Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism

If the former Home Secretary will allow me, I shall make some progress. The sunset clause was the mechanism that would have held the Government's feet to the fire, to force progress on the other measures that would end the need for this legislation. Control orders replaced detention for foreigners suspected of terrorism who could not be convicted because the evidence could not be admitted in court and could not be deported because of concerns about their fate on their return home. Two principal methods can help to overcome these problems: first, enabling intercept communications to be presented as evidence in court, as in many other jurisdictions; and, secondly, concluding agreements with the countries to which these people should be deported, so that their treatment would meet proper standards and they could be safely deported. In those circumstances, the other place accepted the Government's assurances on these and other points, and compromised with annual renewal rather than a sunset clause. Four years later, even the most generous supporter of the Government could hardly describe their progress on these matters as rapid. Sir John Chilcot's review accepted the principle of intercept communications as evidence, but the latest statement by the Home Secretary was highly equivocal and certainly did not convey the impression of an Executive pressing for progress so that the powers we are discussing today, which are an affront to our traditions of liberty, can be disposed of. Almost no progress is being made on deportation orders. In a parliamentary answer in July 2008, the Government said that they had achieved agreements with Jordan, Libya and Lebanon in 2005, and with Algeria in 2006—there was nothing in 2007, but they said they were pursuing agreements with a number of other countries. The only progress made since has been an agreement with Ethiopia in December 2008, and although I am sure that Mr. Binyam Mohamed will welcome that news, the overall picture hardly reflects an Executive straining every sinew to escape from the need for control orders.