Counter-Terrorism Bill

I will concentrate my comments on reserve powers, the need to extend pre-charge detention and the use of intercept as evidence. I place on the record my cautious and probably critical views on using intercept as evidence. I am clear the Bill is an attempt to say that if we used intercept evidence, we could convict people more easily; I understand the intention. However, the fact is that the technology that is used is fast-changing, and it will ultimately prevent effective tracing. That should be acknowledged. My second problem with using intercept as evidence is that the tracing and publicising of intercept evidence, even if it is used only by an advocate, could result in security agents being identified, which puts them and their families at risk. Both those factors should be considered, and I hope that they will be when the Bill is in Committee. The Bill clearly outlines the many and varied challenges that we face. It attempts to put in place a legal and democratic process that will, in an emergency, support the security services, giving them adequate time to detect, detain and charge so that they can prevent further successful acts of terrorism. The process outlined in the Bill carefully attempts to do that, but it also protects individual liberties. The Bill acknowledges that the security agencies and police who work in the realm of coping with and reducing terrorism face enormous difficulties in gathering evidence effectively. The process is often slow and difficult, and it is regularly dangerous. The Bill makes overwhelmingly clear the scale of the activity that we have to get our heads around. Potential terrorist activity is on a growth curve that is frightening for all. I believe that it was the previous director general of MI5 who said that there are today more than 2,000—perhaps as many as 4,000—potential terrorists who are being watched and about whom intelligence is being gathered. Many of them—perhaps all of them—have multiple identities. We have a serious problem, the scale of which we are beginning to understand. Add to that the fact that those people use thousands of CDs, mobile phones and computers. It is on record that it took special branch 60 days to put together one particular video, but when it did, it found the evidence that it was looking for: it was a video to encourage, persuade and ratchet up terrorism. These are difficult times. Gaining factual, evidential intelligence is problematic, and that more than anything else makes me sympathetic to supporting reserve powers to extend the period of detention without charge—with one, absolute caveat: that the powers be used in exceptional cases only. I am reasonably satisfied with the process through which an extension to pre-charge detention may be granted, and I will later outline why. I am keen to hear the Government say who initiated the debate. We have heard that it was, in part, the Association of Chief Police Officers. I would like to know what evidence has been produced by the security agencies and special branch to persuade us that an extension of pre-charge detention limits is essential. I believe that that information should be placed in the Library.