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Terrorism Bill

Thank you. I ask noble Lords to come with me on a very short imaginary journey that closely reflects the problems frequently encountered by anti-terrorist investigators. Imagine that you are the senior anti-terrorist squad investigator. You receive information via a telephone intercept that a group of men in various parts of the country are planning terrorist attacks on the Houses of Parliament and British embassies in a number of Asian and African countries. Despite the valiant efforts of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, and other noble Lords, this intercept information cannot be used in evidence. CBRN possibilities have been discussed between the two main conspirators and the attacks are to be carried out in three months’ time. The information, I think you will agree, cannot be ignored and must be acted upon to prevent possible large-scale loss of life. Surveillance is started on two of the suspects and during the next eight weeks they meet various other people; all unknown to the security services or police in this country. Five key addresses have been identified, but it is not known where the explosives are stored or from where they have been obtained, although the suspects’ conversations indicate they may be from abroad. The men are thought to be illegal immigrants and each is living on two false identities. The police officers working under your direction arrest 15 people under Prevention of Terrorism Act warrants in six different areas of the country. Each arrest requires time-consuming custody procedures, transportation to a secure custody suite in London, the forensic examination of prisoners and the taking of evidential samples. Each of the 15 prisoners has at least one false passport. The initial procedure takes about eight hours for each person and, although some of the procedures can be carried out simultaneously, the booking in with the custody officers must be done individually. The fingerprints are sent to five different countries but, as an experienced investigator, you know that the earliest reply will come in something like two to three months and will be two little letters—““u/i””—which means ““unable to identify””. In this journey I cannot be specific, for obvious reasons, about other countries’ swiftness of reply, but I ask your Lordships to imagine your view—as a senior investigating officer—if the countries are, say: Algeria, Tunisia, Bangladesh, Kashmir and Indonesia. I am sure that you would be most unhappy about that. The example, I stress, for obvious reasons must purely hypothetical, and is given only to help noble Lords to understand some of the time constraints and extreme difficulties with which investigators are regularly faced. But you are not finished yet! Two firms of solicitors represent all the detained men. Their representatives are not available immediately and police wait four hours for one and five for the other. The initial consultations with each of their clients lasts, on average, four to five hours; each disclosure package given to the legal representatives requires lengthy consultations with the detainees. This is essential procedure to which the detainees are fully and rightly entitled. The clock did not stop running while the detainees were with their legal advisers, but it has taken up much valuable time then available to the officers to conduct their own interviews and inquiries. All the men say that they need an interpreter. Reliable interpreters are a scarce resource and some of the men speak in a dialect not easily recognised or understood by the interpreters. In addition, all the men need to be allowed to observe prayer five times a day. You are informed that a vast amount of material has been recovered from the addresses in various parts of the country. This is being properly labelled with the date, time and place where it was discovered and the name of the officer making the discovery who will be required to make a statement. Some 90 disk drives have been recovered and much of the content has been encrypted. The relevance of some 200 pages of documents cannot be assessed until they are translated and analysed for evidential value. It cannot be known at this stage which suspects, if any, they should be put to until they have been translated. The interpreters are human and they are very tired, having been working almost non-stop on translation and interpreting duties for the past two weeks. Although you yourself have been working day and night since day one of the investigation you no longer look at the clock but at the calendar and, as you do so, you receive a request from the Commissioner or Chief Constable asking how the inquiry is progressing and reminding you that, despite the fact that three more suspect addresses have been located and will need to be searched, tomorrow is the 29th day of the investigation. Now I ask your Lordships to state your action. Do you consider public safety first, as the police must, or do you respect the civil rights of the suspects and release them? Give full reasons for your action, noting that it will be subjected to many intellectual and judicial debates in public, in the press, and, of course, in Parliament, at some time in the future when you are trying desperately to wrestle with yet another and even more compelling terrorist investigation. I finish only by emphasising that to apply to keep a suspect in custody for longer than a month and, maybe, for up to 90 days, will apply only in the most exceptional and complex cases. The police do not actually like keeping people in custody, and certainly not those who are innocent. That is not only an infringement of that person’s human rights but also spells trouble for the officers. The police, I am assured, fully support and, indeed, welcome, the prospect of robust judicial oversight of any applications for extended detention before charge. I urge your Lordships to support the amendment in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Ramsay and Lady Park, to which I have also added my name.