Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism

I should like to speak to the tagged report from the Joint Committee on Human Rights. The Select Committee starts with the premise, as it always does, that human rights law imposes a duty on the state to protect us all from terrorism, and it is on that point that today's debate must focus. The 28-day provision was supposed to be a temporary measure, but this is the third annual renewal debate since it was introduced in 2006. There is therefore a risk of its developing an air of permanence, as the Prevention of Terrorism Acts have. That legislation was originally aimed at Irish terrorism, but it has been renewed year after year, decade after decade. In preparing for today's debate, I looked at my notes for last year's debate and the relevant report. Little seems to have changed, save that yet another year has passed without the power having had to be used. I concede that that is not, in itself, proof that the measure is not needed, but it does mean that we need to scrutinise ever more closely the question of its renewal. The recent report of the Eminent Jurists Panel on Terrorism, Counter-Terrorism and Human Rights warned of the corrosive effect of open-ended departures from ordinary procedures and of the danger of special measures, introduced to deal with a temporary crisis, becoming permanent. The point appears to have been accepted in principle by the Secretary of State for Justice, who was recently reported in the press as having indicated, in a public lecture on 12 May, that UK counter-terrorism laws built up in the wake of the 9/11 attacks on New York and the 7/7 attacks on London should be reviewed and may need to be scaled back. He is reported to have said:""There is a case for going through all counter-terrorism legislation and working out whether we need it. It was there for a temporary period."" The Government have set out their case again today, stating that the complex nature of terrorism investigations requires the longer period of detention. However, we know from what the Minister has said, and from published documentation, that only six people have been held for the maximum of 28 days, of whom three were charged and three released. In our previous reports, my Committee indicated that detailed, qualitative information was needed for Parliament to make an informed decision. Since September 2008, three people have been convicted. There is a retrial involving other defendants, and I accept that we cannot scrutinise those cases until the retrials have been concluded, but, as I said last year, we could carry out a detailed analysis of the cases of the three people who were released. However, we were told at the time that the Home Office does not hold information on those cases, as they are an operational matter for the police, in consultation with the Crown Prosecution Service. That was a surprising response, as lessons could be learned from the cases of innocent people who have been held for 28 days. Despite last year's assurances of more detailed information being made available, it seems that all we are getting now is the Home Office's statistical bulletin. That gives only the bare figures, which are not a great deal of use. During last year's renewal debate, the then Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, East (Mr. McNulty), expressly accepted the need for detailed information to be made available about how the power had been used in practice when debating future renewals. Her Majesty's Crown Prosecution Service inspectorate reported on the counter-terrorism division of the CPS in April 2009. The Government relied on that inspection in response to our inquiry into their plans to conduct a qualitative review.