Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism

I was grateful to the Minister for his response to my right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham), because he dealt with one of the two critical aspects of the Carlile report: that regarding proposals to ensure that prosecution is considered fully in every case. I am also especially grateful that the Minister intends to report to the House about how the process goes forward. That nails one of the critical issues that we should be addressing in the debate, so I will focus on the other: the issue of time. In many areas of the Home Office’s operations, it fails to understand the impact of time on human beings’ lives. It has a perfectly sensible sets of policies. However, the most obvious example of the problem is the situation regarding immigration. Over time, people grow up, get married and change their lives. A policy that was sensible to apply at one time in a person’s life is thus not necessarily sensible after the five or six years for which the Home Office has been brooding about the right thing to do about that person’s case. I raised that matter on several occasions with the Minister in his previous incarnation as the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Nationality. I am worried that we are at risk of floating down the same river with control orders. I do not believe that that is the Minister’s intention, and I think that we can avoid that risk. I hope that he will be able to assure the House today that there is a clear programme of work in hand to avoid the risk of individuals being subject to control orders that are renewed time after time. That was why I intervened to ask whether the two individuals whose control orders were renewed in March 2006 would have those orders renewed next month, if the order is passed. They have already been under control orders for two years. Will they be under control orders for three years, and what will happen after that? The control order is an important tool in the Government’s armoury against terrorism and we cannot underestimate its possible value. However, we must stop and think about using a control order constantly over time. I am certain that introducing more robust ways of considering prosecution will be a way of addressing the situation. However, Lord Carlile was very clear that there"““has to be an end of the order at some point, in every case.””" He continued:"““Some of the controlees have already been the subject of their orders for a considerable time. Their orders cannot be continued indefinitely—that was never intended and would not be permitted by the courts. As a matter of urgency, a strategy is needed for the ending of the orders in relation to each controlee: to fail to prepare for this now whether on a case-by-case basis or by legislation (if appropriate) would be short-sighted.””" I hope that the Minister—he is a good Minister and I am confident that he has a plan—will be able to assure us in his winding-up speech that, in respect of the two individuals whom I cited and the situation more generally, he has a proposal that will ensure that we will not allow this moral horror to continue. Although a control order is a necessary tool, it is not sufficient to say, ““Well, it’s necessary, so we’ll allow it to keep floating on.”” I hope that we will hear about what will be done about the longest-running cases. The hon. Member for Newark (Patrick Mercer) mentioned control orders on individuals who have signalled their intention to join jihad overseas. We are potentially missing two tricks. First, we should publicise more widely the fact that that could lead to a control order. A number of people—not a very large number, thank goodness—see themselves as future martyrs and think that they can achieve that internationally. If they knew that they were likely to be subject to a control order, their activities would be more circumscribed. Secondly, what efforts have been made to try to straighten out the perverted thinking of these people? I suspect that it is possible to do that in some cases. Often we are not talking about people who have been directly involved in planning acts of sabotage in the UK. Some of them may not have thought through the full consequences of their actions. The work on the rehabilitation of violent prisoners shows that it is possible to change some thinking. I do not know whether the Minister has the power to make such efforts, but I would be interested to know whether there is any such power, or any prospect of working with people who are subject to control orders to help them confront the possible consequences of their plans. That might help to divert them and it would certainly help to make the rest of us safer. On the fundamental point, the most important issue in Carlile’s report is time, and I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure the House that he is developing proposals to ensure that control orders are used not as a long-term solution to the problem of terrorism but appropriately as a shorter term solution to enable the state to develop effective prosecutions or take other actions—for example, against breaches of the control order. Unless we can show that we are doing that, we risk breaching international human rights standards—unlike the hon. Member for Stone (Mr. Cash), I am glad that those standards apply to this regime—and bringing ourselves into international disrepute, and I do not think that this country deserves that.