Counter-Terrorism Bill

My Lords, like the majority of noble Lords who have spoken today, I shall confine my remarks to the question ““28 or 42?””, to use convenient shorthand. There have been some magnificent speeches today on both sides. I think of two in particular, both from the Labour Benches. There was that of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, with whom I agreed totally, and then, a little later, that of the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport, who took a totally opposing view with which I agreed even more strongly. From the Conservative Benches, I was most interested in the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Cope of Berkeley—I am glad to see him in his place—which tellingly attacked the proposed change from a practical rather than a wholly emotional point of view. It is well worth studying. It is a matter which understandably generates great emotion, but when many innocent lives may be at stake, the head must ultimately prevail over the heart, as I hope your Lordships will agree. We all, I think, have enormous respect for Colonel Tim Collins, but when he wrote in the press a few days ago that al-Qaeda and its many imitators are not so very different from the IRA, the INLA, the UVF, the UDA and so on, he was mistaken. I was glad to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Park of Monmouth, and the noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, agree with me about that. Over the past 50 years, conventional terrorist bombers, by which I mean bombers who are prepared to take risks, sometimes fatal, but hope on the whole to emerge unscathed from the carnage that they have caused—for example, the Baader Meinhof gang, the Brigado Rosso, the shadowy right-wing group which bombed in a long tunnel the express train travelling between Florence and Bologna and killed a great number of people, the various Northern Ireland groups, some of them operating south of the border, and ETA, the Basque terrorist group—have all caused plenty of death and destruction. However, things started to get far worse 25 years ago when a new phenomenon, the suicide bomber, emerged, carrying out a spectacular, lethal attack on a US Marine barracks outside Beirut, killing hundreds of American Marines and dozens of French soldiers. Since then, suicide bombers have gone from success to success by their own warped and perverted standards—I think of the American embassy bombing in Nairobi, 9/11, 7/7, together with hundreds of attacks in Israel, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and even Sri Lanka, where the suicide bombers are a different kind of fanatic. The total number of casualties in Asian countries has been enormous, but, alas, they are off the radar as far as most Westerners are concerned. The only major non-suicide atrocities during this time that come to mind—I have not done deep research on the matter, but I think that I am right—are the bombings in Bali and the bombing of commuter trains heading towards Madrid and Bombay respectively, which caused tremendous carnage. In other words, as the extremely stressful security nightmare at airports testifies, we are now in new territory. I submit that suicide bombers are not merely two or three times but perhaps 10 times as dangerous as conventional bombers, since it is so difficult to defend oneself against them—it is a different ball game, as the Israelis, with their decades of experience in these matters, have found. With that in mind, two alternative initial conclusions can be drawn vis-à-vis this legislation. The first is that 28 days is more than adequate and that any extension would in practice save virtually no innocent lives and that, therefore, the status quo should prevail. The second is that up to 42 days—as has just been said, we are talking not about 42 days but up to 42 days—will occasionally be needed to foil a terrorist attack which could cost many lives. Even if the new legislation prevented only one such attack in, let us say, three years, it would be worth while. Like, I suspect, most of your Lordships, I lack the inside knowledge to adjudicate between these two claims. But leaving aside the three Front Benches so as to eliminate even the merest hint of subconscious political bias—and apart from the noble Baroness whose excellent maiden speech we heard with such interest—there is at least one person who possesses that inside knowledge, who has just been mentioned. I refer to the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew. The noble Lord is clearly not in any way an instinctive authoritarian; indeed, quite the contrary, he is an instinctive libertarian, like myself. Nor does he have any political axe to grind. Again, quite the opposite is the case since, one understands, he is at odds with his own Front Bench in this regard. If he says that detention for longer than 28 days may on occasion be needed to foil terrorist atrocities, I am inclined to believe him. I am sorry that he is not here tonight, but I heard him on the radio very recently passionately defending the 42-day principle and rubbishing any idea of a fudge that would introduce 42 days obliquely by the back door. In parenthesis, however, I sometimes wonder whether a fudge might not be the best solution, although that option is not open to us at this point. Although the information is not as up to date as that available to the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, I am inclined to believe the noble Baronesses, Lady Park of Monmouth and Lady Ramsay of Cartvale, whose good sense, moderation and devotion to traditional British freedoms one has no reason to doubt. But of course that is not the end of the story. There are those who argue that, even if an extension from 28 days may well save a few lives over the next five years or so, the benefits will be outweighed by the consequent enlargement of the existing pool of disgruntled youth, who may become in effect fifth columnists—let us be blunt about it—willing to abet and sometimes commit acts of terrorism, thereby leading to more death and destruction overall in the longer term. That is an argument that one has to take seriously. However, on the assumption that any new powers will be used extremely sparingly and with the utmost sensitivity, I have yet to be convinced by that scenario. Let us remember how many decent Muslims were killed and maimed in the 9/11 and 7/7 bombings, and how many are still being killed by suicide bombers in Iraq and, to a lesser extent, further east. Ed Husain, who has been mentioned, has reminded us that Islamist fanatics are just as much the enemy of the moderate Muslim majority as they are the rest of us, whatever our religion or beliefs. If 42 days is outrageous, 28 days must be almost as outrageous—at least 66 and two-thirds per cent as much. It is a question of degree, not principle, is it not? Yet the 28 days has not provoked comparable indignation politically, perhaps because it is being used so sparingly. I would love to be able to believe that 28 days was adequate and I am willing to be so convinced at some future date, but that has not happened yet. I shall reserve my final judgment until a later stage of this Bill’s passage.