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Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism

The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point. This continued proscription has been at the bidding and request—the demand—of the Tehran regime, without any evidence having been produced to justify it. That is not my view, but that of POAC, of the High Court and of the Court of Appeal. After all, the POAC decision states that"““the only belief that a reasonable decision maker could have honestly entertained, whether as at September 2006 or thereafter, is that the PMOI no longer satisfies any of the criteria necessary for the maintenance of their proscription.””" That is the position. I have already drawn the House's attention to the fact that during both the POAC hearing and the Court of Appeal deliberations, there were days of closed session when special advocates were appointed to consider the secret evidence produced by the British Government. The Lord Chief Justice spent that time considering the documents and listening to the case from the Government's special counsel and concluded that that had only served to reinforce his view that the Secretary of State had acted in a ““perverse”” manner. I asked a lawyer what that signified. He said, ““Saying that people are 'perverse' is the nearest the Lord Chief Justice comes to being rude.”” Such was the uniqueness of the occasion. I also want to pick up on the interesting intervention made by my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, South (Mike Gapes), who chairs the Foreign Affairs Committee. He said that when he went to Iran, he saw how the regime was obsessed by the PMOI and related organisations. I will be signalling to Tehran tonight that the British House of Commons unanimously passed an order lifting the PMOI from proscription. There will not be a Division; it will be a unanimous decision in the House of Commons. I welcome that, but it needs to be reiterated. The United Kingdom embassy in Tehran also has to note that that will be the position tonight after we have concluded our deliberations.