Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 29th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield (CB)]

My Lords, to understand a nation and its people, you need a feel for the inner bundle of practices, characteristics and states of mind that create the image that a country carries of itself, which in turn shapes the way that others see it. For those of us fortunate enough to have been nurtured within the bounds of our cherished archipelago in the cold northern seas, the rule of law has a fair claim to be the most lustrous of our values, almost talismanic in its properties, so anything that threatens, weakens or tarnishes our crucial defining value, the inspirational principle for governing and living well together, is a first-order matter. I regret to say that the Bill before us falls into that category.

This is a moment of immense significance for Parliament, the judiciary, our people and the very quality of our democracy. In no way do I diminish the electric charge of the question that uncontrolled immigration generates, but I fear that the Government have become fixated on their talisman, the Rwanda policy, which Ministers claim will break the economic model of the cruel, evil, heartless people who put the boats and their desperate passengers to sea off the beaches of northern France. For what it is worth, my own view is that it cannot be beyond the capability of Whitehall to work up a scheme for the swift dispatch of asylum claims, with safe and humane shelter provided in the UK for claimants while they await the results of their applications.

By rushing this emergency legislation through Parliament with the intention of getting the deportation flights to Kigali under way by late spring, the Government have already secured for themselves a special place in British political history. The day may not be far off when the Rwanda Bill, having cleared all its parliamentary stages, will be forwarded from the Cabinet Office to Buckingham Palace to receive Royal Assent. In the few minutes that it takes to pass down The Mall and across the tip of St James’s Park on its return journey to Whitehall, our country will change, for the Government will have removed us from the list of rule-of-law nations. We shall be living in a different land, breathing different air in a significantly diminished kingdom. Is that what any of us really wants?

Investigatory Powers Bill

Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my membership of the Royal United Services Institute’s independent surveillance review, whose report A Democratic Licence to Operate was published last year. Open societies possess huge, enduring and, we hope, ultimately prevailing advantages over closed ones, yet open societies throw up special torments of their own—what one might call duelling desirables. This Bill lies classically in that territory, because it attempts to reconcile two duties to protect; the protection of our people from those who wish them and their institutions harm, and the protection of our people against state power, which involves a loss of liberty that trenches on the private conduct of their lives. John Stuart Mill caught this perpetual dilemma in the mid-19th century in his celebrated work On Liberty, when he wrote,

“the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection”.

More recently, my colleague on the RUSI review, Sir David Omand, said:

“Without security you cannot protect human rights”,

a point made by other noble Lords during the course of this debate.

There is a third element; the technical race between the protectors and the would-be harmers, the collection of pre-emptive intelligence which, in its modern form, has been with us since the early months of the Great War. I have with me a copy of the single-page, handwritten minute penned by the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, and countersigned by Jackie Fisher, the First Sea Lord, on 8 November 1914, instructing that all the decoded signals intercepts of the Imperial German Navy, current and past, should be kept in a locked box, in Churchill’s words,

“in order to penetrate the German mind”.

To this day, GCHQ regards this little slip of paper as its founding document, which led, in both world wars, to a British signals intelligence capacity on an industrial scale which was crucial to the outcomes to both conflicts.

I am, of course, aware that total wars create different conditions from the spectrum of state and the multiplicity of non-state threats we face today in our own age of anxiety. The RUSI panel was acutely aware of this and of the prospect of leaping technologies, to which I referred a moment ago. As a result, we came up with 10 tests, some of which the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, mentioned earlier, which should be applied in open societies whenever the John Stuart Mill dilemma presents itself anew. I deeply hope that the Minister will be able to accept those 10 tests this evening on behalf of the Government. They are, very briefly, as follows. The first is:

“Rule of law: All intrusion into privacy must be in accordance with law through processes that can be meaningfully assessed against clear and open legislation, and only for purposes laid down by law”.

That is our business this evening. Secondly, there is necessity and, thirdly, proportionality. Fourthly:

“Restraint: It should never become routine for the state to intrude into the lives”,

of the Queen’s subjects. The state must always and everywhere be a reluctant intruder. Fifthly, there must be effective oversight, with arrangements for the independent investigation of complaints. Sixthly, there must be a “recognition of necessary secrecy”. The secret state should be treated as a needed protector of the open society:

“It cannot be more than minimally transparent”,

to be effective, but it must be accountable to Parliament. Seventhly, the necessary secrecy, however, must be kept to the absolute minimum. Eighthly, transparency: how the law applies to the citizen must be clear and comprehensible. Ninthly, this presupposes legislative clarity, which, of course, is part of our job. Finally, UK Government policy on intrusion should as far as possible be “harmonised” with that of other “like-minded” open societies.

