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Counter-Terrorism Bill

Many hon. Members have made the point that a number of the protections offered alongside the extended power of detention do not add up to very much. That is true—they add up to less than the sum of their supposed parts. This chicane of hollow protections brings a new dimension to the notion of chicanery. In relation to the Secretary of State's power to activate the extended detention provisions and the question of independent legal advice, proposed subsection (1) of new clause 32 would require the Home Secretary to get legal advice only ““as to whether”” she ““can properly be satisfied””. It does not provide that she should be properly satisfied, referring only to ““whether”” she is. The Home Secretary is not obliged to follow that legal advice. Proposed subsection (6) sets out the duty to publish the full legal advice, but subsection (7) completely ousts that duty if the Secretary of State believes that such publication would not be in ““the public interest””. If the independent legal adviser does not agree to the edited version that the Secretary of State wants, none of the advice has to be published. So much for that protection. What of this House acting in the role of a grand jury? It will do so in circumstances that will at least be triggered by a specific case, although the effects of the extension will not then be case-specific, as they might affect everyone already detained and anyone subsequently detained within that period. That is what the House will be doing. We could be brought back during a recess—the Bill provides for a recall of Parliament—yet people are saying that we should deal with these matters only in a calm and reasonable atmosphere, not in reaction to the heat of situations. This could even happen during an election campaign. We saw bombs in Madrid during an election campaign and people know about the political fallout there; they know that there were doubts about how the Government handled, played with and interpreted that situation at the time, and the issues ricocheted through the body politic. We should think about the situation here if we vote for this Bill and the new clauses. We could be creating a situation in a which a terrorist group can deliberately contrive that its plot comes to the proper notice of the police and security services during an election. Hon. Members will be called to this place; some will have seen constituents arrested, and there will be others whose constituents could be affected by the new powers that had been triggered. Their communities will say, ““What are you doing for us? We are told that there is significant parliamentary scrutiny and we have been put into the hands of MPs. You stand up and fight for us, and assert our rights.”” If they do not do that, what will happen? That could happen close to an election or during one—and we do not expect it to ricochet in a dangerous way through the electoral politics of different constituencies? Different MPs could be caught. An MP in one constituency might say to his constituents, ““Sorry, I am a Government MP and I have to go by what the Home Secretary says. I have every sympathy with you, but there is nothing I can do or say.”” Another MP might say, ““Well, I opposed that legislation and I will fight it now that it has been activated.”” In what position does that leave individual MPs? It leaves them in a completely invidious situation that no legislator, no public representative and no candidate should ever be in. Yet if we allow this Bill to go through, we will be inviting that sort of dangerous scenario, because the measures provide for the recall of Parliament during an election campaign. There is another respect in which the protection is hollow. We are told that the courts will be involved, and some hon. Members have assured us that there will be adversarial proceedings in the courts. Yes, there will be adversarial representatives, but there will not be any evidence. What is proposed is pre-charge detention before evidence is presented. The courts have never refused an extension of detention so far; never ever have they done so, and how, essentially, could they? This chicane of hollow protections adds up to very little. The protections are not only dubious, but dangerous. The thrust of these Government provisions is dangerous. They create a situation that will lead to the exercise of undue powers in unseemly and improperly controlled ways. On detention of up to 42 days, we have seen in the past how people have confessed to all sorts of things that they did not do even with seven-day detention. We should think of the Guilford Four and then the Maguires, who were brought in on the basis of what members of the Guildford Four had said. They were not even brought in to be questioned originally and they did not confess. What others were forced to say about them led to their being brought in. In the case of 42-day detention, will not people not only be in danger of saying all sorts of things about themselves to line themselves up for charging, but be in a position to say all sorts of things about others, in a context where this power will be used in all sorts of other ways? This power will end up, in practice, taking on all sorts of gross and ugly proportions that its supporters underestimate. They seem to think that it will be used in very limited ways, that it has only a limited trigger and that it has only limited application. That is not what the Bill says. We will see communities being fundamentally alienated from the state. We have had chief constables quoted at us the last couple of days. Let us just think what good community constables will say when this power is activated and a portcullis comes down between them and the communities that they have been working with, building contact and confidence. They will find themselves compromised and ashamed simply because, as police officers, they are arms of the state that has behaved in this gross way, leaving people not only resenting what has happened to some, but fearing what will happen to others. We have seen how counter-terrorism powers have been counter-productive in the past. That is the experience of Northern Ireland. It is not just internment; it is the litany of counter-terrorism measures that created that culture of alienation, the propaganda weapons and real new and additional victims. I warn the Government and those who would support them in the madness that is in this Bill: do not feed what you want to fight and do not destroy what this House ought to defend.