Counter-Terrorism Bill

A large chunk of my education was received at the hands of the Jesuits. They always taught us that open confession is good for the soul and that we should tell the truth and shame the devil; so I have to tell the House that the last time we debated these issues, way back in 2005, I did not speak in the debates, nor did I vote. I was giving the then Home Secretary a very hard time over police reorganisation and I felt rather sorry for him, so I was rather reticent about pushing on the business of 90 days. In any case, I could not see why there was such trouble then. There was a judicial review every seven days, which I thought was a pretty good safeguard, so I wondered what on earth my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) was getting all het up about. ““He's almost demented, shouting for his 28 days,”” I thought. But he stuck by his guns and got 28 days, and he deserves every credit for that. The reason I did not speak or vote at the time was that I had accepted the responsibility of chairing the Committee stage of the Bill. Indeed, I moderated portions of the debate on it in the Chamber, too. When I saw this Bill's proposals for 42 days, I thought, ““Well, there's some easement or relenting here.”” I was summoned to a meeting with the Home Secretary and went along wondering what it was all about. I was surprised to find that she was anxious to discuss, on a one-to-one basis, the 42-day element. As she was questioning me, I thumbed through the card index of my brain box and remembered that 90 days had been no great problem for me. I said, ““There's no problem””—I used her first name—““you can be assured of my vote on that.”” She was reassured and that was that. But some time later I had another one-to-one discussion, with Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty. She simply asked me, ““Have you ever put yourself in the position of the person being detained?”” That stopped me dead in my tracks. I thought, ““Well, okay, what would it be like? Forty-two days—God, that's six weeks.”” I would be in custody, without charge, under suspicion—suspicion of what?—for one week, and then another and another, at the end of which someone would come to me and say, ““All right, Mr. Cook, we believe that you're innocent—off you go.”” What would I feel like? I immediately felt angry, but then I thought, ““Just a minute—what if Frank Cook was a Muslim and that happened?”” What would I do then? I would be likely to go back to South Shields, the south bank or Southampton and play merry hell, providing evidence of the residual reservoir of resentment that had built up over those 42 days of not knowing what they wanted to detain me for. It would not only eat like acid into the individual soul, but provide justification for others within the community to feel the same levels of resentment and seek a similar kind of retribution. They would feel justified in doing that. This is the second time that I have made this confession in a week, but I felt ashamed of my own failure to recognise all that, so I picked up the phone, rang the Home Secretary's private office and asked them to tell the Home Secretary that I had changed my mind. She was not very pleased! We have heard many good speeches today—a couple of mediocre ones, but most have been quite brilliant. The one that stands out in my mind as providing something that we should try to hang on to was the contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan). Why? He reminded me of the famous words of Nye Bevan, when he said:"““Why look into the crystal ball, when you can read the book?””" My hon. Friend the Member for Foyle opened the book for us tonight. We cannot go on ignoring history. Will we never learn? We have to open our eyes, open our ears and use the bit of grey matter that God, thank heavens, gave us and make sure that we do not make the same mistakes of the past. I will support the Bill as a whole this evening as it has some good elements—intercepts, DNA and other aspects—but on Report, when it comes to the provisions on pre-charge detention, I am afraid that I must warn the Government that they will not be able to count on my support. I shall oppose the provisions on that occasion.