Counterterrorism Review

Lord Howard of Lympne Excerpts

Wednesday 26th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords—

[Lord Howard of Lympne]

My Lords—

[Lord Maginnis of Drumglass]

My Lords, can I thank—

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, we have not yet had a Conservative Back-Bench question.

[Lord Howard of Lympne]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate my noble friend and, through her, the Home Secretary on striking the right balance in this very difficult area between the need to protect the public and the need to safeguard personal and individual liberty. May I ask about the emergency legislation to extend the period of pre-charge detention? Given what my noble friend has said about the Government’s ability to put that in place very quickly, do they intend this emergency power to be available not simply in a general period or emergency but for an individual suspect under detention, in respect of whom the police, and perhaps a magistrate or a judge, are convinced that a longer period of detention is necessary?

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

I thank my noble friend for his kind remarks, which I will pass on to the Home Secretary. On the question of emergency legislation, the intention is really to cover an emergency. I suppose that I can imagine—this is hypothetical territory—two broad categories, for instance, where the general threat level had risen even further. Those will be very dire circumstances in which we might be in a real emergency. There is also the possibility that one or a number of complex conspiracies come together and it is clear that a different approach is needed to the amount of time for, say, pre-charge detention. However, we stress that we believe that these kinds of measures, which at the moment are the norm, should be reserved for really exceptional circumstances.