Terrorism Bill

The contribution made by my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) was extremely good, especially when he said that a certain Conservative even tried to send questions to the House of Commons from prison. I think that that was a former Member for South Midlothian—the last Conservative ever to represent my constituency. I have one or two observations to make. I have grave reservations about the three-month lie down—or lock-up, as it should commonly be called. I come from a mining community, and the point that several hon. Members have made about community involvement is really important. If the police begin to arrest certain members of the community who are not charged after a period of detention, that will infuriate the other members of the community. As I said earlier, there remain deep divisions and hostilities between miners and police in Scotland’s mining areas. The police have had to work extremely hard in the 21 years since the miners’ strike. I may be the only hon. Member who has been locked up—[Interruption.] Perhaps that is not the case, but a provision exists in Scottish law called the 110-day petition, under which a person is held on remand. I am disappointed that the Home Secretary has not taken account of the Scottish approach, as I am worried about what happens when a person is detained without trial. I was in prison for more than two months before my trial, when the jury—that is, the people—took only 25 minutes to find me innocent. I am therefore not a huge supporter of the great Scottish legal system, and I have grave concerns about it. However, the serious point is that it is bad enough for a person who is wrongly sent to prison and who then has to fight against the charge levelled at him: much worse is the problem faced by the person who is sent to prison without being told what the charge is. It is possible that such a person might leave prison without ever being charged, and that is intolerable. We must do all that we can to ensure that that does not happen in this case. I do not want this Government to repeat the mistakes made by the Conservative Government of the 1980s. We must not become isolated from the communities in this country. We must work with the people in the communities and carry them with us. If one person is detained in prison without trial, under the circumstances envisaged by this Bill, that is one person too many. It is possible that some hon. Members may not know what happens in prison. Every weekday, I was locked up for 21 hours out of the 24, and at weekends I was locked up for 23 hours. I could not leave the cell, but that is what happens to people who are awaiting trial and who are innocent. It is intolerable that the Government propose to put people in that position while they are waiting to be interrogated by the police, sometimes with representation and sometimes without. I want to make one final appeal to the Home Secretary. He said that a mechanism would be established that would allow cases to be reviewed by a judge, whose seniority has yet to be decided. I have concerns about judges, and who will monitor the decisions that they take? Will the legislation be reviewed, say, in six months from now to ensure that we are not going down the wrong road? If too many people are being detained without trial, that will show that there must be a fault in the system. In that case, the provision should be brought back for discussion in this House. Having set out those reservations, I look forward with interest to the comments that will made by hon. Members of all parties if the Government’s proposal is accepted by the House.