Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Bill

Dominic Raab Excerpts

Tuesday 7th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)]

Like others, I would like to commend some previous speakers, particularly the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), my hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Patrick Mercer) and the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert).

Confronted by the terrorist challenge, the previous Government resorted to presenting a rather crude and blunt trade-off between freedom and security. Too often, it undermined Britain’s tradition of liberty without eliminating or even substantially reducing the threat to this country. In that context, I welcome the huge strides the Home Secretary and fellow Home Office Ministers have taken to defend and restore our freedoms by abolishing ID cards, halving pre-charge detention, tightening stop-and-search powers and the other measures they have taken in protection of freedoms legislation. I believe that Ministers have decisively reassessed how state power is used to protect us.

In many ways, if truth be told, the whole debate on control orders has been allowed to obscure the substantial progress made by this coalition and this Home Office. Nevertheless, the truth is that the control order regime presents a pernicious affront to our tradition of liberty. It undermines the most basic principle of British justice—of being innocent until proven guilty. Orders can be imposed on people who have not been found guilty of any criminal offence. That is wrong in principle, and control orders have proved to be an ineffective tool in practice. I shall come on to explain why I believe that to be the case.

In fairness, TPIMs are not as draconian as the old regime and again I want to recognise Ministers’ efforts to improve the conditions imposed by the Bill. In truth, however, TPIMs are only marginally less draconian and are certainly no more effective than their predecessor—and that is not much of a trade-off either. Liberty notes in its briefing that TPIMs

“mirror the most offensive elements”

of control orders. Under clause 3, the Home Secretary must demonstrate “reasonable belief” of involvement in terrorism as opposed to the old standard of “reasonable suspicion'”, but a criminal sanction of this severity should require proof of criminal conduct—not hunches, not opinions, but proof.

The potential restrictions on individuals set out in schedule 1 remain onerous—residency requirements, curfews, restrictions on communication and association, travel bans, electronic tagging and all the rest. Clause 5 appears to suggest a two-year limit for TPIMs, but they can be renewed if new terrorist activity is alleged. That is itself a worrying comment on the credibility of the new order as a counter-terrorism measure. Clause 21 retains the penalty of five years’ imprisonment for breach of an order.

In one important respect, which has already been mentioned today, the proposed regime is worse than its predecessor. Control orders had to be approved annually by Parliament in recognition of their exceptional nature and the urgency of the circumstances in which they were introduced, which ensured regular parliamentary oversight, but TPIMs will not be subject to such parliamentary reviews. A temporary emergency measure will thus become permanent and entrenched, and we will have crossed a line. It is worth our asking, with that in mind, what we will gain from such an affront to our tradition of liberty and justice. What will be the security dividend from this trade-off of our freedoms?

Of the 40 individuals formerly subject to control orders, seven absconded and five had their orders quashed by the courts. In 2009, each order cost the Home Office £135,000 to implement—quite apart from the costs of defending the orders from legal challenge and of policing. The number of control orders has halved in the last two years, from 20 to 10. Some will say that that shows that they are used only as a last resort, but in fact it demonstrates their irrelevance to the massive scale of the terrorist threat that we face. MI5 estimates that there are still about 4,000 terrorist suspects in the United Kingdom—10 controlees, 4,000 suspects. Let us not pretend that control orders have ever been anything more than the most flimsy and feeble of security safety nets.

Control orders are not just of dwindling relevance; they constitute a distraction from robust law enforcement and are actually a negative. That is why I welcome the Home Secretary's renewed focus on the Prevent strategy. I would welcome further still measures to strengthen our deportation capacity, which has been undermined by judicial legislation resulting from article 8 of the European convention on human rights, via the Human Rights Act 1998. The massively inflated rights to family life now allow the majority of deportation orders to be frustrated. That has nothing to do with article 3 torture grounds, which I would stand up for. More specifically, as Lord Macdonald stated in his report on the counter-terrorism review, control orders are an “impediment” to prosecution and conviction because

“controls may be imposed that precisely prevent those very activities that are apt to result in the discovery of evidence fit for prosecution, conviction and imprisonment”.

