Counter-Terrorism Bill

I take the hon. Gentleman's point entirely, but I would say this: we have gone far enough. We have legislation that takes us to 28 days; to my mind, we are lucky to have got away with that as much as we have. If we go any further, I suggest that we will hand a perfect victory to our enemies. My last point has already been made. The one effect that we noticed when internment finished was that intelligence sources across the political divide dried up. The ““carefully nurtured”” touts, to use an Ulster phrase, whom we had turned, deployed and made to flourish—whom we were paying, frankly—suddenly ceased to provide the crucial golden flow of intelligence and information. Having talked to members of the Security Service and highly-placed police officers, I believe that the same phenomenon has been noticed already. The only way in which we will win this battle is through a concerted, orchestrated and thoughtful approach to, and use of, intelligence. If we get that wrong, we might as well give up—we can deploy as many gunmen, riflemen, policemen, soldiers or cameras as we like, but unless we have human intelligence sources, we will take casualties. We will. We must not allow that to happen. In my last few seconds, I say this to the Government. The Minister, I know, is an extremely reasonable and sensible man. Please do not make the mistake again. We got it horribly wrong. Many people perished on both sides of the divide—security forces, terrorists and non-sympathetic civilians in Northern Ireland. Let us not get it wrong again. Let us understand that our liberties and freedoms are more important than anything else. Above and beyond anything else, the Government should study history and not pass the most powerful possible stick to our enemies.