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National Security

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, who as Home Secretary led the way in setting up the office for security and counter-terrorism. We continue—I hope—the work that he started, and I praise him for what he did when he was Home Secretary. He is absolutely right about the two issues that he raises. The first is the importance of winning what I call the hearts and minds argument—some people may put it differently—integrating people into our community while making sure that the arguments against violence and extremism, which will isolate terrorists and potential terrorists, are held right across the country. The office within the OSCT to which he referred will be very important in that regard and it is already doing important work. As I said, we will build on that, in co-operation not only with other countries but also with many communities in this country. The debate about biometrics could itself lead to better consensus in the future. Once all the arguments are heard and debated, and the guarantees about the protection of civil liberties against arbitrariness are understood to be real protections, we may be able to move forward in that debate, too. I accept it is contentious but I agree with my right hon. Friend that we cannot have protection at our borders and e-borders without forms of identity management within our country.