In my judgment, the Bill genuinely seeks to meet those tests, but I shall be listening very carefully to the arguments, especially on legal professional privilege. I take very seriously what other noble Lords have said, and what the Law Society and other liberty and justice-related bodies have said about the crucial ability of individuals to consult their legal advisers in confidence. As a former journalist, I shall take an interest in the degree to which journalists and the confidentiality of their sources are drawn into the Bill.

When I was operational, in the old days of the very old technology—just telephone tapping and a leak inquiry—I used to quite enjoy it, as long as I knew there was a leak inquiry, which I often did. I would plug the phone in on Whit Mondays to “Dial-A-Recipe” or the Test score, just to throw them off the scent. It was a trivial, adolescent thing to do, but those were the days of simplicity, when such things were possible.

The secret parts of the state and the law enforcement agencies wish for and need a new licence to operate in a world of shifting perils and surging technologies. Let us craft one that reconciles as closely as any Parliament can the two duties to protect with which an open society must always wrestle, because only Parliament can set the dials for the work of our secret services.

Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill

Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield Excerpts

Wednesday 28th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Manningham-Buller (CB)]

My Lords, I start by declaring an interest as the chair of the Court and Council of Imperial College and by agreeing with the very clear concerns expressed by my noble friend Lord Pannick about this whole area. The widening circles of support for this pernicious ideology are a concern for us all. I also pick up the question put by the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, to my noble friend Lord Evans of Weardale, in his absence, about there being many routes to terrorism. I am out of date on this subject, but there is no one, single route by which a young man or woman turns up as a terrorist—there are many different routes.

I therefore fully understand the Government’s concern in this area and their wish to address it. However, I also support the very powerful remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald of River Glaven, with which I agree. I am afraid that it is a profound irony that we are seeking to protect our values against this pernicious ideology by trying to bar views that are described, too vaguely, as “non-violent” extremist but which fall short of incitement to violence or to racial or ethnic hatred—which is already forbidden by law—or indeed of the other legislative constraints on universities, which other Members of the Committee have mentioned. This is potentially in conflict with the university’s existing obligations to protect free speech, something we are all concerned about. The voicing of these opinions, some of which have been mentioned, such as those against the rule of law, democracy, civil society, women’s rights and so on, is of course often offensive and insulting to people. But we have been reminded only recently that we have a right to insult and we should avoid double standards here.

These opinions need to be exposed, challenged and countered. As the Minister said when referring to universities in his very helpful letter yesterday, to which my noble friend Lord Pannick extensively referred, they are,

“one of our most important arenas for challenging extremist views and ideologies”.

Quite so, and it is safer to challenge them in a university, if they arise there, although I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, that it is not all happening in universities. Much of it is happening in bedrooms, online and so on.

So this is difficult. My instincts are very often in support of the Government on these sorts of subjects, knowing that countering terrorism is not straightforward. However, the doubts that I expressed at Second Reading about putting Prevent, whatever its importance, on a statutory footing, in particular with regard to universities, have not been assuaged by anything that I have heard today. This work is going on now, and we really need a proper review of what has been achieved so far that is evidence-based. We have heard statistics, but we have not heard what they really mean. Prevent needs to be conducted with sensitivity, proportionality and care, and I fear that making it statutory in universities will jeopardise all three.

[Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield (CB)]

My Lords, I shall say a few short words in support of this group of amendments. I pay tribute to the Minister for the courtesy and care that he has brought to the conversations and for the correspondence that he has shared with several of your Lordships.

I declare as interests my professorship at Queen Mary University of London and my membership of the Royal United Services Institute Independent Surveillance Review. I have not been reassured about the practicalities of what the Government are proposing with regard to universities, on which I spoke at Second Reading, and I share the anxiety of many other noble Lords about freedom of speech within a university’s walls. I listened carefully to the Government’s case, but I am not persuaded that we need to shift from a voluntary approach to compulsion. By all means, strive to bring those universities which are laggardly up to the standards of the best; but we need to keep sharp what we already have—the scalpel of quiet, bespoke relationships between the authorities and the universities, rather than the mallet of legislation, however laudable the Government’s motivations in furthering the Prevent strategy.

