Oral question asked in the House of Lords, by Lord Henley (Conservative). It was answered on Tuesday, 27 March 2007.

Terrorism

Question: My Lords, I offer our congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, on this excellent report. I note that the Minister said that she would give her reply ““in due course””, rather than the conventional ““shortly””. Therefore, we presume that it will be some weeks, quite rightly, before the Government give their response, as the report came out only on 15 March, some 12 days ago. I know that this was not one of the recommendations made by the noble Lord in his report, but one of the propositions that he put forward was that no definition was needed. Will the Government also consider that as a possibility?

Answer: My Lords, we certainly intend to give full consideration to each of the recommendations made by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile. As noble Lords will know, he took a great deal of care and attention in this. He spent aboutnine months going across the country speaking toa number of people to ascertain the proper way forward. We will give every consideration to everything that he says in that report.

Secondary information