Counter-Terrorism Bill

It may not have been fully understood by some hon. Members in their contributions today that, as the Home Secretary knows, if someone is charged with one offence, such as possessing terrorist material, it is already perfectly possible subsequently to interview them and charge them with another more serious terrorist offence. No change to the law is required in order to achieve that. The only issue that we are considering in the Bill is whether someone who has been charged with an offence can subsequently be re-interviewed about that offence. The hon. Gentleman may not have been present when I intervened on this matter earlier, but clearly there must be proper safeguards against oppression by the police or the prosecutor if such a procedure is to be enacted. I hope that there can be some sensible discussion on that in Committee, in order to achieve the very aims that the Government are looking for. At the moment the Bill is wanting in that sense, and that must be an area that will cause disquiet. Indeed, the point has been made that it causes disquiet north of the border; I was about to add that it causes disquiet south of the border as well, but that may be curable. I do not think that anything that my right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary has said on the subject is in any way incompatible with the broad thrust of our approach. We want to try to protect the public, but we want to win the battle against terrorism. That battle will be won by sticking to our principles of a liberal, free, pluralist democracy, in which the rule of law is always put uppermost and in which the state and its apparatus avoid creating martyrs, particularly martyrs out of the innocent, which is without doubt the single most corrosive phenomenon for undermining the legitimacy of everything that we do in the House. For those reasons, I hope that the Government will take the opportunity of tonight's debate to reflect long and hard on what has been said, because if they are prepared to show flexibility—of which, I regret to say, they are at the moment showing singularly little sign—we can end up with a Bill that does good. Otherwise, we will without doubt end up with a Bill that has the potential to do harm, and at that point we will do our utmost to resist it.