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National Security

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness the Leader of the House for repeating that Statement. There was a great deal in it—it was a long Statement, and understandably so—and it will need time for reflection. This is, of course, an area where we will work together, as my right honourable friend Mr Cameron indicated in another place. If the noble Baroness will permit me, I must say one thing. There was a measured tone to the Statement which differed from some of the more hysterical pronouncements that we have become used to over recent years. However, I am afraid that, outside Parliament, we have seen some of the old spin—““Prime Minister challenges opposition parties to stand up against terror””, and so on. Spin of that kind helps no one because it undermines the consensus that the noble Baroness and the Prime Minister say they are trying to create and it belittles the difficult judgments that lie behind all this as to the balance between our ancient liberties and the challenge of terrorism. The debates in which this House perhaps above all others has distinguished itself are not about will but about method; they are not about party politics but about what is right and what is most effective. I hope that the noble Baroness will use her influence to rein the spin doctors in. The noble Baroness is right to say that we face exceptional challenge and new methods of attack but, equally, this fine old country has faced a few challenges along the way, and we have seen them off without compromising our essential freedoms, which were so hard won and defended at a cost far greater than any we have seen in recent years. It is easy to lose a freedom. Once lost, it is no longer a birthright and its return becomes a concession from the state. That is to change fundamentally the whole nature of British liberty, which is not enshrined in conventions and rights but in the rule of law and parliamentary constitutional government. I have no doubt that this House will approach these questions with that in mind, and it will be right to do so. The security services, the police and, indeed, courageous members of the public have distinguished themselves in recent weeks in thwarting terror. The whole House will thank them for that. I have no doubt that they will be called on again, and we welcome the additional resources that have been announced today. However, can the noble Baroness confirm that funding for Special Branch, which carries out much vital surveillance work around the country, will be included in that budget? It urgently needs to expand. To defeat terrorism will require tough, consistent and rigorous action at every level. It will need intelligence, and I very much welcome the revised arrangements for the Joint Intelligence Committee. It will need to tackle extremism and the preachers of extremism. We will look carefully at the ideas in the Statement, but we need to be firm; far firmer than we were for far too long in dealing with the Abu Hamzas of this world. It will need effective policing, including at our borders. We welcome the apparent acceptance by the Government of the idea being put forward by our party of a unified border police. Perhaps the noble Baroness will therefore explain why the Government have spent years resisting and rubbishing that idea. How many illegal immigrants, and among them how many potential terrorists, have got in under the wire while the Government were playing nimby politics over effective control of our borders? Can the noble Baroness tell us the Government’s current estimate of the number of those in this country without lawful authority, the number of former foreign criminals released into the community who have not yet been traced, and the number of those under control orders currently on the run? Will the Government draw on the work of the Conservative Party’s commission under the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, to prepare and implement that policy? It will not have escaped the notice of the noble Baroness that we have the UK Borders Bill before this House at the moment. Now that the Government have dropped their opposition, will they consider recommitting the Bill in the autumn to enable the creation of the border police on the fastest possible timescale? I have not been able to consult my colleagues in another place but, if it is practical and if the Government really mean what they said, we in this place would be ready to discuss in the usual channels any reasonable measure, including carry-over, to enable this important provision to be made. We welcome the fact that, on intercept evidence, the Prime Minister has accepted another of our proposals, for a Privy Council committee. Will the Government legislate immediately if the committee finds a way of lifting the ban on the use of this vital evidence in court? The noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, has played a major part in this argument. I hope that he, too, will be consulted in this review. Again, however, why did the Government resist this proposal for so long? We cannot agree on the question of ID cards. This House laboured hard to try to inject some sense into this debate. It is immensely disappointing that the new Prime Minister is not prepared to think over this again. The costs are spiralling; its effectiveness is questioned; and, behind the scenes, a giant surveillance apparat is being planned and created, quite unprecedented in the free world. Surely the money could be better used to bolster security and public safety elsewhere. On ID cards as on money laundering, child protection and so much else, the Government are obsessed with giant computer projects, placing every citizen under surveillance and imposing a presumption of potential guilt that is as corrosive of trust as it is of liberty. They are building giant haystacks in which the lethal needles go unnoticed. No evidence has ever been presented that ID cards would have prevented any of the major outrages we have seen. Use of such instruments needs to be far more focused, and we will look at the measures on people coming to this country, but why do they apply only to those here over six months? Surely an act of terror can be planned and perpetrated in less than six months. We will also explore carefully what is proposed on controls on terror suspects travelling abroad. The ID card system makes travel abroad for UK citizens conditional upon submitting to permanent domestic surveillance. Surely the priority is to target resources on the suspect and suspect organisations. When will Hizb ut-Tahrir be banned? We agree very much with the need to win hearts and minds. Not enough has been done to integrate new arrivals to our country. Our country, our history, our language, our culture, our freedoms become their treasure, too, and the birthright of their children. We must sweep away zany ideas in education that have diminished teaching of our national traditions. We might begin by keeping Churchill in the history curriculum. He fought for the freedom of every religion, race and land, and people of every religion, race and land fought alongside him. I welcome the decision to finally take up our proposal to allow the questioning of a suspect after they have been charged. Is this not the most important way of ensuring that the police can get their job done without introducing what could in time start to look like executive internment? Certainly we have to frame carefully the rules on the use of this power so that it is not abused, but should we not consider the effectiveness and value of this and other instruments before returning to the totemic question of 28 days? We will look at these consultation papers carefully, but both Houses struck a difficult compromise only two years ago. What has changed since last December, when the then Home Secretary, the then Attorney-General and the Lord Chancellor all agreed that fresh evidence was needed before any further change could be justified? Should not this House ask that Ministers prove that all existing laws are being used before they reach for new legislation? After all, it was a Victorian statute that helped to stop Abu Hamza. Our liberties are precious, and one of the greatest ironies of recent years is that some of them are being eroded because of the operation of the Human Rights Act. Will the noble Baroness admit that this Act is frustrating our fight against terror and will she undertake to include reform of that, too, in the ambit of any cross-party discussions? Security is necessary, but liberty makes us the country we are. If we erode that, no one wins but the terrorists who are our enemies. That is the difficult balance we must strike—where the role of Parliament, properly, is to be sceptical; and the role of government is not to chide Parliament for doing its job, but to heed its occasional wisdom.