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Home Affairs and Justice

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Sedgefield (Phil Wilson). I am sure that all the emotions that he has expressed could be reflected by all of us in our constituencies, but perhaps in slightly different ways. I want to talk exclusively about the Government's proposals to increase the maximum period that terrorist suspects can be held from 28 days to 56 days or beyond. May I start by asking the Minister exactly what has changed since we went through this difficult, painful and unnecessary process 18 months or two years or so ago, when the Government, apparently supported by elements of the police force and the security services, were saying that we needed to hold terrorist suspects for 90 days, rather than for the 56 days that is now being discussed? Has the threat changed? Has it diminished? Are we likely to be investigating less complex cases in future? I do not think so. When I listen to the head of MI5, the Home Secretary or the Government generally, or to my rhetoric, it is clear to me that the threat is just as complex. It is thus hard to understand why the Government can reject accusations that this is a political issue rather than one that is bent upon the protection of this country. The issues of plea bargaining, post-charge questioning, and the use of holding charges and intercept evidence have arisen. I declare an interest, because I have been involved in all of those activities practically in fighting the IRA, albeit a few years ago. I understand all of these matters and have employed them. But none of them is particularly significant. I respect the words of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) about the use of intercept evidence, but if one talks to practitioners about any of those measures, they will say that they are certainly useful, but they are not a silver bullet that can put terrorists away without further reference. If such evidence becomes suddenly admissible in court, it will not mean that charges and accusations can be cleared up with the snap of the fingers. They are useful tools, but they are not the pre-eminently important issue with which we are dealing. I therefore ask the House not to be distracted. Whatever the Government say—I am totally on side in trying to reach some consensus on this difficult subject—about post-charge questioning and the like, they are but placebos when compared with the main issue of the extension from 28 days to 56 or beyond. I have been involved at the sharp end of a similar sort of problem and I have railed against the windbags, the bureaucrats and the politicians—those who do not daily face criminals and terrorists or deal with the problems that arise from their activities. It is hard for police officers and members of the security services to understand why a bunch of card-carrying civilians do not say, ““Yes, you can have whatever powers you need. If you say you need them, we will grant them, because the one enduring liberty that stands above everything else is the ability to live in peace and without threat.”” It is therefore hard to understand why Parliament stands in the way of granting those powers. I can sympathise, and even empathise, with the stand that many in the police are taking. I respect the fact that the Government have advanced some sensible solutions for judicial review for those being held without charge every seven days, and other forms of review, including debate in Parliament, of those being held for longer periods. That is sensible, liberal and laudable. Any of those solutions should work, but if we look at the lessons of history, we will see that they will not work. Whatever we do and whatever we say, if we extend the period of detention before charge, our enemies—wrongly, in my view—will label it internment. Would it be internment? Would it bear any resemblance to what went on during the war years, when Italians and Germans were held? Would it bear any resemblance to what I saw in the 1970s in Northern Ireland, when it was predominantly Catholics who were held? Of course not. It bears no resemblance whatever. But would that stop our enemies claiming that it was internment? Absolutely not. If we hand that weapon to Islamist fundamentalists, those who would damage this state not just physically, but morally and politically, we would do ourselves a grave disservice. We would immediately lay ourselves open to further alienating the community from which the majority—although not all—of the problem stems. It is crucially important that the British Muslim community is kept on side in its entirety—or as close to its entirety as we can get. If we consider what happened in the 1970s in Northern Ireland, we see that the one word ““internment”” would—I believe, having listened to the evidence given to the Home Affairs Committee—alienate good, honest, loyal, properly religious and truthful Muslims. Secondly, and probably even more damagingly, anything we do to damage the flow of intelligence from the relevant communities will turn off our only important weapon in fighting the people whom I am talking about. We can rely on information, observation and analysis, but none of that equates to proper, hard intelligence. Believe me, anything that we do that damages our touts, informers or resources, or that alienates people who are giving information, will damage the fight against terror. My next point harks back to what I saw being done in Northern Ireland. The more we take technically innocent people and allow them to be locked up for up to, let us say, 55 days before being released without charge, the more opportunities we will give our enemies to contort the truth, exercise black propaganda against us and twist facts. There is plenty of precedent for that sort of thing; some would say that a number of incidents from the past two years already fall into that category. Once such things happen, those individuals who have been held without charge for that lengthy period will become recruiting magnets for Islamist fundamentalists and totems for radicalisation, just as the IRA used its ex-internees for such purposes in the 1970s in Northern Ireland. My message is simple. I understand why we want to do such things. I understand any policeman or security service person who says that he or she needs such powers, and I empathise with them. However, we must learn the lessons of history. Once we are labelled yet again as a nation that intends to intern its people and as an illiberal tyrannical society and not a democracy, the terrorists whom we are trying to defeat will have dented us—and dented us badly.