My Lords, I support the amendment. Like others, I have been involved with national security for many years—longer, I suspect, than anyone else in this Chamber, except my noble friend Lord Armstrong. I worked with the Security Service when it did not even exist, so in my first report, I had to refer to the Security Service, SIS and GCHQ en bloc as “the agencies”. I continued to work closely with the Security Service until I gave up being chairman of the Security Commission in 1999. Others referred in Committee to their first contact with the Security Service. I remember an occasion long ago when I visited its premises in Gower Street. The door was opened by a young lady I knew and we said simultaneously, “Fancy seeing you here”. Her name was Elizabeth Manningham-Buller, and I think we all agree that she has done very well. I would very much like the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, to be aware of that but she is not in her place, and I am sorry that she is not here to hear me say it.
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I support the amendment for all the reasons given by the noble Lord, Lord King, both on the earlier occasion and today. However, there is a further reason that has not so far been mentioned. It involves looking more closely at other provisions in the Bill. There are currently 2.5 million Muslims in this country who are utterly loyal. In addition, there are 100,000 Muslims who sympathise with the terrorists. Every time we pass a piece of repressive legislation we alienate some of the 100,000, and we will be truly safe only when they have changed. That will probably take a generation or so—the same sort of time as it took to reach a solution in Northern Ireland. My noble friend Lord Condon once said, in a speech that I shall never forget, that you do not change people for the better by putting others behind bars. Every bit of terrorist legislation that we have passed since 2001 has alienated an unknown number of sympathisers. This was clearly so in the case of control orders, which created much anger and did very little good, if any. It would certainly be the case if we reintroduced relocation.
In every piece of counterterrorism legislation there is a balance to be struck. I do not know whether the Government performed that operation when introducing the present Bill, but my guess is that it will do far more
harm than good. Why do I say that? The justification put forward by the Government for the Bill concerns 500 would-be terrorists who are or have been fighting in Syria. Of these, 250 have already returned, so we are talking about the other 250 who are still there. Let us assume that 200 of those 250 decide to come back, of whom let us say 100 would have been stopped under the existing legislation. It is of course unlikely that all 100 would arrive on the same day, so they would be spread out over months or maybe years. Let us suppose that 25 of them arrive before next May; that number is obviously a guess, but it could be an estimate. They will join the 250 who are already here, as we know, and the 2,000 long-term suspects who are also already here, many of whom are known to have undergone weapons training in Pakistan; that figure has recently been confirmed. Yet, with one exception—the London bombing—we have been kept safe. Whether the current risk, as it is called, has been severe or substantial has made no difference because the Security Service has been unbelievably successful at its job.
We are now told by the Government that this Bill is needed badly and cannot wait until the spring. It must be forced through Parliament by the fast-track procedure. I cannot help wondering whether the Government consulted the Security Service to see whether the Bill could not wait until this spring. I feel sure that it would have answered that of course it could. The 25 additional suspects arriving before May would not make the slightest difference from its point of view.
At Second Reading, I said that I could think of no good reason for introducing this Bill now, still less for giving it the fast-track procedure. That remains my view. Another worrying feature is the timing. The threat level was raised from substantial to severe on 30 August. I have said that it has made no difference in the past, but what happened on this occasion? The Prime Minister announced that he would introduce this legislation on 2 September. How did that come about? The threat level has often been raised from substantial to severe without necessitating urgent legislation. I can remember only one occasion when there has been urgent legislation said to be like this, and that was in 2005. The 2001 Act was about to expire and the Belmarsh prisoners were about to be released. The Government thought up control orders, and we had five days in which to consider the legislation. Nobody suggests that the situation now is in any way comparable to that.
On 2 September the Prime Minister had two draft Bills before him: the present Bill and the draft communications data Bill, which my noble friend Lord Butler described as a “Bill in waiting”. We need to know why the Prime Minister chose this Bill rather than the communications data Bill. This Bill is not urgent and will save no lives. The other Bill will save lives and has been waiting for more than two years. In replying to the debate on 26 January, the Minister said that this Bill was more vital than the communications data Bill. I cannot agree with his view, but I do not for one minute criticise him. Through no fault on his part, he cannot have been in possession of the full facts. We need to know why the Prime Minister chose one Bill rather than the other. We need to know whether he preferred this Bill for political reasons.
We need to know, for example, whether the Prime Minister wanted the Conservative Party to be seen as the party that is tough on terrorism. I accept, of course, that that is pure speculation on my part. However, it seems to me that we must be satisfied one way or the other. If there is anything at all in my concerns then it seems to me that the present Bill is tainted, and no agreement between the two parties can prevent that being so. If that is so, the Government must surely defer further consideration of the Bill, and must do so before Third Reading.
I hope I have shown that deferment of the present Bill will cost no lives. It can be brought back after the general election, by which time the reviewer, David Anderson QC, will have completed the review on which he has already engaged, and which covers much of the same ground. There will then be room, in the mean time, for consideration of the communications data Bill, which we all look forward to.
It may be asked why, if all that is so, I did not take part in the debate last week. The reason is simply this. In my speech on Second Reading I said that I was against the Bill in principle. It did not seem likely that I would be able to take advantage of any of the amendments that would be put down. However, I came on 26 January to support an amendment put down by my noble and learned friend Lord Brown, and I happened to notice that the very next amendment was the one that we are now debating. That was the opportunity that I had been waiting for.