Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Bill

Lord Gilbert Excerpts

Wednesday 5th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Macdonald of River Glaven]

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.

[Lord Gilbert]

We all speak from our own experience; the noble Lord moves in his circles and I moved in mine. I have similar experience to my noble friend Lord Reid, having represented a Labour constituency for 27 years. The attitude there was one of concern over control orders; the noble Lord is absolutely right. The attitude was that they should be tightened up: “Lock them up and throw the key away”.

[Lord Macdonald of River Glaven]

The noble Lord has his experience and I am grateful to him for sharing it with us. I find it very helpful and thank him. Most of the people I spoke to during those years wanted to see these men and women in prison for long terms. That is the answer and the way to protect the public. Find the evidence, prosecute these people and lock them up. The gravest disadvantage of the control order regime was that it presented an obstacle to that in the cases of those individuals who were subject to control orders. That is the purpose of a scheme that would link restrictions to criminal investigations that are more likely to result in criminal prosecutions and convictions.