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Terrorism Bill

I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman for that intervention. The decision was difficult because there is much in the Bill that I support and much of it has been subject to talks. At the end of the day, however, I took a judgment and my colleagues agreed—we debated it at the party conference—and we felt that we could not support a Bill that included such a provision. I would have found it extremely hard to abstain or to support something that included a provision with which I fundamentally disagreed. The honest thing to do in those circumstances is to take the position that we have taken. I regret only that it could be interpreted as our wanting to wreck the consensus. We do not want to do so. It is a principled position that we hold dear.