Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism

I, too, apologise for not being present to hear the Minister's earlier remarks. I am grateful to the right hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz), the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, for raising the issue of intercept evidence, which is an important option that I encourage the Government to consider carefully for the future. Like every speaker so far, I support the motion. I do so because I feel I have a duty to support it. I represent many thousands of constituents who work in London, which is on the front line of the world terrorist threat. Those people work to keep this country in the manner to which it has become accustomed and they put their lives on the line, so they must look to us in the House to give them the maximum possible protection from that terrorist threat. I would hate to send out a message to the world terrorist community that Great Britain has gone soft on terrorism or in its resolve to take every possible measure to counter terrorism. All hon. and right hon. Members support the motion. Many of them supported the extension from 28 days' detention to 42, but some, on principle, did not. Perhaps Front Benchers will use their winding-up speeches to explain why the extension by 14 days to 28 days without charge was right and a principled move, but the extension by 14 days to 42 days is somehow different and wrong in principle. I see the pragmatic differences, but I do not yet understand and no one has explained to me the difference in principle between those two extensions. I see advantages in the extensions, but I see no difference on principle. I would like an explanation of that.