Terrorism Bill

The whole House will have been impressed by the Home Secretary’s flexibility. To give credit where credit is due, he is clearly listening to many people’s concerns. I am torn between my instinct to support the objections to the Bill that my hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) has put with great clarity and force, and my experience and knowledge, which pull me in the other direction. We have heard a lot of talk from a lot of Members, all of whom have a little bit of knowledge about computers or encryption, this or that. If I may proffer some advice, a little knowledge is a very dangerous thing. It is not one issue or another that has led not just the police but—I am glad to have had the Home Secretary’s confirmation—the security services to the unanimous view of all those who work in this area that an extension of time is needed, and that it is up to the police to suggest what that period should be. What we are discussing, in a vastly more technological age and in the face of a threat to the country that is completely different from any it has experienced in the past from, for instance, the Irish—an entirely international threat, with no boundaries recognised—is the turning of intelligence that can be gathered into evidence that can be used to prosecute. Trying to achieve that strikes me as not a libertarian but a practical issue. If it now takes longer, because the process is so much more complex, to produce from intelligence evidence on the basis of which a person can be charged and convicted properly in court, that seems to me a perfectly reasonable way to proceed. I hope that in the discussions that the Home Secretary has told us he will have with our Front Bench, the Liberal Democrat Front Bench and all who have expressed an interest, he will be able to pray in aid some of the reasons why the security forces feel as strongly as they do. I know that they are reluctant to divulge their reasons, but perhaps we could be given some indication. When citizens’ lives are at stake, Members must think very carefully before rejecting the advice of professionals who have all the facts at their disposal, and who make honest and straightforward recommendations to the Government of the day, using professional knowledge and expertise that we, inevitably, cannot share.