Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Bill

I want to speak briefly in favour of new clause 7 on annual reviews, but only because it is the least worst option on the table. It is deeply concerning that, despite pre-election promises and having voted in the past against the massively controversial and now, I would argue, totally discredited control order regime, the coalition Government are trying to push through a Bill that in so many respects simply rebrands the very worst aspects of that failed regime. Despite the spin that was put out when the Bill was presented, it contains the same fundamental mechanism of detention. Restrictions on a terrorist suspect while further investigations continue will in many circumstances be reasonable and in the public interest, but what is so offensive about control orders and their close relatives, TPIMs, is that both are imposed by the Executive, not by a court. The continuation of a system of Government detention entirely outside the rule of law is neither effective nor just, and that is why I hope that, as the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) said, we can make these annual reviews more rigorous. Perhaps we can use them in the way I imagine people on control orders hope they will be used: for proper, rigorous scrutiny. Today, I was in the same room as the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) and I, too, heard from somebody on a control order. I heard some shocking stories, and not just about that person waiting to sign in at a police station and being deemed to be two minutes late and therefore, supposedly, in breach of a control order. There were even more ridiculous accounts. People are being written to because they have not kept properly clean the flat in which they are supposed to be in internal detention. All kinds of ridiculous methods are being used to misuse the kind of tools being put before us today. That is why, at the very least, we need the option of an annual review. Everyone agrees that public safety requires that terrorists be held in prison, but let us not forget that this regime is about terrorist suspects, some of whom will be entirely innocent—as, indeed, was the gentleman we spoke to today. So, when considering these matters, which are central both to our security and to our core democratic values, it is critical to remember that the concern is not whether we would like to see terrorists subject to punitive restrictions, but whether we want a system that allows innocent people to be treated outside the rule of law. It is not the action of a democratic state to hold someone without telling them what they are charged with. That is the definition of a living hell: to hold someone without telling them what the evidence against them is, leaving them with no opportunity to defend themselves. The many past miscarriages of justice should weigh heavily on our consideration of these matters. I am disappointed that the amendments I co-signed with the hon. Member for Cambridge, on police bail, were not selected for debate. I realise that I cannot now debate them, but I would simply say that public safety is best assured when suspects are charged with a crime and, if found guilty, imprisoned, rather than left in the community to abscond—as a number of controlees have done—or, crucially, to act as an advertisement for extremism because the regime is so unjust and impacts not just upon them but on their families and communities. Police bail would have enabled us to get away from that and properly to investigate people who are suspected of a crime, rather than leaving them in this no-man's land, which discredits us enormously as a country.