Counter-Terrorism Bill

I do not think that I would go as far as that. I am not sure that I could agree with that proposition. My other point about inquests has to do with coroners. In clause 65, the Government are taking unto themselves a very interesting power. For reasons of the public interest, the Government can sack an ordinary coroner and replace him or her with a specially appointed coroner. If the latter does not come up to snuff either, he or she can be sacked too, and another appointed instead. Those are the hallmarks of an authoritarian Government, and we should have no part of it. Another part of the Bill has received no attention at all, save glancingly from my right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary. Clause 69 deals with whistleblowers and the press, and on the face of it, it is a wonderfully innocuous provision. It makes it a criminal offence to elicit or publish"““information about a person…which is of a kind likely to be””" helpful to a terrorist. That seems entirely innocuous, but on reflection, one sees that it prevents investigative journalism and restricts free speech. It stops the whistleblower because it enables the Government to prevent the press from, for example, identifying security lapses at airports. If such legislation is required, there should be a public interest defence, but no such defence is provided for in the Bill. The asset-freezing provisions in the Bill are in part to be welcomed, as they enable the citizen to challenge Treasury decisions. However, the rule-making powers in the Bill have been drawn in such a way that they will enable the Treasury to conceal an awful lot of information that should be available to the citizen. For example, the rule-making powers enable proceedings to take place in the absence of the citizen or his representative. They also enable the Treasury to withhold relevant information from the citizen or his representative. The list goes on, but whoever drafted those rules had at heart not the interests of the citizen, but the interests of the Treasury. It would have been much better if draft rules had been published when the Bill was introduced, as we would then have known what we would be dealing with. Finally, I come back to the centre of this debate—the length of pre-charge detention. The hon. Members for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne) and for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) were entirely right in what they said, and as my time is running out, I shall make only two points about the proposal. First, it has jolly few friends. No one knows much about it, and no one supports it—especially not the Director of Public Prosecutions. Secondly, the hon. Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington was entirely right when she spoke about the weakness of parliamentary control in these matters. A whipped vote in a short debate with scanty information about the liberties of the person involved is no way for the House to proceed: the hon. Lady is right, and I entirely agree with her.