Terrorism (Detention and Human Rights)

Having read the report from the Joint Committee on Human Rights that came out after ours, it is important for me to clarify the intention of the Home Affairs Committee. We are not suggesting that the power of detention should be used in circumstances when nobody dreamt for a moment that they would be able to bring a case to court, but more that in a case where everything in an investigation is leading towards an arrest that would lead to conviction, the police might decide that they needed to go in earlier than they would if a more minor offence was under investigation. I want to draw the distinction, because we certainly were not advocating a general power to go round taking people off the streets on the grounds that sometime in the future it might be necessary to arrest them. It might be useful to make that clear. It is clear from both reports that our report has been slightly misinterpreted and possibly includes some infelicitous language on the subject.