Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism

Yes. There are a number of wrong ways of going about this, and we have heard several of them. I believe that control orders in their current form are a wrong way, and that we need an alternative to all detention that breaches civil liberties and, in my view, that of the Joint Committee and that of some judges, breaches the Human Rights Act because of a lack of derogation. The same could well apply to lengthy pre-charge detention of the kind described by the hon. Member for Stone (Mr. Cash), against which the hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) has campaigned so assiduously. In its 24th report on the renewal order, published last year, the Joint Committee argued that the case for a consolidating Act was ““potentially quite strong””, and that"““the effect of the Home Secretary exercising his power to renew the Prevention of Terrorism Act, rather than to bring forward a Bill, is significantly to reduce the opportunity for parliamentary scrutiny and debate of the control orders regime””." I realise that there was a renewal last year without that opportunity because of exigencies that had arisen in the meantime and the need to introduce further legislation to deal with that. But now we are discussing a second renewal without a clear prospect that any consolidating legislation will be in time for the next renewal, and that both Houses will have an opportunity to debate and amend the provisions that we are currently debating, in an unamendable form, for one and a half hours. Will the Minister assure us that before the next renewal there will be an opportunity for substantive amendment? The Government’s response to our recommendation stated that the Home Secretary was"““grateful to the Committee for its support of consolidating counter-terrorism legislation””," and that the Government intended"““to put forward a further terrorism Bill, which will be subject to pre-legislative scrutiny, in 2007.””" It is not clear whether those two sentences amount to agreement with the point that we had made. I also want to say something about the question of compliance with our treaty obligations under the European convention on human rights. We said we were concerned about the fact that non-derogating control orders were"““being operated in practice in a way which amounts to a deprivation of liberty, and therefore require derogation from Article 5(1) ECHR.””" Since then judicial decisions have upheld that view in a number of cases, and disagreed with the Government’s view. I hope the Minister will explain why he feels that he has received judicial support for his disagreement with our statement that there is a clear danger that without derogation there will be a breach of the Human Rights Act, and the courts will be able to quash orders.