Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Bill

Unlike the shadow Home Secretary, many of us regard this as a lost opportunity to put behind us legislation that is a scar on our constitutional and judicial structures. References have been made to 9/11, which we will be remembering this Sunday. I was in New York on that day, and the memory is still visceral. The event has unleashed a decade of sometimes good, sometimes poorly thought through legislative responses to real and apparent and sometimes not-so-real threats. Over the years, there has been growing opposition to some of those more extreme measures—the push for 90 days' detention without trial, the preamble to the Iraq war, with the promotion of non-plots, such as the ricin plot, and the sexing up of dossiers as a basis for our going to war, and of course the control orders. These are all part of an approach to the control of terror that says there is never enough doubt. This is not a point of balance. We need to have a balance for the rights of all people in this country, and one of the most sacred rights is the right to a free and fair trial. That opportunity has been lost today, but I believe that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has done her best to have a thorough and meaningful review of the measures that the Government consider appropriate for the times. This is not a mere nod-through of legislation. The debate has been robust.