Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005 (Continuance in force of sections 1 to 9) Order 2006

rose to move, as an amendment to the above Motion, at end to insert, ““but this House regrets that the safeguards against misuse of the powers conferred by the Act are inadequate given the need for compliance with the obligations of the Human Rights Act 1998””. The noble Lord said: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, referred to the case before the Judicial Committee of this House in December 2004 which concerned the nine foreign nationals who were being detained in Belmarsh Prison without trial. The Judicial Committee held that the powers under which they were held, pursuant to the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001, were a serious breach of the European Convention on Human Rights. So the Prevention of Terrorism Act was rushed through in some two and a half weeks of February and March of last year. Many noble Lords will remember our disputes at the time. We did agree to co-operate in finding appropriate stop-gap measures subject to there being appropriate safeguards. In our debate on 10 March last year, when the Common amendments came back to this House, I stated that,"““we agree that there is a serious terrorist threat. We agree that the principal means of reducing that threat is by criminal prosecutions brought against a suspect in the regular criminal courts.””—" a point echoed today by the noble Lord, Lord Bassam—"““We agree that there will still be a small number of cases in which there may be insufficient evidence for a prosecution, yet a means of control order, is appropriate, imposing stringent conditions””.—[Official Report, 10/3/05; col. 864.]" It was in the light of that, agreeing in principle to control orders but looking for safeguards, that I proposed amendments to those clauses of the Bill dealing with control orders which were intended to be constructive.