Terrorism Act 2006 (Disapplication of Section 25) Order 2008

My Lords, I am grateful to those who have contributed to the debate this evening. I am very conscious that the Counter-Terrorism Bill is fast coming down the track, and I am very much looking forward to that. There will be considerable debate on it, so I am grateful to noble Lords for making important comments. All of us in this House appreciate the seriousness of the terrorist threat that we face and the importance of having the right measures in place. We might have different views about how that should be done, but I know that we all acknowledge it. That has been reflected in the short but excellent contributions to the debate. As I said, we will have a considerably longer debate in a few weeks. I shall respond briefly to the specific points that have been made. The noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones, asked a number of questions. She was interested first in how we can ask to assess the use of the 28 days. This goes to the fact that no one has been held for more than 14 days in the past year of review. My noble friend Lord Harris absolutely correctly pointed out that that indicates a number of things. One is that this is not used willy-nilly by our police force. There is careful thought about what has to be used. He is also absolutely right about the periodicity of these sorts of attacks. We are, as the director-general of the Security Service said, monitoring a large number of plots. I have to be careful at times about what I say. However, the complexity of major plots and when they are dismantled has an impact on the progression of further plots. It is cyclical. It would not be sensible to remove this statute because there has been nothing for the past 12 months, as that could change quite dramatically in the very near future. We need this in our back pocket for all the reasons that I think everyone in the debate has accepted. The noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones, also asked when the Home Office review on statistics will be completed. I agree that this has not been as rapid as it should have been. I would have liked it to have been faster. We need to pull our finger out. It will come out in the autumn. That is a slightly inflexible timeline, but I will put pressure on it. The noble Baroness also asked when the community impact review will be complete. We are considering the scope of the review now. We hope to have the initial findings out by the end of the year, although we have not scoped it yet. That is the way forward. The noble Baroness, Lady Miller, asked what has changed since this time last year. I have to be very careful here. I am told off when I say this, but I am afraid that I am going to say it anyway: we are safer than we were 12 months ago. I say that because we have done a lot of very good things—a whole spread of things that I will not mention. We have a great quiver full of arrows that we use, but the threat level is still severe. There could be a bomb attack as I speak. That is why one has to be so very careful about saying that, but I think that we are safer. We have done some very good things. The National Counter Terrorism Security Office has been a huge success. The focus that it has put on co-ordination across government has been good. Is it perfect? Far from it. There are lots of things that we still have to do, but there are many specific areas in which I can say that we are safer because of this. As I say, however, that does not mean that we are safe. The threat that we face is huge. Anything could happen at any moment, but we have achieved a great deal. My answer to the noble Baroness is that we have achieved things. As I said, I probably should not have said that. I am sure that I will be told off by the media people in government for having done so, but I believe that to be the case. Given the effort made by a resource of very bright, hard-working people across government and in the police force, in SO15 and the agencies, that is only to be expected. Considerable resources have been put in, although the threat level, as I say, is still severe. All speakers in the debate tonight are aware of the balance of rights. We are all believers in habeas corpus, and we are always balancing this terribly difficult thing—the freedom of the individual, which is so crucial to our nation and for which tens of thousands of people have died throughout our history, and the right of our population to live their lives normally as they are entitled to do. That is a very important right, too. We must balance these things, but it is not easy. There is no easy equation in a democracy to do that, but those are absolutely the right things. On the question of taking people through the judicial process and convicting them, it is interesting that, so far in 2008, 32 people have been convicted in 10 significant terrorist cases. Of those 32, 11 pleaded guilty. We are not going far wrong in identifying people by intelligence, getting the evidence and taking them to trial. In 2007, 36 individuals were convicted in 14 significant terrorist cases, of whom 21 pleaded guilty. That is really quite an achievement. The more we do this, the more we can get across to people—to the Muslim community—that there is a real risk and that we are trying to do things properly. That is the right way of doing things, but at times it is extremely difficult because, as I say, we have to move quickly. Some of the things that these people wish to do are just horrifying. They want to cause mass casualties among innocent people. Therefore we have to act quickly, and we have to act earlier than one would like to in collecting evidence. That is just a fact of life. I would never want to be in the position in which, because we have adjusted things, the Security Service and particularly the police say, ““Let’s just leave it for a couple more days because we want to get that evidence””. If something happened in that couple of days that killed hundreds of our people, I would find that very difficult to live with. That is one of the real problems. My noble friend Lord Judd made some very important points. We read very carefully what the Joint Committee on Human Rights says, and what it says is very important. It is certainly not taken lightly; it is very important to us. We go through the review very carefully, and it is very important that we do exactly that. I have said on the Floor of the House that the report of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, was not published far enough in advance. The Home Office received it on 15 June, and we published it on 23 June. That is not good enough, and we need to do better. People need to be allowed to look at it so that they can make the correct comments. We are aware of that and we must do better. We are working with the independent reviewer to ensure that these reports are published in good time in the future. The role of the independent reviewer is set out in statute, and it is open to Members of this House to propose amendments to the Counter-Terrorism Bill if they want to change it. That could easily be done. On the judicial process and the judiciary, perhaps I am wrong in this, but I have immense faith in our judges. Having seen one of these processes at Paddington Green, I was impressed by the rigour of what went on. Perhaps it is not absolutely perfect, but my goodness, the judge went into great detail; people there were defending while others in a sense were prosecutors, and all the intelligence and other evidence was looked at. It was a thorough scrutiny. One could debate the issue at length, but overall the system is good and serves as a protection for people in this position—and we are talking about a very small number where there is a lot of intelligence that can be used against them. But, of course, intelligence is not evidence.