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Terrorism Bill

Let us be absolutely clear about this. In relation to prosecutions it is the duty of those who prosecute to look at all the facts of the case. The changes that we have made in the past year mean that once the police have collected all the material and the circumstances are known, the CPS has to look at those circumstances and at the totality of the information and decide whether to charge. We have made it plain—I have made it plain repeatedly from this Dispatch Box—that it will be the duty of the Director of Public Prosecutions to consider which cases should or should not be prosecuted. That onerous duty—and I know that each person who has held that post has discharged it with integrity and honour—is to see whether all the circumstances justify a prosecution. We have all agreed that such prosecutions would be few and far between and will be looked at with great care. Those circumstances should be known before a charge is laid and it will be possible to look at those issues properly. It is simply not right to suggest that this would not be an appropriate way to deal with this.