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Terrorism Bill

My Lords, I wholeheartedly support the proposed maximum of 90 days’ detention, given that, as has been said, it is to be reviewed weekly by judicial process. Terrorists have become infinitely more sophisticated, and it is simply not practical to expect the police and the relevant specialists to act in so short a time as at present proposed. Much of the evidence, including computers, can be gathered only after the arrest and must be analysed and decrypted. To quote the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, from whom we shall hear later, translations of some of the manuscript material will be,"““in languages for which quality interpretative services are at a premium””." He too supports the 90 day proposal for many other equally cogent reasons. We are not talking about more time for the police to interview suspects—some of whom may simply exercise their right to silence anyway—but to analyse and identify evidence to which the police will have access only after the arrest. It is, incidentally, unrealistic to argue that the police should build up their case through surveillance. As I remember, it takes 30 people—three shifts of ten—to provide complete coverage of a targeted suspect. If and when those suspects come from a particular community, the surveillance team has to be able to blend into the neighbourhood and into their daily lives. We should think of that as a need that is not easy to satisfy. The police and security services are therefore likely to be dependent on evidential material which becomes available only after arrest. To quote the noble Lord, Lord Carlile—I am sorry that I am doing it once more—"““significant conspiracies to commit terrorist acts have gone unprosecuted as a result of the time limitations placed on the control authorities following arrest””," and they have sometimes been forced to pre-empt a known threat by such an arrest. They need the time to analyse the often voluminous evidence rather than to pursue prolonged interrogation. I cannot see how that can put the detainees under unacceptable pressure. I quote the noble Lord, Lord Desai, speaking in this House on 10 March:"““How many deaths would noble Lords balance against the incarceration of one or two innocent people before they changed their minds?””" He went on,"““I respect those who say ‘I would lose x amount of lives for the protection of one person’s liberty’””.—[Official Report, 10/3/05; col. 1005.]" But he doubted whether such certainty could be right. My second point concerns the issue of glorification, and the double standards which the Government continue to apply in the context of terrorism in Northern Ireland. This Terrorism Bill is, however, to cover the whole United Kingdom. The Government are therefore, I hope, committed to applying this legislation to the IRA, which daily glorifies its past actions and is still recruiting the young. The Prime Minister has rightly said that glorifying terrorism abroad would equally be an offence. I hope that Clause 17 will catch those IRA supporters who have fled to the US and have been aiding, abetting, funding and procuring arms for the IRA, as well as catching the new breed of Islamic terrorists. Under the legislation for the disappeared, which produced a pitiful three bodies, Her Majesty’s Government allowed the IRA to describe their murders as executions. HMG now intend, after praising the IRA for renouncing its arms—after seven years of false promises—to allow known murderers who fled the country before 1998 to escape justice and to return. After that, there is to be a form of judicial process, but these people will not even be required to attend the court, and they will then be free on licence. The Government say that it is not an amnesty but that is what it looks like to the victims of their murderous hate. How is that to be made to square with the Bill? Is this Terrorism Bill for the whole of the UK or not? I believe that, as well as prosecuting those who glorify murder, we should be ending the culture of respect for them which now obtains. It is not right that we should be failing to understand the aversion which all decent people, including their own communities, feel for those who murder and claim that it is in the name of a religion or a political cause. The Independent Monitoring Commission in Northern Ireland has always argued that it is wrong to give any respect to those who reject the rule of law, as Sinn Fein/IRA repeatedly does and as the new breed of terrorists in this country do. We should apply the maxim generally. Whichever community our new terrorists come from, those communities will be glad to be able to demonstrate that they, too, disown the violence done, in some cases, in the name of their religion or sect. It is not acceptable that, as in the case of Sinn Fein/IRA, its leaders should be allowed repeatedly to refuse to recognise British justice or to allow men accused of crimes in their community to come to court, as in the McCartney case in Northern Ireland, with impunity. It is equally reprehensible for an apparently respectable senior member of the Muslim community to say that in any conflict between duty as a British citizen to respect the law and duty to a putative Islamic world state, loyalty to the latter should come first. As the Prime Minister has also said, one basic liberty is the right to life of our citizens and freedom from terrorism. I am sure that those whom the IRA paramilitaries have exiled—and whose right to return to their community Martin McGuinness does not recognise—would agree. I hope that Clause 1 will bring in much needed justice, including, since it covers the past, retrospective justice for Omagh, for the McCartney family and for the families and of the disappeared. The Prime Minister said of this latest terrorist activity in July that it is,"““of a wholly different order from anything we have faced before in this country””." We saw, he says, that these people were prepared to kill more than 50 innocent people—it could have been 500—and to rejoice in that. Where was he when the IRA bombed Brighton, Birmingham, Guildford and Canary Wharf? It is, however, reassuring that this new breed of terrorists is to be treated with rigour, and that we should not allow mistaken respect for their point of view to cloud our judgment.