I have to admit that the prospect of certain vice-chancellors being in the dock for contempt has a certain delicious attraction to it—although, I hasten to say, not my great friend and boss, the principal of Queen Mary University of London, Simon Gaskell. Universities must be very wary of overpleading that they are a special case—they genuinely must. None the less, the statutory road is not the path to take, as mapped out in Part 5 of the Bill. The defence of the realm is the first duty of the state—the first call upon the state—but here I think the state is in danger of overreaching and taking a step too far, even given the magnitude of the very real terrorist threats that we are facing.

[Baroness Sharp of Guildford]

My Lords, my name is attached to quite a number of the amendments in this group. I am not going to repeat the arguments that have been put very ably by other noble Lords. I merely add that it is vital that there is the opportunity for open debate and discussion of radical and extremist views in our universities and in other educational institutions in this country so that they can be challenged and the views refuted. It seems to me that the great danger in shutting down this debate is that it goes underground. It goes to the internet and social media, which we know are of vital importance in influencing those who are susceptible to these sorts of views. That issue is just as important for schools, further education colleges and sixth-form colleges with 15, 16 and 17 year- olds. If universities were to be excluded from this legislation, serious consideration would need to be given to the exclusion of other educational institutions as well.

Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill

Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield Excerpts

Tuesday 13th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my membership of the Royal United Services Institute’s independent surveillance review. I share the threat and risk assessments that are the motive power behind the Bill, and I share the natural and, perhaps, instinctive regret of many who live in an open society such as ours whenever the state needs to reach for more powers of intrusion and intervention into the lives of individuals than it would if times were more tranquil and secure. I hope, even in advance of such legislation passing, for the day when at least parts of it can be repealed.

The line between security and liberty is never static, nor is it clearly drawn. It is always a truly jagged frontier, and this has certainly been case with what one might call the construction of the new protective state that we have created in successive instalments since the atrocities of 11 September 2001. I add my welcome to the noble Lord, Lord Evans of Weardale, to your Lordships’ House as a hugely experienced shaper and former operator of that protective state. I also add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Green of Deddington, on another fine maiden speech.

The key criterion for our new protective state, in my judgment, should be that of the great Sir Karl Popper in his classic 1944 study, The Open Society and Its Enemies, in which he wrote:

“We must plan for freedom and not only for security, if for no other reason than that only freedom can make security secure”.

It is a tough book and that is one of the easier sentences to absorb, but it also happens to be the crucial sentence in the entire book. That is the approach and state of mind that we need to cling to, especially when our spirits recoil from particularly dreadful events, such as those that occurred in France last week, as here in the UK we face exactly the same configuration of threats generated by jihadi-related terrorism.

Counterterrorism and security legislation requires especially careful crafting, as we all agree. Not only does it have to reflect the Karl Popper criterion but it also has to meet a test of practicality. Here, in one particular aspect of Part 5, the Prevent section of the Bill dealing with the universities, lies, in my judgment, an anxiety on the practicality front. I declare an interest as a semi-retired professor of contemporary British history at Queen Mary, University of London. My particular concern is stimulated by paragraph 61 of the Government’s consultative paper, Prevent Duty Guidance, dealing with the duties of higher education institutions. The paper says:

“We would expect the institution to have robust procedures both internally and externally for sharing information about vulnerable individuals (where appropriate to do so). This should include information sharing agreements where possible”.

The difficulty here lies in the degree to which, in today’s universities, even the most conscientious and pastoral care-minded tutors and supervisors can be such sensitive eyes and ears for the proposed Prevent panels under the Prevent duty as described in the draft guidance.

When I graduated in 1969, only 7.5% of the age group were in higher education; now it is close to 45% and rising, and the ratio of teachers to taught has widened. However much we university teachers try to compensate for that, it is genuinely harder to get to know your students well, and the old “in loco parentis” requirement has long since lapsed. When I tutored and taught substantial numbers of undergraduates, my own view was that I would intrude and intervene in their personal lives only if they came seeking help or guidance. That was usually about financial difficulties or family circumstances. I appreciate that it will be but a small number of students to whom the proposed Prevent requirements are likely to apply. But even here, unless a sudden and overt bout of proselytising occurs, indicating a fast-developing radicalisation, it will be very difficult even for the most attentive tutor to pick up mood swings, for example, let alone the real reason for such oscillations in mood and temperament. I appreciate that the Government have consulted and are consulting with universities on what, if the Bill receives Royal Assent, will be their duties under Part 5. However, I respectfully suggest to the Minister that, if it has not already happened, officials should talk to university teachers active at the level of tutorials, supervisions and seminar classes about the possible compliance problems on which I have touched.

