Counter-Terrorism Bill

Not since Rocky Marciano fought Don Cockell has there been a more one-sided contest than we have witnessed this afternoon and this evening in the debate. Indeed, if the House will forgive my saying so, the hon. Member for Nottingham, East (Mr. Heppell) personified Don Cockell in the debate, as the only supporter of the measures to speak so far—it is now 7.15 in the evening. It is such a rout that it almost feels like a liberty to join in. It is such a rout that if the measure passes with those provisions intact—if not tonight, later—it will be a triumph for party management but a serious defeat for democratic politics in this country. It is a funny old world, Mr. Deputy Speaker—as a former Prime Minister once said. We heard a brilliant, bristling defence of liberty from the Tory Front Bench, backed by a brace of former Ministers in Mrs. Thatcher's Government, while Labour Members—with honourable exceptions, I grant—will be asked by their Whips to vote the measure through, yet year after year after year, as my friend, the hon. Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), pointed out, Labour Members voted against the prevention of terrorism Acts on precisely the grounds that have been best adduced by the Opposition against the measure today: namely, that such laws sacrifice our liberties but guarantee us no extra securities. On the contrary, they act as a recruiting sergeant for those who want to destroy our liberties still further. The Home Secretary was wrong when she described the threat that Britain faces as being on an unprecedented scale. The IRA campaign in Britain was far deadlier than the campaign of Islamist extremists nowadays. The Prime Minister came within an inch of losing her life in a hotel in Brighton. Members of Parliament were killed in Brighton, in this building and in their homes. A rocket was fired through the Cabinet window and the Cabinet had to take cover under the Cabinet table. There were bombs in Parliament, bombs in the Tower of London and bombs on the underground; there were bombs everywhere in this country but—at least on this side of the water—we never sacrificed the essential liberties that we are being asked to sacrifice in this flawed strategy, which will be my point in the four minutes remaining for my speech. Yes, the Bill is an egregious measure and, yes, if it goes ahead it will make things that little bit more difficult, but it is part of a flawed strategy. If I may quote myself, when the House was recalled after the atrocities of 9/11, I said—sitting on the Labour Benches as I did at the time—that if we handled things in the wrong way we would create 10,000 new bin Ladens. That is exactly what will happen if we pursue policies such as these proposals, which act as a recruiting sergeant for extremism. I know that extremist Islamist organisations are preying on the fringes of the Muslim community. I have been a victim of them myself, and much more deadly was what happened to the victims in Aldgate East underground station in my constituency whom I watched being carried by the tube workers and the emergency services on 7/7, or those being carried into the Royal London hospital in my constituency. I know that there is a problem. There are extremists, trying to lure young Muslims—boys mainly, but girls, too—on to the rocks of separatism, extremism and violence. But our point in opposing this measure is that those who support it are assisting those people. It is not, to quote the shadow Home Secretary, a human rights point; it is actually a security point. We are making our avowed purpose more difficult to achieve by telling people in the Muslim community, who already feel beleaguered and besieged and who are told constantly in the yellow press and by some politicians that they are somehow an enemy within. We are telling them that we are ready to suspend and abolish the liberties and the democracy that we say we hold dear—so dear that we are ready to invade other countries to impose it—at the first whiff of grapeshot. The 55 dead on 7/7 was far more than a whiff of grapeshot—that is true—but if we by this measure recruit new allies for bin Ladenism and for the mediaeval obscurantist mindset that he represents, we will, as has been said many times here, do the terrorists' work for them.