Terrorism (Detention and Human Rights)

The right hon. Gentleman makes a good point. One of the problems in the debate on control orders was that, as he will recollect, the sense of urgency when it was announced was such that the whole thing was rushed through Parliament in a way that was bound to raise hackles. He may recollect that in Committee and on Report, vast chunks of amendments were sensibly tabled to the Bill, but there was no opportunity to consider them—causing fury not only for our party, but on the Labour Back Benches. There was a remorseless sense that unless one signed up immediately to support the Bill, one was almost treasonable or aiding and abetting terrorists. That is a very bad state in which to legislate. I entirely welcome the suggestion that we should have full legislation and, as the right hon. Gentleman will recollect, the final compromise came when the Home Secretary wisely announced at the Dispatch Box that although he was not prepared to concede a sunset clause, he was prepared to concede to Lord Carlile’s review. Major consolidating legislation would then offer the opportunity for amendment and full debate on every aspect of our anti-terrorism legislation. I repeat what I said when I intervened on the hon. Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore): I hope that the Government keep that promise. The suggestion that this consolidating legislation may just be a rubber stamp exercise to bring together everything that is currently on different statutes into one piece of legislation, would be, to my mind, a flagrant breach of the undertaking that I understood had been promised at the time. I hope that the Minister will tell the Home Secretary that it is in the interests of the Government and, indeed, the public that we should have an opportunity for reviewing the armoury of legislation that we now have—some of which has never actually been used or may not even have come into effect. We need a sensible and comprehensive piece of legislation. That can be done, but it means that people have the right to question what it is made up of. There are many references in the reports to thresholds for prosecutions and holding charges. I appreciate from that that it is probable that we who are lawyers and have participated in earlier debates may have failed hon. Members by not communicating something that was obvious to us, but not to others. I am afraid that that sometimes happens and I was struck by the bit in the report dealing with thresholds for prosecutions. It has long been the case that the test for the threshold as to whether to charge may be a lower threshold where there is reasonable anticipation that more material will come to light. In the context of drug importation and all sorts of other things with which I have been involved, such as ordinary crime, that is a common place. Therefore, it is something that was always in the back of my mind when considering the necessity for a 90 day pre-charge detention. I imagined that it was in the back of the Government’s mind as well and I shall be interested to hear from the Minister about that. I may be a bit muddled, but I should be grateful for clarification as to why, apparently, it might not apply to certain terrorism cases, because I am mystified by that. I do not see why terrorism cases are any different in their nature from any other form of criminal activity in this respect. On holding charges, I am slightly concerned that we might be giving a mistaken impression. Of course charging someone with a holding charge merely as a pretext for detention cannot be tolerated, but charging someone with an offence for which there is plainly material to justify it and when one intends to bring them to trial, with the knowledge that there are other, more serious matters that one wishes to investigate so that one is happily able to marry the two things together from the point of view of preventing crime, is perfectly acceptable and, indeed, is done all the time.