Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism

The difficulty that we face in the House is that, in a free society, if we agree to changes in the law, they must not only be justified—they must be supported by people who are democrats and who want to live in a free society. If we accept restrictions that, in themselves, do the job of the terrorists, we may be playing the wrong game. I hope that the Minister will not get too hung up on the suggestion that there is no evidence. Many of us feel that if we are to combat this terror, we have to look at the situation far more widely and intelligence has to be important. It is not just a question of what we do when we have people in custody.