heard today the answer to the conundrum of how we overcome the problems associated with the longer detention period. While I said that the Home Secretary had convinced me that a longer detention period was needed, he has not convinced me that 90 days is the right period and, to be fair to him, he has not tried to convince me of that. We need some evidence as to why those 90 days are necessary. I would have thought that the provision of as short a detention period as possible is in the interests of anyone who loves liberty. Certain arguments have been advanced, and some thought that they would poke fun at the Labour Member who suggested that because the 14 days had not been exceeded, there should be no concern about a 90-day detention period. The reality is that the police will work within whatever length of time might be available to them.