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Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism

I made that point at the time, and it does concern me. In debating such matters, we have to rely a great deal on trust, which is often well placed in Ministers and the advice that they receive from the security services. Nevertheless, we have to decide as a House whether to agree to the orders, and we should do so on the basis of the maximum information available. I want to put one minor point to the Minister. The separate negative order that has been laid could have been included with the affirmative order to give the entire House the opportunity of agreeing to it. That would have meant that some of the exchanges in which the Minister has engaged with hon. Members would have been in order rather than almost out of order, as they must have been. When we debate such matters, we often lack the evidence that the Minister has in his possession. That is inevitable. The House cannot know about all the advice that has been received because some of it will be from our security services and police and from foreign sources, and it would not be appropriate to divulge all that information in the public domain. However, we are entitled to know about the levels of activity of such organisations in the United Kingdom so that we can make a judgment about the danger to British citizens and British interests elsewhere. We should be told whether any of the orders have been placed at the request of another Government. I fear that the Government are in danger of putting themselves in a difficult diplomatic position whereby they accede to requests for proscription from some countries but not from others. It becomes ever more difficult not to accede to such a request, even if there is a suspicion that it is less well founded, and that puts diplomatic pressure on the Government. It should be made clear to the House where there has been a request from an overseas Government and the extent to which that has been supported by British intelligence-gathering organisations in the field that can corroborate the view of that Government.