Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore), and it is a great pleasure to be able to address the Minister for Security, Counter-Terrorism, Crime and Policing as right honourable. I pass my congratulations to him. The people we seldom properly support, praise and laud are our security services, including the police, MI5, MI6 and GCHQ. Were it not for the outstanding and gallant behaviour of those men and women over the past 12 months I have little doubt that we would have seen further atrocities, further dead and further injured. It is in the nature of their duties that they remain unsung and low profile. All of us, from whichever side of the House we speak, have a duty to record our thanks and admiration for the brave men and women who do that job on a daily basis. It depresses me that I am experiencing almost déjà vu. Last year I spoke from the Opposition Front Bench, opposite the right hon. Gentleman, and when I look at the words I uttered then I see that almost nothing has changed. It depresses me that in matters of life and death—as I believe these are—the House is so dilatory in making real progress on subjects that can make a difference to the liberty and indeed the continued life of terrorists. For instance, this time last year, we were talking about one of the most important measures that we could possibly put in place to displace the control order regime—intercept evidence. There were signs—green shoots of hope—that the Government might consider the use of intercept evidence. This year we know that the Government will indeed accept the use of intercept evidence—after yet another period of review. Why do we need to be so slow? Why have we not thought of making it very clear that we can use post-charge questioning? My hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) has advised me that the powers already exist. Those powers, along with the use of intercept evidence, might mean that one or two of the individuals currently under the thoroughly unsatisfactory, inhuman and liberty-taking measure of control orders could either be prosecuted or released. In any event, they could be brought to court and put in front of a jury. Similarly, why have we heard so little about plea bargaining? A number of eloquent speeches have been made about the use of that measure yet it is one of those things that is seldom talked about, even though we can see how it is used by the American judiciary. Will the Minister give us some of his words of wisdom about those three measures, which could probably take people off control orders? Exactly like last year, the Minister said that control orders were an ““important tool””. I think I quote exactly his words of last year, and certainly of this year. If the orders are an important tool, why are they so inefficient? Why do they not produce the results we want? Why are individuals allowed to abscond? Why have the orders been compared to antisocial behaviour orders? As we have heard, we are talking about dangerous terrorists, in many cases bent on mass destruction. We must not conflate a measure that we might use against a young hooligan on the streets of Newark with measures against people who are hellbent on creating mass destruction and killing hundreds, if not thousands, of our fellow citizens. Lastly, because although the subject is important others must speak, will the Minister talk—if he can—about a programme for rehabilitation of individuals who are either in prison already or subject to control orders? Singapore, Malaya, Indonesia and the Philippines all have a well developed rehabilitation programme for individuals under close supervision. As we have heard many times this afternoon, such individuals are of no further use to terrorist organisations so what are we doing to bring them on-side? What are we doing to suck dry their expertise on their previous thoughts and how they were suborned? How can we use them against the very people who turned their minds? I appreciate that the Minister might not want to go into detail about that, but I would none the less like to hear from him this year—he avoided the issue last year—about what we are doing in that respect. The control orders are thoroughly unsatisfactory. We are going to have a huge debate and confrontation over the amount of time for which we can hold terrorists without charge, be it 28, 42 or 90 days. In my view—I am probably one of the few people in the Chamber who would say this—28 days is far too long, but we are where we are, and I accept the fact that we have decided on it. However, I hope that that debate and the Counter-Terrorism Bill will provide the opportunity to get the wicked, inefficient and incompetent series of measures known as control orders off the statute book.