Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism

Control orders, secret evidence, the whole debate about extraordinary rendition—all these add up to the emergence, post-9/11, of a secret state that does not meet the test of the freedoms that this country has taken for granted for so many centuries; that is not effective; and that is undermining some of the good work of our security services by spreading disaffection in the communities thus affected. I would say more than that. If the emergence of a secret state is allowed to happen in this way—by that I mean not just control orders, secret evidence and what happens in and around the process of extraordinary rendition—then it is not just the particular communities that some of us have in mind that are affected: in the end, that abrogation of liberty will affect us all. In recent weeks, the Government have found themselves in the deeply embarrassing position of having fought to keep judicial findings about the extradition of Binyam Mohamed secret and then being forced by the courts to reveal every last paragraph. Yet Ministers still do not see where the post-9/11 atmosphere has led them in terms of going clean contrary to what has, for centuries, been accepted as the due process of law in this country. Control orders were wrong when the Government initially proposed them, they have been proven to be even more inadequate than some of us thought, and they are still wrong now. I will not be supporting the Government on this matter tonight.