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Terrorism Bill

My Lords, in introducing the Bill my noble friend on the Front Bench said that we need legislation dealing with terrorism that is comprehensive and up to date. I echo her words. But I also believe that we need legislation that has been scrutinised and honed as finely as possible to ensure that it is as effective and targeted as can be achieved. I hope that we will conduct the further stages of the Bill in exactly that spirit. Like the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, I welcome the creation of the new offence of acts preparatory to terrorism. This proposal, first mooted many years ago, was considered by the Newton committee, of which I was a member, and recommended to the Government. It is very important, particularly in relation to the period of detention before charge, a point to which I shall return in a moment. In the context of the powerful speeches made by my noble friends Lady Symons and Lady Ramsay, with whose analysis of the threat, danger and reality of terrorism I agree entirely—we live with the reality of terrorism, not the threat of it—we must also remember the words of the noble Lord, Lord Hurd. At heart we all understand that our greatest assurance of security comes from intelligence gathering by the police and the security services. Once we know about potential perpetrators, the investigative and legislative court procedures fall into place. That is fundamental to our protection. But we are legislators and as such we are hard-wired to find a statutory solution to problems. It is part of the parliamentary DNA to do so. It is the weapon for which we reach. When we add to the armoury of powers needed by the police to protect us and when we discharge our duty of making sure that that armoury is fully stocked, we must also recognise that sometimes we do not get it completely right. One point that struck members of the Newton committee as they considered the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 was the number of provisions contained in that Act which had never been used. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, recently tabled an interesting Written Question on the use of the Terrorism Act 2000, which was answered on 16 November. The Written Answer reproduced a complicated table of 24 separate offences under the Act. I understand that in the five years since the Act has been in place, there have been some 23 convictions under the range of 24 offences—six appearing on the table in the Written Answer. Earlier this year passionate debates were held in this House about the absolutely essential nature of control orders. In October, the Answer to a Written Question on such orders indicated that currently there are only three in use. Some will say that this is because those Acts, those pieces of legislation, are effective as deterrents. We have already discussed, however, that for the particularly virulent and dangerous form of terrorism that we are facing, deterrence is often not a solution. We have to ask ourselves whether the ways in which we are legislating are fit for purpose. I welcome charges of acts preparatory to terrorism, because that will be one solution to the problem to which 90 days was the police’s answer, which is the difficulty of bringing charges in situations where investigations—as has eloquently been described—take a long time, have great inherent difficulties or cross international jurisdictions. To be able to bring the intermediate, preliminary charge of an act preparatory to terrorism will be enormously helpful to police. We heard from the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, of the ways it would be possible to continue to investigate, to question if necessary—although I understand questioning is not a lot of good with this particular group of suspects—and to build up a case on potentially more serious charges. In the longer term, the answer to this challenging set of circumstances is not to be found in some magic number of days that people are allowed to be detained before charging. We should look again at what was stated in our report and what the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, who will speak for himself later, also said, together with what has been quoted, about the possibility of a completely different form of judicial oversight in such cases prior to charging. That would allow confidence in the system, but equally allow the police enough time to build up the case and to protect the public while doing so. When the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor gave evidence to the Constitution Committee of this House a couple of weeks ago, he indicated that he had not in any way ruled out further investigation of that possibility. I believe that it could square the circle of the difficulties that we find ourselves in when wishing to give the police the opportunity to do their job properly, when wishing above all to protect ourselves, our families and our fellow citizens, and, equally, when not wishing to do it by means that would be counterproductive or ineffective.