In no way do I diminish the perils that we face, nor the rapidity with which radicalisation can occur among some men and women in the university age group. Until the first examples of this came to light in our country, I lived under the illusion that young men and women, whatever their origins or faith, who had been taught in our schools and universities and passed through our colleges, would almost organically have picked up a feel for the values, practices and essentials of a pluralist, open society. I was truly shocked when I discovered that that was not so and, to be frank, felt naive in my previous assumptions.

I recognise, as the noble Lord, Lord Evans, said earlier, that the Prevent section is an especially difficult segment of the Government’s Contest counterterrorism strategy. I ask the Minister and his colleagues to look again at what early warning can practically and sensibly be expected from those who tutor and those who teach.

Intelligence and Security Committee: Annual Report 2011-12

Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield Excerpts

Monday 21st January 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield]

My Lords, I add my thanks to the intelligence community for keeping us safe throughout our stellar Olympic summer. As a historian, I hope the Cabinet Office has commissioned an internal study of how it was done, for two reasons: first, to serve as what Whitehall used to call in the old days a fund of experience document, which can be drawn upon for the planning and protection of future great national events; and secondly, when the passage of time permits, so that the study can be declassified for future generations to appreciate a job extraordinarily well done. As far as one can see, as an outsider, the operation involved almost every element of the British intelligence community.

On that theme, I am pleased that the remit of the Intelligence and Security Committee is to be widened to embrace the community in its entirety. I note from last July’s report that the committee, rightly, places much weight on the value of horizon scanning. There have been some encouraging developments on the horizon-scanning front, in the secret world and beyond, since the document we are debating this afternoon was placed before Parliament.

Little noticed on page 17 of the coalition’s Civil Service Reform Plan last June was a paragraph on horizon scanning which read:

“The Government needs to continue to strengthen its strategic thinking and horizon scanning, given the current environment of change and uncertainty. A review of the capability will be completed by Autumn 2012”.

Completed on time it was, and I am delighted to say that the Cabinet Office has declassified it this very day.

I should declare a minor interest. I delivered a short presentation to the review team early on in its work about the history of horizon scanning in the United Kingdom since the Committee of Imperial Defence—the National Security Council of its day—prepared its first War Books in 1912-13. The review was led by the Cabinet Office’s Joint Intelligence Organisation, so its work is well within the remit of ISC oversight.

The motive power of the review of cross-government horizon scanning as it is called, is to make better use of the considerable array of horizon scanning already undertaken across a range of departments and agencies—domestic, foreign and secret—and to embed the combined product more effectively in policy analysis and planning. Horizon scanning is, by its very nature, a perilous craft but, as the review states: “The benefits of conducting horizon scanning outweigh the negatives when it is used to add value to strategic decision making. It is a wasted resource if it is not ultimately used to inform the policy agenda in a coherent way”.

I understand that the report’s recommendations that the Cabinet Secretary should be the “champion” of trans-Whitehall horizon scanning has been implemented and that Sir Jeremy Heywood has already chaired the first meeting of his Permanent Secretary-level group which will be underpinned by a second group at director level, led by the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, Jon Day.

These developments strike me as a wholly beneficial addition to our country’s ever needed capacity to look over the other side of the hill, and I hope the ISC will apply attention and support to the new arrangements.

There is one delicate sphere of horizon scanning which I think it is timely to contemplate. May I respectfully suggest to the ISC that, during the coming two years, it keep a close, scrutineer’s eye on the depth and width of contingency planning within the secret world about the possible impact of a Scottish separation on what we would no longer be able to call—should it happen—the British intelligence community?

Certain thoughts arise: would Scotland want its own security and intelligence agency with a “McC” in Edinburgh? Would an independent Scotland seek its own bespoke GCHQ? Signals intelligence is a costly and complicated business with an infrastructure all its own. Would we see aerials and antennae springing out of the thin soils of the Cheviot Hills? Would those old Cold War listening stations on the north-east coast of Scotland crackle back into aural life? In submarine terms, who would warn the Scottish Government of a Russian Akula lurking in the Minches? Would a Scottish intelligence liaison officer from the Scottish High Commission in London take his or her place every week at the Joint Intelligence Committee alongside the American, Canadian and Australian representatives? I have more than a suspicion that our United States intelligence allies would be far from radiant about the prospect, especially if there was a determinedly non-nuclear Government in Edinburgh.

