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Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Bill

I respect the noble Lord’s experience. I am sure from my own experience, conversations and discussions with many people in different parts of the country and different communities when I was DPP that there is and was concern about the control order regime, as there was concern about the pre-charge detention regime. Frankly, noble Lords delude themselves if they seriously suggest that there was no broader concern about measures of this sort; I am sure that there was. Maybe we will not agree about this but, with great respect to noble Lords, I find that view somewhat complacent. When this subject is debated, everybody agrees that the most important result of any investigation into terrorism is prosecution. If one is considering protecting the public, they are best protected by people being sent to prison for long terms. This is something that we became and are extremely good at in this jurisdiction. We have extremely skilled and able specialist counterterrorism police and prosecutors, and an outstanding record of putting people in prison.