Counter-Terrorism Bill

The right hon. Lady should look again—that is exactly what he said. The simple truth is that a likelihood of finding evidence in the next couple of weeks gives the police their 42 days. The simple truth is that if the 28-day point is reached, and a policeman has a reasonable suspicion and expects to find the evidence in the 42-day period that the right hon. Lady wants, he can charge. That is why the Director of Public Prosecutions does not agree with her—the right hon. Lady, I beg her pardon. [Hon. Members: ““What's wrong with ““her””?] I will be careful. Beyond that, there are still control orders and the option of surveillance. We are talking about one, two or three cases, and we have not even talked about the ability to use intercept evidence, post-charge questioning or the other measures that we have proposed to alleviate the pressure on the police. Faced with that evidence, the Home Secretary's predecessor changed ground and put a different hypothetical case. He conjured up a worst case, nightmare, doomsday scenario. ““What if there were five Heathrow plots, with five gangs of terrorists acting in a co-ordinated way, aiming to bring down 50 aircraft? We could be overwhelmed,”” he said. More recently, the Minister for Security, Counter-Terrorism, Crime and Policing coined the idea of three simultaneous 9/11 attacks. I will leave the House to make its judgment on the probability of that hypothetical scenario.