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Terrorism Bill

I am one who did not intend to speak in this debate, but I have felt moved to do so by some of the contributions. I take a slightly different line. My answer to the questions would be that 60 people have been killed by suicide bombers, something that we have never encountered previously in this country. I feel the Committee has great merits in mounting a debate of this nature. We bring to the fore our great experience, even more so than one finds at the other end of the Palace. To a degree, we also expose our weakness that we are not always up to date with all that is happening. No one in this House, other than Ministers or those who recently were Ministers, has had experience of dealing with suicide bombers. I am confused about whether I should go for 28 days, 60 days or 90 days. I suspect that I reflect the views of many parliamentarians. When I am in difficulties I look to the parliamentary system to assist me. There is one area about which I criticise the Government. The bombings were in July, and we had much talk about the likely new legislation that is needed. From July until the legislation arrived in the Commons there was time to set up proper pre-legislative scrutiny involving all parties, when evidence could have been taken from those with the facts, when representatives of the police could have come before us, and when we could have heard from people at GCHQ who spend their lives dealing with issues of this nature. I confess that I am absolutely staggered to hear that a former Attorney-General of this country had never been into GCHQ to understand the work undertaken there. It really is quite scandalous to hear that in quite recent years Ministers with positions of power and responsibility for security did not know about that. We have to look at the mechanisms whereby we endeavour to deal with issues of this nature. I put to the Minister a point that I have raised within the confines of Labour Peer debates. Why have we not had proper pre-legislative scrutiny? Can we have an assurance that when we deal with issues of this significance in the future we will not have to wait for the Home Affairs Committee, which is now taking detailed evidence from witnesses with appropriate current experience, to deal with these problems? I want to know what the Government will do with the report of the Home Affairs Select Committee when it is produced in due course. I am unsure of where I stand. When in doubt I tend, like the man or woman in the street, who do not have direct representation here, to support the establishment and the authorities. On balance, I tend, even though the police make mistakes, to give them the benefit of the doubt and I will go with them. In the main, I also go with the judiciary and I go with what comes out of Whitehall. From time to time one has bad experiences which worries one, but none the less one comes back to fundamentals. Therefore, had I been at voting at the other end, I would have gone for 90 days. If we have a vote here, I will go for 90 days, because I believe that that reflects the view of the bulk of people in the country. We should not ignore that. We ignore that at our peril, as all politicians do. I would then go for 60 days and, if we do not win on 60 days, we will be left with 28 days. I worry about when someone from the Muslim community—who the Muslim community would not wish to support—is taken in but is released on the 29th day and a bomb goes off somewhere. That is what I worry about. We should be concerned about that because it is what concerns the great British public. My questions are about process and the way that we legislate. Is this the right way to do it? I do not believe that it is. I believe that we should be looking for better ways in future. I remind my friends on the Liberal Democrat and Opposition Benches that in 2000 they opposed the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, in which Charles Clarke sought authority to intercept, and we now discover that it is through intercept that we have our greatest access to the information that we need to trace these terrorists. Members of the Committee should remember that. It is the kind of issue that I have in the back of my mind when, with the limited information I have, I make a judgment on which way to vote on an issue such as this.