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Terrorism Bill

My Lords, as a former senior police officer, you will be pleased to hear that I do not intend to detain your Lordships for too long this evening. This has been an interesting and inspiring debate. The threat posed by international terrorism has been well addressed. It is totally different from anything this country has faced before. The law enforcement agencies clearly have a monumental task to deal with fanatics whose sole aim is to destroy as many innocent people as possible. It is imperative, therefore, that we give those agencies as much support as we can. This is better done across party divides, and I hope there will be a consensus on the general principles we are discussing this evening. I would like to deal particularly with the question of pre-charge detention, and why it is so essential under the changed circumstances. We all value human rights and civil liberties, and rightly so. In dangerous circumstances such as we now face, however, a balance has to be struck, as has been said. That is what this debate has been about. The police handling of suspects used to be governed by what were called the ““judges’ rules””, prior to the enactment of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act in 1984. The judges set out the circumstances under which suspects could be detained and when they could be charged. Police could arrest if they had reasonable grounds to suspect people of committing what were then called ““felonies””. There was no limit on that detention, which in many cases I recall was for days at a time. However, the police were directed by the judges that they had to charge when they had sufficient evidence. This, as was mentioned earlier, has the effect of preventing any further questioning regarding that particular charge. It has been suggested that an answer might be to charge for lesser offences. The police used to do that; they held people on what was called a holding charge. The difficulty of that if you are dealing with terrorist offences is that, if you are holding people on a very minor charge, there is a risk that they would be granted bail, which causes problems. That all changed with the PACE Act, which placed limits, subject to extensions by a superintendent and then by a court. This is well regulated now, with codes of practice related to tape recording and so on. Terrorism is of a different order, particularly suicide terrorism. The first duty of the police is the prevention of crime and the protection of life. It follows, therefore, that if they receive intelligence about a group of active bomb-plotters, the necessity to arrest early is obvious, as noble Lords have mentioned previously. The task then starts of collecting evidence while the conspirators are being held. This can include making premises safe and decoding numerous hard drives, checking CCTV footage and so on. My noble friend Lady Kennedy rightly said that this does not stop simply because you have charged the suspect, but when you are searching houses, seizing property and coming across tape and phone recordings, it is valueless unless you can put some of the points you have found back to the people you have in custody. That has to be understood, and I am sure it is, certainly by the legal minds in here. It is no good simply seizing property without talking to people about what you have found and who it belongs to. It is important that that point is made. Interpreters have to be marshalled and suspects interviewed—with proper rest periods, quite rightly, and legal representation. The police and security services have looked carefully at this, and their assessment was that a proper judicially supervised period was 90 days. There has been quite a lot of criticism of this by opponents who claim that this was only an opening offer by the police, who expected it to be whittled down. I think that is unfair to the police, who gave an honest evaluation of the time required to do the job. I said at the beginning that we need a balance between the protection of life and the safeguarding of our civil liberties. Your Lordships may not accept the impartiality of the police in this, but they have access to information that cannot be made public. Someone who might be more acceptable as an impartial commentator is the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, Britain’s independent reviewer of counter-terrorism laws, who has addressed your Lordships’ House this evening. He is a highly respected Member of the House, sitting as he does on the Liberal Democrat Benches. I am sure you will agree that he is beyond reproach, despite the cryptic comment made at the beginning by the noble Lord, Lord McNally. The noble Lord, Lord Carlile, said last week that his independent assessment of the time needed for the police to conduct investigations was, lo and behold, 90 days. I quote:"““I know of at least two or three cases where terror suspects were not charged appropriately because the police ran out of time to question them. If the new Bill does not redress that situation, it will not deal with the problem””." Lest your Lordships suspect collusion, he added:"““The police never put to me 90 days. I looked at such evidence as was available and made my own assessment””." Those comments speak for themselves. The other matter I would like to deal with briefly is the allegation that the police have conspired to get mired in politics. Policing is a very political business. Northern Ireland displays that fully. It would be remarkable if the police did not make representations to parliamentarians openly and publicly on issues on which they have expert knowledge, and a wish to protect the lives of the citizens of this country. When I was the president of the Police Superintendents’ Association, I campaigned rigorously to change the law on paedophiles, the right to silence, double jeopardy and many other issues. What I did not do, and what I would have been wrong to have done, was to get involved in party politics. There lies the difference. That is prohibited by police regulations. But to lobby on general issues with people of all parties is perfectly reasonable. On terrorism, the police campaigned openly with parliamentarians of all parties and of none, in both Houses of Parliament. In my opinion, that was their duty. If anyone could have been construed as dragging the police into party politics, it was the Opposition in accusing them of being lackeys of the Government. That was manifestly untrue and amounted to a disgraceful slur on their integrity. I conclude with a simple plea: give the police the tools and they will do the job. I commend the Bill to the House.