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Home Affairs and Justice

When I appeared before the Home Affairs Committee, I spent a considerable time exemplifying my argument and providing evidence to my hon. Friend and others that there is a trend of growing complexity in the material gathered, the international links and the scale of the investigations, which I think—as do others, as I have identified today—provides a strong argument that there is likely to be a requirement for a period beyond 28 days. My hon. Friend and other Members appear to be asking me to put us in a position where the evidence we provide is the inability of the police to bring a charge against a suspected terrorist because they run up against the buffers of time—[Interruption.] My hon. Friend says, ““Exactly””, but I do not want to be in a position where a terrorist suspect is held up to the limit of the existing provisions, is released because there has been insufficient time to build a case and then goes on to perpetrate a terrorist act. That is the question that all Members must answer. If such a case arose, Members and the general public would rightly ask why the individual had been released, why we had not studied the trend of terrorist activity and investigations, and why we had not acted to provide greater investigatory powers when we could still have done so. That is the first question that Members have a responsibility to answer.