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Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005 (Continuance in Force of Sections 1 to 9) Order 2010

My Lords, first, I thank all noble Lords for their contributions to this debate. The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, was absolutely right: when I came into post some two and a half years ago I did not like control orders at all, for some of the reasons that noble Lords have given. I was very concerned about them. I wanted to be absolutely sure that they were needed because they were not an attractive option to me. I sent the Security Service, SO15 and the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism away to look at this in great detail to make me believe that they were right. I thought that they would not be able to prove it. They came back to me, and it took them some months. It was quite clear at the end of that that the costs—not just money costs, but resource costs—were going to be dramatically higher to give the same surety of security. Indeed, it was probably almost impossible to give that surety of security in a number of cases. Therefore, I reluctantly accepted that these orders should continue. What do I mean by the surety and the ability to ensure that these people could not be engaged in terrorism? Reference has been made to people being moved from where they live. Sometimes it is difficult to ensure that someone living in a very close housing estate in Hackney—I know those places well as I live in Hackney—has no connection or connectivity with people who we know are involved with terrorism, either through deep intelligence or because they have been prosecuted, have been inside, come out again and then we have seen them re-engage. I think that the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, mentioned people being sent to Siberia. Certainly, we have preferred not to leave some people in Bethnal Green, Hackney or somewhere like that and we have sent them to Gloucestershire. That is not quite as bad as Siberia, although I know that Gloucestershire can be quite bad sometimes. It means that one is able to monitor them a lot more carefully. What are we trying to do with these people? We are trying to make our nation safer. We do not pluck these 11 people from the top of a bus somewhere; we have reason to have these 11 people there. We believe that they are involved in terrorism. Those things are sometimes very difficult to disclose. The noble Baroness asked who looked at the detail of each of these cases. I certainly sit down and look at the proposal for a control order. Light touch was mentioned. I do not particularly like some of the light-touch measures because I believe that the only people who should be subject to control orders are those who pose a real and serious danger. I sit and go through the orders. There is normally a supporting document much bigger than the one before me of Security Service intelligence, SIS and other intelligence, which I go through. It takes a long time and I put a lot of effort into doing that. I then forward it to the Home Secretary, who I am sure puts just as much effort into it. It is an exhaustive look. I had a full head of dark hair and no bags under my eyes when I started, but these things take a lot of effort, so we do take them extremely seriously. As I say, these cases are reviewed properly. It is not a question purely of money costs but also of resource capability. Although we have doubled the size of the Security Service and increased the size of SO15 by 70 per cent, we are still quite tight on resources. There are a lot of plots and concerns, and to cover them properly is extremely difficult. That is an important issue. As I say, we do not pluck these 11 people off the top of a bus. We do not say, "Let us pick those up and have a look at them". These are people about whom we have serious concerns and an awful lot of intelligence. But as we know, intelligence is not evidence. It is not fair to say that we then just apply things to them. A judge has to agree that there is reasonable suspicion of involvement in terrorism-related activity, and that the order and its constituent obligations are necessary. A judge looks at this, so as well as me looking at it and the Home Secretary looking at it, a judge looks at all this detail as well. A number of speakers mentioned people absconding. I think that the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, mentioned someone who had absconded and said that someone had made a statement some time ago about him no longer being a threat. I do not know about that. All I would say is that since I came into post not a single person has absconded.