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

My Lords, in moving this amendment, I perhaps should inform the House that I will also be calling a Division. I have nothing whatever to add on the first part of my amendment, which has been covered earlier in the debate. But I should like to add a few words on why I am calling on the Government, whoever they may prove to be, to limit control orders to one year without renewal. In his third report, the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, pointed out that control orders were never intended to continue indefinitely. He recommended that they could and should be limited to a period of two years. His reason was that, after two years, the controlee was unlikely to be of much use to his fellow terrorists. The noble Lord, Lord Carlile, as we have learnt this evening, is—if I may use a nautical metaphor—the sheet anchor of the Government’s case; yet the Government rejected altogether his very sensible suggestion without giving any reason. I agree with the reasoning of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, on that—if not on everything else—and I suggest that it would apply equally to my amendment, which proposes that a controlee should not be kept for more than one year as a maximum. If the person has been out of circulation for that long, he will be of very little use to his fellow terrorists. That brings me to the stance of the Official Opposition. I can understand why they abstained on the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, although I greatly wish that they had not. However, what is their difficulty with my amendment? They must surely regret, as I do, that the Government have not done more in the past five years to find a substitute for control orders. Why do they now not stand up and say so? I remind the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones, that her predecessor said as long ago as 24 February 2007 that the Conservative Party would vote against any subsequent renewal of the control order legislation—that is, in 2008 and subsequent years—yet they have not done so. It is now 2010, and I suggest that it is high time that they put into practice, in relation at least to my amendment tonight, what they have refused to do in the past two years. I beg to move.