Counter-Terrorism Bill (Programme) (No. 2)

I am happy to press the Minister to answer that question, but I think that I can almost give my right hon. Friend the answer now. In Committee, we discussed the number of times that the problem was likely to arise. We need only consider the number of terrorist cases. Mercifully, we are not so burdened with those at present that such circumstances are not unusual, and I do not believe that they will arise very often. The other reason I think the circumstances will not arise very often—and it is one of the reasons I consider Government amendment No. 57 to be deficient—is that people who have been detained for a long time without charge have not necessarily been questioned for very long. Amendment No. 57 would allow a person to be questioned for 24 hours, although obviously not continuously, on the authority of a senior police officer. Only after that would it be necessary to obtain permission from a magistrate to continue the questioning for another five days. It is at that point that I begin to feel that the Government are not really addressing the issue. We know that there have been two instances in which a person has been detained for up to 28 days and subsequently charged. As it happens, I have the figures before me showing the amount of time in those 28 days that those people were actually questioned. One was questioned for 13 hours and 29 minutes in all, while the other was questioned for 14 hours and 34 minutes. In one case, the longest interview lasted for one hour and 58 minutes, and in the other it lasted for one hour and 37 minutes. After the 14th day of detention, one defendant was not interviewed on 14 days in the subsequent 14-day period, and the other was not interviewed on 11 days. The figures break down as follows: in the case of one, 38 minutes on day 19, 14 minutes on day 20, one hour and 11 minutes on day 26, and 15 minutes on day 27; in the case of the other, 54 minutes on day 19, one hour and 58 minutes on day 20, and one hour and 17 minutes on day 26. Quite apart from illustrating the fact that interviewing is probably not the central aspect of the problem of investigating offences, those figures emphasise that if amendment No. 57 were passed, the chances are that it would have no impact whatever on the present position, because the chances of someone being interviewed for 24 hours post-charge are so negligible that they can be entirely ignored. If we are to allow post-charge questioning with some supervision, which the Minister has begun to concede in certain cases, we may as well grasp the nettle and say that it should apply in all post-charge cases. That would obtain whether the Minister were minded to adopt our amendment No. 15 or new clause 4.