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Terrorism Bill

My Lords, this has been a fascinating debate, not least the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Stratford. I must confess that the noble Lord chilled me somewhat when he said that collective freedom was more important than individual freedom. Naturally, we are very shocked by the appearance of suicide bombers in our country, just as the United States was very shocked by the events of 9/11 in 2001, but we are not the first to arrive there. I think that we can profitably learn from the state of Israel, which has lived with suicide bombing for many more years than that. We can learn from the wisdom of its rightly celebrated Chief Justice, Aharon Barak, who, I think, is giving a lecture in this country this month. In his famous judgment in the case known widely, although not correctly, as the ““ticking time bomb case””, because that was an example of what you could do if there was a ticking time bomb, condemning heavy-handedness by the Israeli security services, he said:"““Although a democracy must often fight with hand tied behind its back, it nonetheless has the upper hand. Preserving the Rule of Law and recognition of an individual’s liberty constitutes an important component in its understanding of security. At the end of the day, they strengthen its spirit and its strength and allow it to overcome its difficulties””." I fully understand the Government bringing forward this Bill following the events of 7 July—the day of my maiden speech in this House, for which I was late because of the disruption of the trains, although that was the minimal thing in that absolutely tragic day—but a balance must be struck between adequate powers for the police and security services and the liberty of the subject. Chief Justice Barak’s words on that are highly relevant. We should not underestimate the effects on liberty of 90 days’ detention, particularly if it will be at all frequent. If you overdo it, you will deeply disillusion those portions of society likely to be affected by it. We know that there is a very serious risk that Muslims in our society are likely to be particularly targeted in this area. It must be said that the vast majority of Muslims in this country are horrified by the perversion of the Koran and of Islam that underlies those horrible criminal acts. They are our best source of intelligence, and I feel confident that our intelligence services will be fully aware of that. It is also important that decisions on those matters of individual liberty must not be seen to be left to either the security services or the police. That is unfair and dangerous because it is very hard for them to know what to ask for, and, when you give it to them, it is very hard for them not to lock people up. Let us remember what happened under the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001: 23 people were locked up, under such supervision as it was possible for the courts to give them through the Special Immigration Appeals Tribunal system, for up to three and a half years. Yet when the Law Lords declared that to be contrary to law, in the case of A in December 2004, about half of them were let out and some placed under control orders but to the best of my knowledge—I will be corrected if I am wrong—not one of them has been prosecuted, notwithstanding that they were held in custody for far longer than is proposed in the 90 days provision. On the debate between the 28 days and 90 days proposals, which will not be central in your Lordships’ House unless it is pushed forward on an amendment, although I deeply respect what the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, and those with experience of the security services say, I am far from convinced that the case is made out for one particular length rather than the other. I am far from convinced that we should necessarily see any prosecutions even if that longer period were given. It will be very interesting to learn from the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, at least something on the drift of why he thinks prosecutions would have been brought. This is only one of six Bills on terrorism since 2000. My second question is: would not money be better spent on building up the security services and the police’s specialised membership in this area of anti-terrorism rather than on the Identity Cards Bill, on which enormous sums are likely to be spent? That remains a very serious question. I am glad that we shall deal in Committee with both Bills in parallel. The next thing for this House to do is to fulfil its primary role as a revising Chamber. I very much support the points made about the opacity of Clause 1, which deals with encouragement and glorification. It is quite right that intention should be included, but I support all that has been said. I would build on the words of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Bingham of Cornhill, as to the potential injustice that could arise from a definition of recklessness not requiring personal culpability. I also think we must put right the present state of the clause on attendance at a place of terrorist training. Powerful points have been made on that, as they have on the question of libraries and universities by my noble friend Lady Carnegy of Lour, and the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, both of whom know very well what they are talking about. Our duty is to scrutinise the Bill extremely closely and to make sure that it is, in so far as it can be, effective—and like the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, I welcome Clause 5—but also fair. It is the abiding principle of all criminal justice, whether it deals with terrorism or general crime, that it is very often right and necessary to be tough, but we must also always be sure that we are fair.