Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Bill

I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to the debate this evening and I think that all the contributions made so far indicate how serious the issues we are dealing with are and how difficult for everyone, whichever side of the House they are on, because it is a case of trying to weigh the balance and make some very difficult judgments. When dealing with matters of national security, it is important that we try as far as possible to reach a consensus, because these matters are incredibly important for the country, and that we try to start from the evidence base, which in my experience leads to better decisions on where the balance of judgment should rightly lie. I want to think about the evidence we face at the moment. First, that concerns the nature of the threat. Sometimes these issues are discussed in the abstract and are not necessarily rooted in the reality of the threat that the country faces. For some years the threat level has been ““severe””, which is only one step down from ““imminent””. That means that this country faces a very significant threat from al-Qaeda and al-Qaeda-inspired terrorism, often originating abroad but also involving people who were born and brought up in this country and are enmeshed in a series of worrying plots. It is important to put on the record the nature of the threat that the country faces. Secondly, we should consider the extent of the problem. People sometimes feel that, because we have been dealing with this threat for 10 years and have had the control order regime in place for the past six, the extent of that threat has somehow reduced. At any one time, the security services are dealing with tens of plots, which are often very complex and interrelated, with a web of international and domestic actors and many technologies, and involving incredibly complex organisations. Between 1,600 and 2,000 known terrorist suspects are involved in these plots, and those are the ones we know about. There may well be other organisations, other plots and other individuals who, as we speak, are intent on organising the kind of terror that can wreak mayhem and destruction on our communities. The sustained nature of the threat and its extent ought to be a backdrop to some of the difficult decisions that we have to make with regard to this legislation. There is therefore a clear need for surveillance and the gathering of intelligence and evidence on the intentions and actions of those involved in planning and conducting terrorist operations. It is of course right, as my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) and others point out in an eloquent and genuine way, that in a free democracy such as ours we should always seek to bring those involved in terrorism before the criminal courts. That should be our starting point. We should bring prosecutions where the evidence can be adduced and tested, where witnesses can be cross-examined and where a jury can reach a verdict on whether the accused is guilty or innocent. That must be the starting point in any democracy—that we have a criminal system that allows all that to be done as openly and transparently as possible. One of the reasons we brought in some of the new offences now on the statute book, such as committing acts preparatory to terrorism, was to enable us to interrupt plots at the earliest possible stage and still be able to bring a criminal prosecution and go through the conventional criminal system and bring those people to justice. Those offences have been very useful in giving the police powers to interrupt early and ensure that they disrupt the plot and prevent any damage while still using the conventional criminal justice system, which is obviously what we want to encourage. However, we must recognise that there are—and, unfortunately, likely to be for the foreseeable future—a small number of people involved in terrorism who pose a serious threat to the safety of our citizens and country and who cannot be brought within the ambit of the conventional criminal justice system. Much as we may dislike it, that is the situation we face. For several years there have been discussions, or attempts at discussions, between various Home Secretaries and Ministers and the judicial system, and in many cases the judiciary have been reluctant to engage in any discussions on whether the way the criminal justice system operate can be amended. I understand their reluctance because of the separation of the Executive and the judiciary, and they want to avoid confusion, but I feel that the criminal justice system is not necessarily able to cope with the nature of the threat and the offences we face in the world we now live in. Many of the suspects cannot be subjected to the traditional judicial system because to do so would mean bringing forward intelligence and evidence that could put at risk the lives of those who seek to protect us. We cannot allow that intelligence to be revealed as doing so would reveal those agents and their personal security would be jeopardised. Those people put their lives on the line for the people of this country and we have a duty to protect them. Bringing forward that intelligence would also reveal the surveillance methods and techniques that the security services often use to gain it, which would also undermine their ability to keep us all safe. Control orders have been used in a small number of cases and I think that we should get that number to its irreducible minimum. We imposed only 48 control orders in the six years that they have existed and there are only eight or 10 now in place. It is a very tightly managed and controlled regime, so those powers are not sprayed around and used loosely as a way of rounding up the usual suspects. That is absolutely not the intention. I am afraid that the reality, which we should all be grown up enough to acknowledge, is that the threat we face is such that we have to have a system that, however distasteful we as democrats find it, can protect the people for whom we are responsible. It was for that reason that in 2005 the then Home Secretary and I, as the Minister responsible for policing and counter-terrorism, brought forward the original control order legislation, which the Bill seeks to alter in some significant respects. I will never forget bringing forward that legislation. I remember being in this House at 4 o'clock in the morning debating that hugely contested legislation. In some ways that was very difficult, but in others it was very encouraging as it indicated the depth of commitment on both sides of the House to a free democracy in which people felt strongly about those issues. I was very glad when we finished at 10 o'clock that morning; nevertheless, it was an inspiring occasion and a good one for the House. I want make it crystal clear to the House that, whatever some Members might say, that original legislation was not introduced in some kind of knee-jerk overreaction to the events of 9/11 or 7/7. It was a genuine recognition of the inability of the criminal justice system to accommodate the situation we faced. I am a lawyer and I have huge respect for the rule of law—