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Terrorism Bill

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, the Minister and all those who support the Government’s case have often, in recent months, spoken of the need to strike a balance between the liberty of the individual and the safety of the community. They suggest, as the noble Baroness has just done, that we need to strike that balance in a different place now because of the particular dramatic, sinister brand of terrorism with which we are faced. She perfectly rightly said that suicide bombing is different. We have to accept that basic point. Those of us who are, by nature, liberals with a small ““l””—I say that to the noble Lord, Lord McNally—and who believe passionately in the liberty of the individual, and know how vulnerable that liberty has always been to arguments of public safety, have to accept that we do need to re-think the balance. However, we should not suspend the need for balance. We should not allow terrorists to unhinge our powers of judgment on these matters, or to induce us to forget some very valid lessons from the past. That is why, personally, I much preferred the line taken by the Prime Minister in the days immediately after the July bombings, when he said that we must not allow the terrorists to coerce us into changing our basic way of life. I preferred that to the mood which was with him on 5 August before the holiday, which produced the rather hectic proposals then, and, more recently, the hectic efforts to push them through in the Bill in its original form in another place. Against that background, I should like to say a few words about two parts of the Bill: first, Clause 1 and the glorifying and encouraging of terrorism. Of course I fully accept what the Minister said, that that has come to us substantially improved from another place. I think that the effect is still somewhat obscure. I should like to give a bit of advice to the Home Secretary, if that is not presumptuous. We should not spend too much time pursuing individuals because they delight in saying disgraceful things. These people earn, or think they earn, their headlines by this public unpleasantness. But obnoxious clerics, and, in my experience, obnoxious people of all descriptions, tend to have good lawyers. I think that the Home Secretary would find himself wasting a lot of time if he went down this path too often. I do not believe that there is serious evidence that these loud mouths are essentially responsible for acts of terrorism. We need to worry not so much about the loud mouths but about the quiet acts of subversion and training from dangerous people up and down our country, who, on the whole, keep their mouths shut. Of course there is a difficult distinction between those who express hateful views and those who actually prepare acts of terrorism. The Bill attempts to make that distinction. The best part in it is the belated action on the recommendation of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, in, I think, 1996, that we should make illegal preparing acts of terrorism. I do not believe that the part of the Bill dealing with the glorification of terrorism will make our lives safer. Perhaps I may add another word of advice to the Home Secretary. It is not directly relevant because it comes under the Royal Prerogative. But, in this day of television and the Internet, it is rather old-fashioned to rely too much on powers of exclusion. If you are thinking of vulnerable young men in Birmingham or Leeds, it does not make a huge amount of difference if the incitement comes to them from someone in London or someone in Beirut. The international media today do not rely very much on frontiers, or, I am sorry to say, on the edicts of the Home Secretary. The second point relates to the powers of detention in Clauses 23 and 24. Again, as the Minister said, these have come to us, in my view in a greatly improved form, from the other place. But scrutiny is still needed. This is the main point I want to make this afternoon. I am convinced, from my own experience and from everything I have read or heard since, that intelligence not legislation is the key to successful counter-terrorism. I fear that our intelligence in these matters is, again, scanty. I say ““again”” because we know of the difficulties we got into in Iraq because of scanty intelligence. I believe that our intelligence is scanty as regards what is happening in our towns and cities. I do not blame the police or the intelligence agencies for that; it is not easy or quick to concentrate resources, which are limited anyway, on new and difficult targets. But the scantiness of intelligence must affect our judgment on the powers which it is right to give to those who have to act on that intelligence. That brings me to the role of the police. It is right in our democracy that the Government should ask for, and whether asked for or not, that the police should give—in private to Ministers and to the public—their views on the powers that they need. But Ministers should not suspend their own powers of judgment, or come to Parliament telling us that it is the view of the police or the agencies so we must accept it. Nor should the police urge Parliament to suspend its views or judgment, but that is what has been happening. We have an admirable and effective police service, and we have been reminded again in the past 48 hours how much we owe them. We do not ask them to draft our laws on criminal justice, any more than we ask teachers or nurses to draft our laws on education or health. Nor certainly should Ministers propel the police into the front line of parliamentary debate to bring about the results that the Government want. There are two reasons why there is a distinction between the role of Ministers and the role of the police. First, there are considerations that are for Parliament and Ministers and not necessarily for the police—for example, the effect of a Bill on the views of the minority community and on its willingness to co-operate with the police and the Government. We know that we need co-operation in the fight against terrorism. That is arguable; I am not expressing a view. But that argument should take place in this House and in the other place. It is not a matter essentially for the police. Secondly—I am trying to deal with this point delicately—the police in their state of scanty intelligence are not infallible. I am not talking about detention after charge and before conviction. But detention without charge, whether for 90 or 28 days—obviously it is worse if it lasts for 90 days—can ruin an individual’s life. He can lose his job or his family; he can go bust. It is hard to defend the use of that degree of detention if it is based on the kind of intelligence that led—we do not know how yet—to the shooting of the innocent Brazilian recently. On a personal note, I spent many difficult weeks—two Christmases running—poring over the evidence in the terrorist cases of the Birmingham and Guildford bombers. In those days it was the personal responsibility of the Home Secretary, but fortunately that is no longer so. Initially the police were entirely clear and absolute in their view that the verdicts based on police evidence were right. In both cases, after many twists and turns the verdicts turned out to be wrong. In judging such matters it is necessary to have that kind of memory and recollection. It is wrong for Ministers and their press officers to suggest that it is opportunistic or disreputable to give close, occasionally sceptical, scrutiny to these proposals. The noble Baroness, in introducing the Bill, breathed sweetness and light, as usual, but she knows perfectly well the remarks that were made in another place after the recent votes. It would be irresponsible to ignore the threat of terrorism and the fact that the threat, as the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, said, is more dangerous than and different from the one we had before. But it would be equally bad and irresponsible if we as a House of Parliament failed to give the Bill not partisan hostility, but the kind of scrutiny—and occasional sceptical scrutiny—that it deserves.