Counter-Terrorism Bill

My Lords, there are those, I understand, who from time to time assert that the Church of England speaks with an uncertain voice, although not perhaps if they had been listening to the General Synod in the past 24 hours. However, on this issue, the church has been very clear, as I hope the close proximity of my speech with that of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford will demonstrate. In February of this year, the General Synod asserted its grave concern that an extension to the current 28-day maximum period for detention without charge of terrorist suspects would, in the absence of the most compelling arguments, disturb unacceptably the balance between the liberty of the individual and the needs of national security. As is becoming clear the longer this debate continues—and in your Lordships’ contributions today—those compelling arguments have not been forthcoming. What is before us represents a significant retreat, as has already been pointed out, from the Government’s desire to introduce a 56-day limit, let alone a 90-day limit. To that extent, the proposals represent a victory for principled opposition to the erosion of civil liberties and an acceptance by the Government of the burden of justifying extension in particular and exceptional circumstances. However, as we all know, the danger of normalising what was previously seen as exceptional is acute. It leaves us with the high risk of falling between two stools: eroding civil liberties unnecessarily on the one hand, but failing to provide a practical mechanism for the kind of exceptional situation supposedly envisaged on the other. Despite the concessions and amendments tabled by the Home Secretary on 3 June, to which the Minister referred in his opening remarks, we are still left with significant flaws in the criteria for extending legislation, for which no amount of procedural safeguards can possibly compensate. Further, by introducing the criteria of the grave and exceptional terrorist threat, the Government have shifted the ground, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford pointed out, because the original justification for the extension was the length and complexity of terrorist investigations and not the seriousness of the threat. Many of us in the church stand with other of the Government’s critics in asserting clearly that these proposals are both unnecessary and unprincipled and offer us the prospect of innocent people being held for well over a month on the basis of police suspicion rather than hard evidence and without a formal accusation of any criminal offence. Above all, it is clear that these proposals are unproductive. They will not make us safer. Those of us who live close to and talk regularly with the leaders of Muslim communities are acutely aware not only of their concern for security, as the noble Lord, Lord Sheikh, has pointed out, and the acute need to counter terrorism effectively, but also of their deep concern that this Bill will have the opposite effect. At this point, I invite noble Lords to exercise their imaginations. Imagine the consequences for the tightly populated Muslim neighbourhoods around the major mosques of a city such as Leicester. Imagine the effects on the carefully and painstakingly built relationships of trust between community leaders and the police if a young man or woman were to be taken into custody, held for five weeks and released without charge. Imagine the concern among the elders of these communities, who already experience repeated delays at airports on return from foreign visits and who have been delayed, searched and questioned repeatedly without evidence. Imagine the effects on the large numbers of students in our universities and colleges, looking sometimes for evidence to corroborate the propaganda readily available to them, which tells them that this country is not on their side. Imagine the consequences for the police, whose intelligence gathering depends on the trust and co-operation of the local communities—a trust that, once fractured, can take years to reconstruct. Imagine the stigma attaching to an innocent detainee living with the consequences of detention without prospect of clearing his or her name in court. I mentioned at the outset that on this issue the church has been clear and unequivocal. The Christian faith has no privileged insight that shortcuts the hard work of analysis and moral struggle on this issue, but the keen Christian awareness of the fallen and compromised nature of human beings serves as a perennial warning that measures taken to counter horrific evil must contain checks and balances, given the temptation, even to those whose intentions are laudable, to betray their own principles. Such checks and balances are at the heart of our moral identity as a nation. We ignore or erode them at our peril.