Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism

I beg to move,"That the draft Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005 (Continuance in force of sections 1 to 9) Order 2008, which was laid before this House on 30th January, be approved." The purpose of the order is to renew the control order elements of the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005, which automatically lapses after one year unless renewed by order subject to affirmative resolution in both Houses. The effect of the order is to maintain the powers set out under the Act until the end of 10 March 2009. That will allow us to continue to use control orders to tackle the threat posed to national security by suspected terrorists whom we can neither prosecute nor deport. I am conscious of the limited time, and I will try to be as quick as I can, but it is important to put the threat that we face in context. As hon. Members know, in the past few years, we have witnessed several appalling attacks on our country. As the director-general of the Security Service stated in November last year:"““The number of people...involved in terrorist-related activity in the UK has increased to at least 2,000. And we suspect that there are as many again that we don't yet know of.””" The threat is clearly genuine, serious and unparalleled in our country's history. It is unparalleled because of the suicide dimension, which is new. Faced with a threat of that magnitude, it would be irresponsible to say that there was a simple solution. We need a range of responses to reduce the risk of further terrorist attacks. The order should be viewed in that context. I freely admit that the balance between human rights and security is paramount and that no party in the House has the monopoly on supporting security or human rights. All hon. Members accept that we all seek that balance. We must ensure that we protect all our fundamental values and civil liberties while defending the most of important—the right to life. Let me make it clear that prosecution is—first, second and third—the Government's preferred approach when dealing with suspected terrorists. Somehow in the past, a view has been put abroad that we cannot be bothered to prosecute so we invented control orders to avoid that route. In 2007 alone, 37 people were convicted of terrorism-related offences in 15 cases. However, we are constantly seeking to improve our ability to prosecute suspected terrorists. First, as hon. Members know, we introduced new offences in the Terrorism Act 2006, which have already been used successfully to prosecute those involved in terrorism. Secondly, we propose measures in the Counter-Terrorism Bill to extend post-charge questioning of suspected terrorists. Thirdly, we have accepted the Chilcot recommendation that we should introduce intercept as evidence, provided that the conditions outlined can be met. However, as the Chilcot report states:"““We have not seen any evidence that the introduction of intercept as evidence would enable prosecutions in cases currently dealt with through control orders.””" Two other proposals made in last year's renewal debates—about the use of the threshold test and turning Queen's evidence—are already in place.