Terrorism Bill

The hon. Gentleman totally misses the point. It is necessary, even under the PACE code that he describes, that a charge should be in place to go through that process. The hypothesis that we are discussing is that, in a number of cases, there is no possibility of charging on a short-term basis. I want to move on to the central question of this part of the debate: amendments Nos. 1 and 33, which deal with the length of time for which an individual can be held. That has been a subject of massive debate in the country and in the House. We debated it last week. I said in the House that I thought it important to try to get consensus in the House, and that has been my approach throughout.