---

Terrorism Bill

My Lords, I have discussed this in some detail. If you go through London borough by London borough to identify potential targets, your Lordships may be surprised to know that there is no London borough which does not have significant potential targets in its area—whether they are installations of military significance or of major importance to the infrastructure or to the functioning of the state, or whatever else. Every part of London could potentially be a target. If you add to that the present objective of the terrorism that we are having to deal with—to inflict mass casualties—you start to think about places of entertainment, major shopping centres, football stadia and so on. It becomes very difficult to say that there is no part of London which is immune. Whether the approach of saying, ““Let us designate the entire metropolitan police district rather than being a bit more selective”” or whether it is right that this should happen on a regular basis, it is not appropriate to comment. But I come to where I started when I intervened initially. Clearly, the police in using the powers under Section 44 must be very mindful of the danger of misuse and must avoid a situation in which we have recreated the sus laws, which many of us were involved in arguing against at the time. That is why I come back to the way in which the Act is used—the way in which guidance is given to individual police officers about the circumstances in which they should do this, the way in which the stops take place, and the nature of the interaction between the police stopping an individual or a car and what is said to the individual concerned.