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Counter-Terrorism Bill

I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman was not present for the Second Reading debate, as I remember that another Labour Member made exactly the same challenge. I made my position very clear then. At the moment, I am very happy with a period of 28 days. We should stick with that period because that is what we voted for, but we need to regard it as an emergency measure and keep it under constant review—especially given the lack of evidence that even 28 days is necessary. The hon. Gentleman asks about alternatives to the knee-jerk, Kafkaesque extension of detention without charge that is being proposed, but I believe that all the alternatives are much to be preferred. The Bill allows questioning to continue after charge, and we welcome that. We should also allow intercept evidence, as is the case in Australia and the United States. The Committee considering the Bill took evidence from Sir Ken Macdonald, the Director of Public Prosecutions, who said that his counterparts in the countries that I have named found our refusal to use intercept evidence astonishing. Most importantly of all, Sir Ken has described the considerable flexibility that the Crown Prosecution Service has to bring charges, which it can do even if it is felt at the time that the chances of a successful conviction are less than 50 per cent.—the normal test. In fact—this is crucial—Sir Ken pointed out that the CPS had had a 92 per cent success rate with terrorist convictions since the beginning of last year. As a result, he is on record as saying that the new powers are unnecessary. That is significant precisely because, if it is possible to secure a 92 per cent. conviction rate in cases brought after terrorist events have happened, as has been the case over the past two years, Sir Ken has the flexibility to achieve even more success should he decide to bring charges before a terrorist event occurs. Detention without charge for terrorist suspects has already risen from seven days to 14 days and then 28 days, just since 1997. The sad truth is that Ministers are using this simple number as a proxy to persuade the public that the Government are tough on terror. In fact, such blunt instruments run the substantial risk of alienating the communities that we need to have on board if we are to fight terror effectively.