Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Bill

It is pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins), who drew on his experience and made some sensible contributions to the debate. I diverge from his view, however, on the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) made about communications. The point about allowing people to have access to mobile phones, the internet or fixed lines is that there are indeed some intelligent potential or actual terrorists, but equally there are some rather stupid terrorists who may use those facilities and make the sort of connections that would facilitate a prosecution. That might be one of the purposes of making communications available to them. The Bill is welcome. It starts to tackle some of the grossest abuses of human rights that existed under the control order system, but I would like it to go further. For instance, on prosecutions, the right hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East referred to the fact that there would be additional resources for covert surveillance and intelligence. My understanding is that that will be used to secure prosecutions, which is welcome. More could be done to secure prosecutions, and we may want to return to that at a later date. I am pleased that the Government are not afraid of improving Bills where and when that is necessary. I do not agree with Liberty's contention that the Bill is worse than the control order system that is currently in place. It is not; it is more targeted. Liberty's argument seems to be centred on the fact that although control orders are continually on the political table because of the sunset clause that calls for an annual review and the associated parliamentary oversight, the effect of the Bill would be permanent. That is true. However, control orders have been debated annually and renewed year after year, whereas TPIMs are limited to a maximum of two years, following an initial period of one year. The right hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East argued that the Government should allow TPIMs to go beyond a two-year period. My understanding of one of the arguments deployed in favour of control orders is their ability to disrupt. One would expect that after a two-year period of a lack of communication or of controlled communication, the disruptive nature of control orders would have had an impact and broken down those networks. The right hon. Gentleman may have been arguing for TPIMs to be applied indefinitely to ensure that that disruption was permanent and took place over a longer time scale. My view is that disruption would have taken place within the first two years and the links would have been broken. To suggest that TPIMs should be extended beyond two years presents a threat from the civil liberties perspective.