Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism

This was a very quiet and sombre debate until the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne) spoke and livened matters up considerably. There was a very passionate intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton, South (Ms Taylor), and the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) galloped into the Chamber to make his intervention. I find myself in precisely the same position as the official Opposition—that of putting the Government on notice. We have debated this matter at length, and it is important that the House has a proper, full debate on the issues involved, because they concern the liberty of the subject. We should therefore take time to consider the matter rather than rush in and agree a renewal. I shall therefore be in the Division Lobby with the Government—and presumably with the official Opposition—in support of the measure that the Minister has brought before the House today. The hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Ruffley) summed up my feeling extremely well when he said that we accept the Government's case as put forward by the Minister, but that the next time this matter comes before the House we will expect the Government to put a stronger and more effective case. That is not a criticism of my right hon. Friend the Minister's speech; I say it because we can no longer just accept in good faith statements made on issues of this kind. My hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) has just left the Chamber, but I wish to pay tribute to him for the work he has done in this area. The fact that we have 28 days is, by and large, due to the fact that he came up with this compromise when the Government had originally suggested an extension to 90 days. That is why he and other Members also support the Government measure to renew, I think. The Minister was not the responsible Minister when this matter came before the House at the time of the debate on 42 days, but he will recall that the concern we all had was that there was only a need to give the Government these powers if the Government were in a position to use the powers. Reference has been made to the Home Affairs Committee report on extension to 42 days. Hon. Members—especially my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, North—said that we came to a conclusion that would mean the period would be extended. That is right, but it is important to put it on record that although we accepted that there ought to be an extension, there were a number of conditions that we felt it was important the Government should meet before that 42-day period was triggered. We did not say that it should just go ahead willy-nilly, but I should have realised that a combination of my hon. Friend, Baroness Manningham-Buller and Shami Chakrabarti would eventually see this particular measure defeated. In checking on the constituencies of hon. Members, I was reading the "Dod's Parliamentary Companion" report on proceedings before the House in the 177th year of Dod's. It contains an account of the last debate we had to try to raise the period from 28 to 42 days, in which it said the Government""scraped through by nine votes. Few could really understand why so much political capital had been expended on a 14-day extension of detention which, by the time concessions had been made, looked unlikely ever to be deployable anyway. The provision seems highly likely to be amended in the Lords, where it has already been condemned by a former Lord Chancellor, a former Attorney General and a former Director of MI5, in addition to the opposition. Then there will be the 'ping pong' between the Houses, and the risk of defeat yet again."" There was no ping-pong of course, as the Government accepted the decision of the other place and as a result the 42-day proposal was defeated. My hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore) made an eloquent speech that rightly drew attention to the eighth report by his Joint Committee on Human Rights. He pointed out the Committee's concerns, which I do not think the Minister addressed so I hope he will do so when he comes to reply. Is the Whip—my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Mudie)—nodding and trying to encourage me to get on with my speech? I assure him that there is plenty of time left in the debate, with no more speakers other than the Front-Bench spokesmen, so if he will allow me to develop my arguments, I will be extraordinarily grateful. When the Minister replies, I hope he will deal with points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon. When his Committee considered the matter, it did not see that there was a case for an extension certainly beyond 28 days, or even for keeping it at 28 days. His speech was an "on notice" speech, therefore. Along with the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds, myself and other Members, he is putting the Government on notice that we would not be prepared to go along with this proposal on a future occasion unless additional information were placed before the House.