Counter-Terrorism Bill

I am glad that someone is better read than I am. The bottom line is that those organisations exist to protect human rights. That is their raison d'être, but I remind the House that we have duty to make sure that we protect the human rights of all of our citizens. If we do not fulfil that duty, we are failing as Members of Parliament, Unlike Liberty, however, we also have a duty to protect people's lives. I do not say that that organisation goes out of its way to threaten people's lives, but the decisions that we make in this House must strike the right balance between those duties, and we have to recognise that there are two sides to this argument. From reading the papers, people outside the House might feel that the debate is only about pre-trial detention, but the Bill is about much more than that. The Government are not obsessed about 28 days, although everyone else is. The problem is that people have made that their cause célèbre: they have drawn a line in the sand and said, ““We will go no further, this is it. We're not going to change our minds about 28 days.”” In fact, it is clear from the debate that some hon. Members would prefer 14 days to 28, or even fewer than 14. Unfortunately, the contention that the Government will not be able to change people's minds on this issue was made long before the Home Secretary talked about trying to get some consensus together.