Counter-Terrorism Bill

Indeed. I was about to turn to that very point. If Ministers listen to no one else in the debate, let them read the speech—still better, watch the video—of the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan). It was the most important speech that was made in the House today. He is here to tell us from the streets of the north of Ireland that the securocratic approach—the approach of the suspension and abandonment of liberty in defence of liberty—was fundamentally flawed and recruited thousands of new soldiers for the IRA campaign, to which I previously referred. I represent tens of thousands of Muslims. Even my worst enemy in the House—there are a few—would concede that I have more interface with Muslims in Britain, especially young Muslims, than virtually anyone else all over this country. In the past week, as a candidate in the London assembly elections, I have been to three major Muslim events—in Barking, in Newham and in Tower Hamlets—and I will attend many more. I must tell Members—I ask them to believe this—that young Muslims in Britain are feeling besieged and unfairly put upon, and they do not need a radical cleric to make them feel that way. The idea that there are ideologues out there who are responsible for the radicalisation of Muslim youth is fundamentally flawed. It is not the imams or the ideologues who are radicalising young Muslims in Britain and, indeed, around the world. All young Muslims have to do to be radicalised is to switch on the television news and look at the pictures from Palestine, look at the pictures from Iraq and look at the double standards being employed by western statesmen in relation to those kinds of conflict. That is what is radicalising the young Muslims here and abroad, and it will not be solved by this measure; it will be made worse. That is the truth of it. So I beg the Government, who have already got so many problems that even I am feeling sorry for them—notwithstanding what I said earlier, I do not want the Opposition to be sitting on the Government side in the next Parliament—to turn back from this folly. Folly enough there has been. Turn back from this folly before it is too late.