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Terrorism Bill

This is a very interesting debate, and I am glad to follow the views expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Condon, who was commissioner of the Metropolitan Police when I was Attorney-General. This is a difficult question. We have all agonised over the right balance between the existing 14 days, as it was before the Bill was introduced, and the 90 days proposal that was put on the table during the course of the discussion, but were not on the table initially. It has not been an easy matter within government—that is perfectly clear. It is clear that the Home Secretary had to agonise over these matters, and large numbers of proposals of between 14 and 90 days have been seriously and rightly discussed. It is significant—and I commend them on it—that, as I understand it, the Government have not switched their position to the 90 days. We are in an area where one very much needs a lead from government if one is to take a decision on these highly tricky balances, and one then seeks to hold the Government to account and to test all the arguments. I fully understand the strong reasons that have been expressed by some former leaders of the police. I listened with great care and attention to what the noble Lord, Lord Imbert, said. Plainly we ask our police to do—as I remember very well from my days in office—an extremely difficult job. In those days that was principally in the context of terrorism in Northern Ireland. I remember my noble friend Lady Park saying that she detested the way that we rather downgraded the dangers of Northern Ireland. They were very real and hundreds of people were killed in appalling atrocities carried out by terrorists. It is essential to get the right balance between protection of society and the liberty of the subject, because it is important to be just. Justice in our society and the belief that our society is so constructed that we will achieve justice is one of the great strengths of our free society. I mentioned the chief justice of Israel, who reminded his country, in the terrible situation in which it has been living for decades now, which has of course been exacerbated in recent years, as it is for us, by the new phenomenon of suicide bombing, that none the less it is right to keep that balance. It is not only the liberty of the subject that is important. One does not want to go over the top, as the noble Lord, Lord Condon, rightly said, and thereby alienate those very communities from which we need the friendship and co-operation, which we largely have, which will produce the intelligence that will be one of our strongest weapons in this very difficult battle. I looked carefully at the reasons helpfully given by Assistant Commissioner Andy Hayman for seeking the 90 days. I respect him for coming forward. It is that kind of detail that we need an opportunity to look at. There were nine reasons and the first was that terrorism is different and that it has spread world-wide. Yes, suicide bombing is different, but when we look at the dangers that afflict our society—and I happen to have been reading my grandparents’ letters during the First World War, and one casts one’s mind back to the Second World War—are we in a wholly different ambit of risk from those days?