Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism

I entirely agree with the right hon. Gentleman. I am delighted that he managed to hotfoot it into the Chamber to make that devastating intervention. I note that the hon. Member for Stockton, South (Ms Taylor) is not seeking to respond to it. As I have said, the arguments previously used in favour of retaining 28 days' pre-charge detention have been substantially weakened, and we ought to take account of that. Moreover, the threshold test is now substantially more flexible. I believe that the real reason why the Government failed so conclusively in their attempt to increase the number of days from 28 to 42 was that a whole series of serious people who had been involved in the counter-terrorism effort for many years were unpersuaded. The Crown Prosecution Service can now bring charges on the basis of reasonable suspicion alone, even when it does not think that the chance of a conviction is greater than 50 per cent. With that flexibility, in 2007 the Crown Prosecution Service enjoyed a 92 per cent. conviction rate in terror cases—I am sorry that the Minister has not been able to give us the most up-to-date figures, but I can give him the most up-to-date figures that are available to me—and in 2008 the conviction rate was 78 per cent. Both those rates are substantially higher than the rates of conviction for other serious crimes.