The wider evidence is stark and clear. This country now has a gaping prosecutorial deficit. The number of convictions for terrorist offences has fallen by 90% in the last four years, despite all the legislative hyperactivity of the previous Government, despite all the hubris, and despite the exponential rise in the terrorist threat, whose existence I think we all accept. Yet conviction in court and locking up terrorists constitute the only guaranteed way of protecting the public.

I find it worrying that we have heard so little about strengthening prosecution in real, core, concrete, tangible terms. We need a far more robust and proactive prosecution policy. We need to learn directly from experience abroad, particularly in Commonwealth countries such as the United States, Australia and Canada. We need much greater use of plea bargaining, although incidentally I do not see why the discount should be increased. I believe that if plea-bargaining were deployed effectively, it would almost certainly increase, not reduce, the number of dangerous people put behind bars. Indeed, that is the whole point of it.

As others have said, we must also overcome entrenched bureaucratic inertia and lift the ban on the use of intercept evidence in court, thus ending Britain’s virtual global isolation and giving prosecutors an invaluable tool with which to secure convictions. I know from my experience of working at the Foreign Office on information co-operation with international war crimes tribunals, along with all the Departments and agencies in the United Kingdom, what the limits are and how intercept evidence can be used discreetly, carefully and competently, and I am convinced that we can overcome the objections that have been presented.

The hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) said that if we were to ask anyone in the United States, such as the FBI or the Deputy Attorney-General—I myself have talked to the counter-terrorism adviser in the George Bush White House—they would be aghast at the idea that intercept evidence could not be used as a powerful weapon to put more terrorists behind bars. It is absolutely critical. It is a mystery to me that we in this country have allowed so much surveillance of the ordinary law-abiding citizen, yet we adamantly and trenchantly oppose using intercept evidence to target prosecution against those engaged in terror.

Lord Macdonald offered a very credible alternative to the control order regime, with restrictions linked to bail in the active pursuit of prosecution. I regret that his proposal was not taken up in place of the old regime, or, indeed, of the new one presented to us today.

Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism

Dominic Raab Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)]

It is a privilege to speak in the debate and to follow the hon. Member for South Antrim (Dr McCrea). I welcome the outcome of the counter-terrorism review. Ministers have been decisive in scaling back some of the more draconian aspects of the previous Government’s authoritarian legislation, such as pre-charge detention and stop-and-search powers, and by tightening regulations in relation to surveillance.

The contentious debate that we are having on control orders should not obscure this welcome sea change in the overall approach. The tide is turning, and I commend the Minister for helping to bring about that change. Likewise, I recognise that Ministers are committed to substantial reform of the control order regime. The new powers will be significantly less offensive to basic principles of British justice than what we have now, but each half-step in the right direction raises the question of why we are not scrapping them altogether.

Under the regime that we are reviewing, the Home Secretary must have “reasonable grounds to suspect” an individual’s involvement in terrorist-related activity before imposing a control order. Now the threshold will be raised to “reasonable belief”. No one can deny that that is progress, but it still allows the equivalent of a criminal penalty to be imposed without a criminal conviction. There is no getting around that. It undermines the most basic principle of our justice system: innocent until proven guilty.

The two-year limit is a welcome recognition that a person not convicted of a crime should not be subject to intrusive restrictions indefinitely, but the orders are renewable, or they will be, which in the same breath undermines this element of the reforms. The fact that under the new system an order can be renewed if someone is engaged in further, different, terrorist activity while subject to its restrictions speaks volumes about the frailty of control orders as a means of public protection. I recognise that curfews are an improvement of sorts on virtual house arrest, a feature of the current regime, but as Lord Macdonald said in his report, curfews are still “disproportionate, unnecessary and objectionable”.

Control orders are an affront to British liberty and justice, but—I make this point to the hon. Member for South Antrim—their relevance as a security measure for dealing with a threat on which we all agree is at best minimal. My hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Patrick Mercer) put it more eloquently. There are eight control orders in force. On the best numeric assessment, there are 4,000 terrorist suspects in this country. Use of the orders against that rising threat has halved. Overall, 15% have absconded. Between 2006 and 2009, £16 million was spent on the regime. That is without factoring in court costs or policing.

