Terrorism Act 2006 (Disapplication of Section 25) Order 2007

My Lords, the issue before us is not whether we should be extending 28 days to something longer—I gather the Government will tell us a little more about their thinking on that tomorrow morning—but whether we should maintain 28 days or go back to 14 days. The Terrorism Act 2006 inserted a sunset clause about this matter, requiring us, once a year, to listen to the Government’s justification for the continuation of 28 days. If the Government are not justified, in our view, in sustaining the 28 days, we would be perfectly entitled to vote against this order. As the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, rightly said, or implied from his examples, we, of all liberal democracies, have the longest period of detention without charge—28 days. The sunset clause in the Terrorism Act requires the Government to justify, in terms, why we need 28 days but, by contrast, the United States requires only 10. This matter was warmly debated in another place a few days ago. One of the issues addressed by the honourable Mr Dismore, a member of the government party, was precisely this point. He asked what specific analysis the Government have done to satisfy themselves that 28 days was needed rather than 14. He used the example of the airline bomb plot. The facts are that 24 suspects were arrested following the plot; 17 were charged; 11 were charged within 14 days; 6 after their detention was extended beyond 14 days, and two within a day of the 28-day limit. Of the seven not charged, four were released within 14 days and three within 28 days. Your Lordships’ House is entitled to know what the Government make of those statistics. The honourable Mr Dismore asked four questions about them. Was the evidence upon which suspects were charged after 14 days available before the 14 days? How has the 28-day period enabled prosecutions to be brought which would otherwise not be possible? How did the longer period affect the urgency of how the police went about their work? How often were suspects questioned during this period, and for how long? My noble friend rightly drew your Lordships’ attention to the judicial safeguards. The noble Baroness is absolutely right. They are there and are strict. But we do not know—for example, with respect to the airline plot—what questions the judiciary asked in responding to requests from the Government to extend this period. Mr Dismore again suggests that the Government ought to address this issue. Did the material before the judiciary provide reasonable grounds for believing that the suspect had committed a terrorism-related offence? Were there reasonable grounds for believing that further detention was necessary to deal with potentially probative evidence? That is the kind of response we would expect the Government to make to justify continuing the 28 days. In the context of the history of this nation, a period without charge of 28 days is a very long one. It is a serious deprivation of liberty. It is right that the Executive should regularly seek to endorse it in front of your Lordships’ House and another place. I am afraid that there is, among some members of the Government, a view that the more you reduce liberty, the more you increase security. That is wholly fallacious. Quite apart from anything else, the longer that suspects are kept in detention without charge and then released, the more bitter their reaction will be to the authority and the more disengaged they will become from the positive forces in our society. Moreover, the more we reduce liberty in response to the terrorist threat, the more the terrorists will think that they are succeeding in undermining the principles upon which our society is based, and the more determined they will become to succeed. These issues are not to be taken lightly. They go to the root of our constitutional freedom. We are right to ask the Government to be much specific about these matters than they have been today.