I should not expect such contingency planning—which I sincerely hope is already under way—to be made public. However, I would hope that the ISC could examine it on behalf of Parliament and the public.

Last year’s ISC report, as has already been mentioned, examines horizon scanning very much in the context of the foreseeability—or otherwise—of the Arab spring. I had a great deal of sympathy with C’s argument, as reflected in the report, that that was the last thing Middle Eastern and north African regimes expected, so their secret worlds were not brimming with their own prescient forecasts which western intelligence might have acquired by clandestine means for warning purposes.

I thought of this old and ever present “secrets and mysteries” problem that our intelligence-gatherers always face when the files of the Franks inquiry into the origins of the Falklands War were declassified a few weeks ago. The noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, gave absolutely riveting evidence to Franks—the transcript of which, in parts, reads just like a film script. In one section she expresses a degree of sympathy for the analysts, despite her criticisms of the intelligence community on its pre-invasion performance. Here she is in an exchange with Oliver Franks about such criticism:

“It would be the easiest thing in the world for the JIC, or whoever does the actual intelligence assessment, to say to ministers that every single thing in the world could blow up into a major incident within the next few weeks or months—Belize, Cyprus, Hong Kong … It would not be helpful, it would be incompetent, it would be weak. They have to try to alert us to some of the priorities, they have to make an assessment which does not say everything is on a knife edge”.

Another thought arose when reading the Franks inquiry transcripts. The great and the good Oliver Franks asked each of the four Prime Ministers who gave evidence—Harold Wilson, Ted Heath and Jim Callaghan, as well as the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher—about the use they made of their intelligence feed when they were in No. 10. In their different ways they made it plain that among the piles of red boxes that the private office prepared for overnight or weekend reading, they reached first for what the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, called the “hot box” containing the intelligence. It was so much more interesting than yet another brief on local government rate support grant, but that is my observation, not that of the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher.

Although perhaps it has happened already, it strikes me that it might be valuable if the ISC conducted a survey with its questions modelled on the Franks approach of how Mr David Cameron and the Ministers in the inner intelligence loop make use of the product from our country’s remarkable £2 billion a year intelligence and security machine. Again I suspect that the results could not be published, but it would be instructive and valuable, not least as an indicator, of how the new National Security Council-led tasking is playing out in real terms.

I have a final thought that is linked to the coalition’s Civil Service Reform Plan. It contains a so-called “Action 11” which has aroused anxieties about a possible seeping politicisation of the senior ranks of the Civil Service if Secretaries of State are given the proposed “greater influence” over new appointments. I hope that the ISC will keep a careful eye on this. If there was the slightest whiff of politicising the top appointments to the secret world it would amount to an anxiety of national proportions. For almost above all others, the Queen’s most secret servants possess an overriding duty to spare their ministerial customers nothing; always and everywhere to speak truth unto power. Theirs is among the toughest of callings in Crown service; placing patterns on fragments, constantly dealing with the grimmest possibilities and the darkest sides of human nature. As the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong of Ilminster, told the Franks inquiry, the JIC is,

“presented with a series of shafts of light of varying quality and brightness on a scene and their job is to fill those in, link them and relate them to make a coherent picture”.

Those who undertake this stretching task day in and day out, and those working in the agencies who supply the particles of the intelligence picture, deserve our special gratitude and appreciation.

Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Bill

Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield Excerpts

Wednesday 5th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield]

My Lords, when an open society such as ours finds itself confronted by a vivid, immediate and largely unanticipated threat, as we experienced a decade ago in the tense days following 9/11, part of the response has to be shaped by the need to do a deal with ourselves. If we decide, as we did, to frame new and tougher counterterrorist legislation, we must, given our instincts and our traditions, set out to cast the new statutes in such a way that they are plainly an unwelcome aberration from the norms and should endure only as long as they are required. At moments of shock and attack such as the July 2005 bombings in London, we need always to emphasise the gap between ourselves and those who seek to deprive others not just of liberty but of life; to avoid narrowing the gap; and to prevent our new laws from coarsening our politics and blunting the sensitive social instincts and systems that are essential to keeping our open society worthy of its name.

