Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Bill

Indeed so; the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. That matter should be looked at in great detail in Committee. I hope that the Bill will be greatly changed in Committee and that we will hear about those changes on Report. I hope we will move away from the principle of control orders and the conditions that he rightly says are associated with them. I understand that Liberty, whose briefing on this matter I have neither read nor seen, for which I apologise, describes these measures as ““low-fat”” control orders that have been dressed up to resemble something that they are not. I represent a mixed, inner-city community constituency, as do many other colleagues, and I am very proud to represent that area. The events of 2001, the invasion of Afghanistan, the invasion of Iraq, the Bush-led war on terror, the axis of evil speech and similar things have had an enormous effect on community relations. They have also generated a degree of Islamophobia within our society and continue to do so, which is a very serious matter. The anti-terrorism legislation and the arguments surrounding the Prevent strategy, like so many other things, play into that agenda. My borough suffered on 7/7: more people from my borough died than from any other borough—it was a dreadful, awful, terrible day. I do not believe, however, that counter-terrorism legislation that goes around the principle of the use of the criminal law or goes around the norms of parliamentary democracy and open justice will stop those things happening again. That whole process does not make us more safe; ultimately, it puts our society at greater risk and makes it more vulnerable. Although we are debating a change in the legislation and the Bill is presented as being the end of control orders, the reality is that we are being presented with a different form of control orders. I look forward to the Committee asserting itself when the details of the Bill are debated and improving it a great deal by removing the whole principle of control orders. Once we give away our powers to secret courts or give away accountability to secret services—I accept that only 48 control orders have been put in place—we are crossing a very big line. We should be very careful about doing that. Our job as Members of Parliament is to ask the awkward question; our job as MPs is to put very awkward questions to those employed by the state to look after law and order and protect us. Above all, our task is to ensure that our liberties are safe, our democracy is safe and that individuals will not be detained irrationally for a very long time on the basis of hearsay evidence that would simply not stand up in a criminal court. That is a bad thing for a democracy; it is a bad thing for us to do.