Terrorism Bill

I have listened carefully to the debate. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary invited to us to reflect on the proposal from our constituents’ perspective. I would like to say a few words from the perspective of the people of Leeds, a city that was shocked and traumatised by what happened in the summer. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry), who said that, if we are to make our communities safe, we must build trust within them. Over the years, we have made a fair effort at that in Leeds, and there is generally good trust between all the communities in my constituency as we have tried to work together. Encouragingly, having spent weeks in my constituency over the summer break, I have seen that trust built up and strengthened through the traumas that we have faced. Despite that trust, the events of the summer in Leeds came as a complete shock out of the blue. The community was unsighted and the events were totally unexpected. The families of the bombers themselves did not know that terror bombers were living in their midst. I am therefore a little surprised to hear Liberal Democrat Members and others say that nothing needs to change at all, because that is not the sentiment in my constituency. On the morning of 12 July, my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary alerted me to the fact that No. 12 Alexander grove—a house on the very edge of my constituency—would be raided by the police as it was a suspected bomb-making centre used by the London suicide bombers, whose homes were to be searched that morning. In the Burley Lodge area of Leeds, 420 of my constituents were immediately evacuated. The police knocked on their doors and told them that they had only a few minutes to leave because there was a dangerous bomb in the neighbourhood. After many hours, the police forced an entry into the house in Alexander grove—it was feared that a bomb would be tripped and so on. The furniture had been removed, but they found a household bath full of chemicals. They had to work out the composition and combination of the chemicals and, crucially, those materials were of a different type from those used by previous bombers in Britain such as the IRA. The scenario was quite different, and it took more than 14 days to make the house safe with the help of chemists and other specialists before the forensic investigation could even begin. If a single suicide bomber had survived and been taken into custody, how on earth could the forensics have been completed in time to bring a charge? I simply do not understand the rationale of people who hold fast to the 14-day limit and will not contemplate any movement whatsoever. I pay tribute to the courage of the security services and the police. They had to manage the situation in the neighbourhood in extraordinarily difficult circumstances, keeping people away from their homes for two days and explaining to them to the best of their ability that they were trying to make the place safe. In my visits to the neighbourhood since they returned home and in the surgeries that I have held in the Burley Lodge centre, I have asked people how they see things. They tell me that the context has changed since 9/11 and since 7 July. They think that the international context has changed as well, with transnational terrorists who move across borders and operate in the new world of IT, international mobile phones, encryption and so on. They say they hope that Parliament will take more time, if necessary, to get it right, because what they need most of all is for their communities to be made safe for everyone.