Part of this involves the reopening and re-examination of the temporary deal embedded in our counterterrorist legislation at regular intervals and when circumstances allow. The Bill before us represents a welcome chance to revisit one of the most controversial ingredients of the new protective state we have constructed over the 10 years since the atrocities of September 2001. Control orders, and the apparatus of special hearings and special advocates that accompany them, cut against the grain of our traditions and instincts. Therefore, I welcome the wish of the coalition to ease previous arrangements in the manner laid out in the review of counterterrorism and security powers published last January, and given legislative shape in the Bill before us. I welcome, too, the reduction to 14 days of detention without charge, which also flowed from that review.

For those without access to the assessments of the security service MI5, or sight of the product of the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre, it would be impossible and wrong to assert, in definitive primary colours, personal conclusions about the proportionality of the Bill in relation to the terrorist threats that currently exist in our country. On this patch of legislative terrain, as my noble friend Lord Bew expressed so well earlier, a very high level of trust is involved. We have to place our faith in the collectors and analysts of current intelligence, and in the creation of a picture for Ministers that is painted with care, detail and context. We have to trust that the Ministers with responsibility for counterterrorism, individually and collectively, will test out the judgment of the intelligence providers and security advisers, the validity of their product and what it means for the defence of our people and of the realm, as well as for the individual on whom a control order or a TPIM might be imposed.

That said, I welcome the easements and new thresholds involved in the move from control orders to TPIMs. I have no objection to the enhanced TPIM legislation that we have in draft form, and the opportunity for pre-legislative scrutiny that it affords. It is in line with the tradition of emergency legislation from the Emergency Powers Act 1920 to the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 in terms of extra, latent power for the state in circumstances where the Government of the day can persuade Parliament of the temporary need to swiftly make these powers actual. The only occasion I know of in our lifetimes when this was not possible was the inevitably draconian draft Bill giving the state breathtaking powers over people, property and life itself that would have been rushed through Parliament in the last days of peace before World War III erupted, Parliament was prorogued and the Government subsequently broken up into 12 mini-kingdoms, each presided over by a Cabinet Minister/regional commissioner as, in effect, an absolute monarch in a bunker. The draft Emergency Powers (Defence) Bill to which I refer was framed in 1962-63 in the months following the Cuban missile crisis and only reached the public domain when it arrived at the National Archives, having been declassified under the 30-year rule in the mid-1990s when the Cold War was over.

The threats we face today are not of comparable magnitude, but they are very real. The outbreak of the Third World War was a highly unlikely contingency but an utterly catastrophic prospect—“beyond the imagination”, as a mid-1950s Cabinet Office study of the impact of a Russian thermonuclear assault on the UK put it. Jihadi-inspired terrorist attacks are not beyond the imagination. They have happened and, despite the best efforts of Crown servants both in and out of uniform who place themselves between us and danger, they will very likely happen again.

The number of individuals caught in the world of the control order or the proposed TPIM is about a dozen. However, quite rightly, the questions of their treatment and the length of time a suspected terrorist can be detained without charge have been among the most important weather-makers of the rolling conversation we have had since the passage of the terrorist legislation following the Belmarsh judgment by the Law Lords in 2004.

As the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald of River Glaven, pointed out in his Review of Counter-Terrorism and Security Powers, control orders have had a seriously harmful effect, not just on the liberty of those so controlled but on their health, well-being and family life as well. The noble Lord was also eloquent on the need to nurture and sustain a bias towards evidence-gathering and prosecution of those suspected of planning terrorist acts, rather than “warehousing” them—the noble Lord’s verb—by using control orders or TPIMs if this Bill becomes law.

Terrorist emergencies do not begin with a formal declaration of hostilities, nor do they end with a surrender document, unconditional or otherwise—nor did the Cold War, which inspired that fearful draft legislation in the 1960s. I suspect that this rolling conversation will continue long into the foreseeable future. Each time Parliament decides to perpetuate legislation that carries with it restrictions and procedures that cut against our shared instinctive grain, we should do so with reluctance and an awareness of the need to time-limit. This is why I would support an annual review of the provision, and of the desirability of sustaining that “enduring political consensus”, or as close as we can get to it, of which the Home Secretary spoke in her speech in another place on 26 January this year—a consensus that must rest on the idea of that lustrous philosopher of the open society, Sir Karl Popper, when he declared in 1945:

“We must plan for freedom and not only for security, if for no other reason than that only freedom can make security secure”.