Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism

What it shows, frankly, is that information given to the House at the time when the control order legislation was passed was simply not true. Presumably the Minister is not trying to tell me that something else has happened to those hundreds of people. They certainly have not been prosecuted or arrested. The other issue that the Minister batted aside when I put it to him was the number who had escaped. If these people really pose an ever-present threat to the safety of the public, seven escapees—presumably the most dangerous, the most cunning, the most determined to get away—would be a matter of concern. When asked about that, the Minister's predecessor, the right hon. Member for Harrow, East (Mr. McNulty), said that they were not a significant threat to the country after they had escaped. Much of this is about resources. Much of it is about the willingness to introduce a surveillance mechanism. We all understand that surveillance is very expensive, because it involves a vast number of people. The trouble is that control orders without it do not work. That is the point about the seven escapees. Control orders with surveillance, however, save no money, so what is the point? There is little point in this legislation other than machismo. Let me make one simple final point. It is clear from all the arguments that we have had about intercept evidence that an intercept strategy would solve the problem caused by the majority of 15 or so individuals with whom we must deal in any given year. It would reduce that total to a tiny number, and surveillance would solve the remaining problem. This is an unnecessary piece of law, and a bad piece of law. It does huge damage to the Government's "prevent strategy", and I suspect that, if anything, it makes the threat from terrorism worse.