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Counter-Terrorism Bill

First, I will come on to habeas corpus, as I promised the hon. Gentleman earlier. Secondly, we are subscribers to the European convention on human rights—and rightly so—and I propose a way in which we can lawfully do what the Government wish us to do in cases of major emergency. We have now had experience of the 28-day limit. I remind the House that 28 days was to be an exception, with the norm being 14 days and the issue subject to annual review. The DPP tells us that he has managed reasonably comfortably. Sue Hemming, the chief prosecutor, says that 28 days has proved to be ““sufficient””. We have already heard the figures for the alleged airline plot. Six were held beyond 14 days, with two charged just before 28 days and three released just before. The latter were not re-arrested or subject to control orders. The 28-day limit has been used only in two other cases. Up to now we have had no quantitative analysis of those cases, although the Opposition Front-Bench team produced some yesterday, which showed that there was little questioning of the suspects during that period. We have heard today that in fact the evidence to support a threshold charge was probably in place by 14 days for the two who were held up to the 28-day limit. However, until we receive the detail, we cannot be certain that that was the case. We must also take into account the possible urgency of the investigation. If we had had a 42-day limit, would those three people have been held for that time in the hope that some evidence might turn up, rather than for 28 days? The judicial safeguards proposed in the Bill are effectively the same as those for 28 days, save that the DPP and the chief constable have to authorise the application for the extension. The existing process is not fully judicial in accordance with article 5. The Government say that it involves a proper judicial hearing, but the case of Garcia Alva v. Germany in the European Court of Human Rights makes it clear that the criteria that the Government operate do not match those that the court expects. Even if there were no problem with the process for 14 days, or even 28 days, it is wrong to say that neither would there be a problem for 42. The longer the period of detention, the more stringent the procedural safeguards need to be. The Government say that there has been no challenge to the extension process in court on the grounds of incompatibility, but there was: the case of Naseel Hussain, which was one of the first 28-day cases. It failed on a Catch-22: the High Court said that it could not review the decision of the High Court judge to extend the period of detention. That ruling would also, in effect, exclude habeas corpus. That court case decided that the warrant of further detention was a judicial hearing for the purposes of article 5.4. If that is so, that is the judicial hearing that would be required by habeas corpus, so any application for habeas corpus would be struck out by the court as an abuse of process. New clause 35 is very important because it would overcome that particular problem.