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Counter-Terrorism Bill

The hon. Gentleman raises an important point, and I will try to give him the most serious answer I can—[Interruption.]—the one that the hon. Gentleman's question deserves, namely, yes. There are two categories of circumstance with regard to a threat to the state that the Government might face. One is a situation that obviously worries the Home Secretary, where perhaps 25 people are arrested and we are left with one, two or three at the end for whom we do not quite have enough evidence. We can deal with that, as was pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, East (Dr. Lewis), by a variety of other mechanisms, including—[Interruption.] Surveillance, I say to the security Minister—I think that is who he is. It certainly can be dealt with that way, but it can also be dealt with by the threshold test for prosecution—the reasonable suspicion test. The other circumstance is where there are a vast number of attacks on the state at the same time. The security Minister—the Minister for Security, Counter-Terrorism, Crime and Policing—referred to it as the three 9/11s test. Under those circumstances, we would be overwhelmed, and we would need a definition of a state of emergency. This is what the Government object to. The matter is important because full judicial review can apply a test as to whether a state of emergency applies, in a way we cannot as individuals discussing the matter in the House of Commons. That is the point of distinction, which is why we offered the Home Secretary very early on in the process a modification to get ““CCA plus””, as it was known in the jargon at the time, if she wanted it. We were willing to do that.