Counter-Terrorism Bill

My Lords, I cannot help feeling that something has gone badly wrong. If someone had told me in 1997 as I sat on the Benches opposite, which were Labour Benches then, that a Labour Government would come in and introduce measures to detain people without charge for 42 days, I would have laughed in disbelief. I find myself now sometimes on the verge of tears at what is going on. Having listened to many powerful speeches, most particularly those of the noble and learned Lords, Lord Goldsmith and Lord Falconer of Thoroton, I cannot believe that the proposal for 42 days will not sink without trace when the matter comes to be voted on in your Lordships’ House in the autumn. I know nobody in this House who is unsympathetic to victims of terror or unconcerned about the threat of terror. I do not believe that we needed the scary speech of the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, because we are all fully aware of what is going on, at least in outline. We work, here in this building, in a terrorist target area. The level of security alert as we enter this House is displayed on the monitors each morning—and in my experience it has never been described as low. We, our family, our friends and neighbours fly, use the Underground and visit shopping centres and busy places that are vulnerable to attack. We all want to be safer and we all want our Government to do their best to ensure that we are. Contained in this Bill are provisions that do just that. One of them has not received a lot of attention. The noble and learned Lord who spoke immediately before me is no doubt going to deliver a second speech when the matter comes up in Committee, but the legislation on post-charge questioning would appear to all of us to be potentially helpful to those investigating terrorism and something that in the long term is likely to help to make us safer. But as noble Lord after noble Lord has said, there has been no evidence whatever from any source that 42 days’ detention is necessary or would make our country safer in anyway. Quite the contrary: the people who ““know best””, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, described them, the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Crown Prosecution Service, say that it is unnecessary. One would have hoped that that would be enough in another place. Instead, this provision was said at one stage to be necessary because we were ““up against the buffers””. It was only later we saw the reality of what happened in the one case in which people were not charged until the very end of the 28-day period. No one has mentioned it so far in this debate; there was evidence for a charge at four and 12 days but the charging did not take place until 27 and 28 days, because the Crown Prosecution Service was unable to decide whether to charge or not. If these provisions are to be used for administrative convenience, or because people have a pile of papers and are busy dealing with something else, that is simply not good enough. We have had references to the Civil Contingencies Act, which I was unhappy about when it went through this House, as it contained truly draconian provisions. However, it is on the statute book and available for the sort of doomsday scenario to which the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, referred. Even worse than unnecessary proposed legislation is having counterproductive legislation. We have heard, notably from the noble Lord, Lord Ahmed, but also from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford, that this gives a propaganda coup to terrorism. It will be confirmation to many in our Muslim communities who are not disposed to support terrorism that those in power make special rules for them and regard their freedoms more lightly than those of ordinary criminals, for whom there is still the seven-day limit. I share the view of a number of noble Lords who have already spoken that the proposal is wrong-headed and wrongly drafted. I am bound to say that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Steyn, was over-polite when he described the so-called safeguards as constitutionally illiterate. They are bordering on rubbish and were clearly cobbled together to buy off opposition in another place, probably in the hope that this House would give them the coup de grace, which I suspect it will. There are obviously differences of view among people on the front line, whether senior police officers, those in the security services or people involved in the law offices, about where the line should be drawn on this issue. It must be right, therefore, to go back to the very first principle, and what could properly be called the ““gut feeling”” to which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mayhew, referred. Surely, wherever we sit in this House, where we start is this: we used to take pride in calling our country a free country, and some still do. An essential element of living in a free country is to be free from the fear of being locked up without charge. When it is necessary to restrict that principle in the interests of public safety—and sometimes it is, and I think that we would all accept that—it is surely the mark of a free country that we do it for the minimum possible time. We should not sacrifice freedom for no compelling reason or give away our liberties or toss them aside as a precautionary measure, or just in case it becomes necessary in future. In that direction lies the path towards indefinite detention, which we have seen others go down. It is worth noting—and I found this chilling—that the Burmese regime took comfort publicly from the vote in another place. Terrorists seek to destroy our freedom, so why are we being asked to do the job for them? In the long term the best way in which to control terrorism is to maintain and strengthen the freedoms that terrorists themselves seek to destroy. I am bound to say that I voted against 28 days and would do so again if I were given the opportunity, which I am not likely to have immediately. But I very much welcome what Mr Dominic Grieve said in another place about the intentions of a future Conservative Government—that that 28-day limit would be revisited. It should not be there permanently; it is a blot on our civil liberties. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Steyn, and others mentioned Magna Carta. Purely coincidentally, yesterday morning I stood in the great hall in Berkeley castle in Gloucester. As I was shown around, I was reminded that on the eve of Runnymede the barons from the West Country met there to determine their tactics to force the signature to Magna Carta. I very much hope that when we come to vote on this measure in the autumn, as I have very little doubt we will, the 21st-century barons who are now Members of your Lordships’ House will show the same sort of resolution in standing up for freedom.