Terrorism Bill

I shall be brief, but the Minister has just announced the effective expansion of some special branch duties as a way to alleviate Opposition concerns about take-down orders being put in place by a constable. In my time, I have served alongside special branch officers—in the special operations unit SO12 in Northern Ireland—and I know that they are among the best officers in the police force and that they do an extremely good job. However, I also know the practicalities of Government directions such as the Minister’s, and I question whether the person placing take-down orders will in fact be the sort of officer about whom she gave the House assurances. Special branch officers are incredibly overworked and bear a heavy burden. Among their many other jobs they run agents, liaise with intelligence services and implement new legislation. The Bill talks about a ““constable””, meaning a member of the mainstream special branch, but my experience is that that person will soon be merely a liaison officer attached to special branch, and then an ordinary constable who is asked to assist in a case. Inappropriate allocation of police officers to such tasks can lead to the sort of extreme events that we saw with the Manchester ricin plot. In that case, the wrong type of officer was deployed in the wrong job, and lives were placed in extreme danger. I hope that the Minister will alleviate some of our concerns, perhaps in writing if she is unable to provide the answers to my questions this afternoon. What will be the cost of the extra training for some officers? Why do the Government believe that the Bill should speak so loosely of a ““constable””, without offering a closer definition of the expertise required? Why is the Minister not happy with GCHQ, the agency that does the job at the moment? It has linguists, and its intercept knowledge goes far deeper than that of the police force. Does not GCHQ represent the best way to go about these matters, in conjunction with a judicial appeal?