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Terrorism and Community Relations

: In answering such questions, it is important that I restrict my remarks to the assessment that the Committee was able to make when it did its inquiry. We all have our anecdotal sense of what has happened since. We will have heard people who share the hon. Lady's view, and others who do not. It is difficult to make a scientific assessment—but she is right to raise the issue. I will return to it in a moment in relation to the new legislation before Parliament. Looking strictly at the Government's response to our report, one could argue that the detail of the wording does not quite exclude what I have just said about how Muslims feel about community relations. My point is that this is not a topic on which weasel words are appropriate. If we have a problem, we must discuss it out in the open and frankly, because that is the only way through.