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Terrorism Bill

My Lords, I, too, welcome the amendment and compliment those who drafted it. I do not want to be churlish about it but it shows the value of the way this House runs itself. The House was able to take all the time that was necessary to get this part of the Bill right. That is a tribute to the House and to the way it runs its affairs. I hope that will be a lesson to those people who want to alter the way this House runs itself and to impose on our deliberations the sort of restrictions that the House of Commons has seen fit to accept. I think that this could be a salutary lesson to the House not to change its procedures too quickly. What worries me is that the Bill came forward in the first place from the Home Office in a form that was completely unacceptable to virtually everybody in this country. There is a lesson there for the Home Office, too. When it is framing legislation that will have a possible effect on individual people of all sorts throughout this country, it should be ultra-careful. Ministers in that department should also be extra careful in agreeing to allow such legislation to come forward. This has been a good experience for the House of Lords—for Ministers, for noble Lords on the Front Bench and, indeed, for the whole House—in the way in which it has been able to improve the Bill. I sincerely hope that the Commons will not try to alter the Bill when it goes back, but I feel sure that Ministers will not allow that to happen.