My Lords, your Lordships’ Constitution Committee managed to produce, at fairly short notice because this was a semi-fast tracked Bill, a report in which we drew attention to the absence of judicial oversight and expressed considerable concern about it. Therefore, I welcome the development that my noble friend the Minister has announced today. I do not, for one moment, suggest that we were the only organisation which drew attention to this gap and called for change. The Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, David Anderson, was considerably more robust in his wording than we thought it appropriate to be. He pointed out that,
“in peacetime we have never accepted the power of the Home Secretary simply to place someone under Executive constraint for two years without providing for some relatively speedy process of appeal”.
It seems that the principle of what we, and others, have called for has now been met and I welcome what my noble friend has said.