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Police

Much of the ground has been covered in the substantive debates on the Terrorism Act 2006, so I shall be brief. My hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) said that he hoped that the code would be passed by the House, but I take a different view, not because of the contents of the code, but because the passage of the code is a condition present to the extension of the time period for detention from 14 days to 28 days. If one takes the view, as I do, that we should not extend the period of detention, one inevitably has to oppose the code, even if it is an improvement on the current position. My hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) was right to secure an undertaking from the Government that a code would be published and brought to the Floor of the House. He should be commended for that, but the essential point is whether we want to extend the period of detention. If the answer is no, the House should not pass the code. It is not necessary, desirable, just or proportionate to increase the period of detention from 14 days to 28 days. It also increases the risk of injustice. Anyone who practises in the criminal courts, as I do regularly, knows very well that the period of detention is a time of great stress for the detained person. If the period is an extended one, those detained are capable of wrongly incriminating themselves. We are embarking on a course of action that is likely to have that effect, and it is primarily for that reason that I opposed the extension of the detention period when we debated it last year. I have also expressed, on many occasions, my dissatisfaction with the process. Statutory instruments and codes are not amendable, but they can have a heavy impact on the rights of citizens. This code is an important document. It has been the subject of consultation, and one is grateful for that, but the House cannot amend it. We must either approve it whole or reject it. Matters of this kind should be amendable, which could be achieved by putting them into the schedule of the Bill. I regard this as a very unsatisfactory process. Matters of this kind should be dealt with under primary legislation, and when they are detailed and complex they should be included in schedules, so that they are amendable. I am aware—we have just heard so from the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Lynne Featherstone)—that there will be no support for voting to oppose the order. I therefore do not propose to divide the House, but I do protest against what we are doing and against the extension of the detention period. To anybody who says that the Conservative party signed up to 28 days, I admit that that is true, as my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs said in terms. But we did so because a 28-day period was a darn sight better than 90 or 60 days. It was the best deal that we could make. That is not an assertion of principle, but of pragmatic fact, and—speaking for myself—I am thoroughly against an extension of the detention period to 28 days.