The new regime is intended to strengthen the duty to consider prosecuting controlees, but Lord Macdonald pointed out clearly and categorically that control orders are not just a poor substitute, but make prosecution more difficult. He said that the regime is

“an impediment to prosecution… controls may be imposed that precisely prevent those very activities that are apt to result in the discovery of evidence fit for prosecution, conviction and imprisonment”.

With that in mind, the House should note that the number of terrorists convicted in the past three years has not just fallen, but plummeted. The number of convictions has fallen off a cliff edge—90% in three years, according to the October statistics. Control orders cannot reverse that trend. As Lord Macdonald said, they just get in the way.

What is being done to address this pretty fundamental failing in the counter-terrorism strategy that the coalition Government, to be fair, have inherited? What is being done on plea bargaining, prosecutorial policy and intercept evidence? The Home Secretary has indicated that the review on lifting the ban on intercept will continue. Both Lord Macdonald and the current Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer, support lifting the ban. They say that it can be made to work effectively, as in virtually every other country in the world. However, Liberty has described the Government’s efforts—I think it is a reference to official efforts—to grasp this important reform as “lethargic”. Prosecution is vital. It is not some quaint commitment to legal tradition. In relation to the home-grown threat, suspects cannot be deported, so prosecution and incarceration is the only way to protect the public.

[Mr Dodds]

I am very interested in what the hon. Gentleman is saying and his emphasis on prosecution and incarceration. He will remember that his party and the Labour party, and indeed the House, voted to release terrorist prisoners who had been duly prosecuted and imprisoned for lengthy periods of time. It was decided that they should be let out, free from the severe punishment that had been meted out to them. That was a decision of this House. Does he now regret the decision to take that course of action, given what he has said about prosecution?

[Mr Raab]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a valid point. In fairness, that was in the context of an overall conflict resolution settlement. I was not a Member of the House at the time, but I pay deference to an important and valid point.

[Richard Fuller]

On my hon. Friend’s point about the critical importance of prosecution, is he aware that many of the conditions that apply to control orders also apply to immigration bail conditions: relocation, restriction on communication and tagging, all without any charge and imposed indefinitely? Does he agree that it will be an omission if those restrictions in the conditions are not also considered for change in the review?

[Mr Raab]

My hon. Friend makes a valid point and is absolutely right that those restrictions should be considered.

My hon. Friend the Member for Newark made an important point about the significance of measures that we consider in this House. The political heat that the debate on control orders has generated over a number of years bears scant resemblance to their relevance as a security measure. In fact, that distracts us from grappling with a growing prosecutorial deficit, which in my view is one of the major problems we face.

There are other vital reforms that we should be grappling with but are not because of the political lightning rod of control orders. Most notably in my view, we should be reforming the Human Rights Act 1998 so that we can deport criminals and terrorist suspects more readily. I want to be clear that we would not necessarily deport them to face torture—I do not support that—but there has been an expansion in article 8 cases, which prevents deportation when it might disrupt family life; I currently have a constituency case dealing with that. That is a bridge too far and a result of judicial legislation. Some changes to the Human Rights Act would restore some balance in that respect.

The increasing fetters on deportation mean that we are importing risk, which is one reason why the previous Government resorted to so much authoritarian legislation in the first place. In deference to this Government, I welcome the fact that they are expediting the review on the Human Rights Act and the case for a Bill of Rights. That is an important piece of work and it should not end up in the long grass.

I support the Minister in his efforts, but I struggle to see the case for keeping alive this broken control order regime to limp on indefinitely when there is so much else that we can and should be doing to deport and prosecute those who threaten our country with terrorism.

Counter-terrorism Review

Dominic Raab Excerpts

Wednesday 26th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

The right hon. Gentleman’s description of the PSNI’s use of section 44 is accurate, because the PSNI used it very carefully—more carefully than police forces on the mainland. He rightly says that, as a result, terrorist attacks were disrupted and prevented. We have been very careful in discussions, and it has been of particular concern to ensure that the power that we are proposing will be usable by the PSNI and will enable it to continue to do what it needs to prevent terrorist attacks in Northern Ireland.

[Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)]

I commend the Home Secretary on the important steps that she has taken towards reversing the draconian drift under the previous Government. I am disappointed that the coalition has not scrapped control orders altogether, but even more important is the need to reverse the collapse in counter-terrorism convictions of 90% in the past four years. May I just ask about the written statement on intercept evidence? Are the Government now committed to lifting the ban? Has the question now changed from “if” to “when and how”?

[Mrs May]

The Government have always had a commitment, including in the coalition agreement, to examine the possibility of using intercept material as evidence. It is on that basis that we have asked that further work be done to examine a number of issues associated with practicality, affordability and how an intercept-as-evidence regime could operate. It is a mistake for anybody in this House to think that using intercept as evidence is somehow the silver bullet that will take away all our other issues and requirements. Work has been done to examine existing cases and ask whether a prosecution would have been made possible had intercept as evidence been available. I believe that I am right in saying that in all cases—although I hesitate in saying “all” because I cannot remember the exact numbers—such evidence would not have made that possible. That is certainly true of most cases.

Counter-terrorism

Dominic Raab Excerpts

Thursday 20th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

The hon. Gentleman is entirely right. Not only is it surprising that Labour Members are so worried about leaks; it is equally surprising that they can bring themselves to talk about civil liberties given their shambolic and dreadful record on that issue. That is precisely why the reserve powers that we propose will be in the form of a draft Bill, so that nothing can be done without the full consent of Parliament—even in the most dire emergency, which we can all imagine happening—if it is thought that we need to revert to a longer period of pre-charge detention. It will be for Parliament to decide, and that is absolutely the right way to proceed.

[Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)]

I welcome the statement and the fact that the trajectory of pre-charge detention under this Government is going down, not up, as it did under the last Government. We will have to wait and see what the legislation says and look at the detail, but can my hon. Friend confirm one point in relation to evidence? A lot of evidence is already in the public domain in the form of the Home Office statistical bulletins, which show that in more than four years we have never needed 28-day pre-charge detention. Will he confirm that, and also that he has not seen any countervailing evidence that contradicts that?

[Damian Green]

My hon. Friend, who is a considerable expert on these matters, is of course right. No one has been detained for more than 14 days since July 2007, despite the many terrorist outrages that we have regrettably seen since then. To put the House fully in the picture, to date, 11 individuals have been held for more than 14 days pre-charge, six of whom were held for the maximum 28 days, three of whom were charged and three were released without charge. Again, for the those on the Opposition Front Bench to talk about evidence when they tried to foist 90 days on the House without any evidence at all was completely disrespectful.

Controlling Migration

Dominic Raab Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

The proposals I am setting out today apply to immigration policy across the United Kingdom. To respond to the hon. Gentleman’s first point, I am confident that the needs of particular sectors will be met through our changes to tier 1, tier 2 and the intra-company transfer route. We have listened very carefully to business, and the CBI recently said it thought that

“a workable...solution would encompass…protection of sponsored work permit numbers as a priority ahead of those without a job offer”,

which we have done. The CBI also said that by

“prioritising the demand-led part of the system—Tier 2—in this manner the government will be able to deliver on its goal of reducing net migration without damaging business”,

which, again, is exactly what we have done.

[Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)]

I welcome the statement. Does the Home Secretary agree that the UK economy’s dependence on skilled labour from abroad highlights two of the starkest failures under the last Government: the promotion of welfare dependency, and the failure to improve skills and training?

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and it is important that we see the policies announced in the statement in the context of our welfare reform policy, the Work programme to be brought in next year, and the Business Secretary’s proposed skills agenda, which he introduced in a White Paper last week.

Socio-economic Equality Duty

Dominic Raab Excerpts

Thursday 18th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Lynne Featherstone]

It is totally defensible. Listening to Opposition Members, I must say that they are re-enacting what is in the Act: they are talking about things, not delivering them.

[Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)]

I welcome the Minister’s reply, but will she go further? The Government are consulting on related regulations to force up to 27,000 councils, schools, police forces and other bodies annually to audit their work force on age, disability, sexuality, sex changes, religion and other beliefs. Can she explain how, according to the departmental answer I received this week, those requirements will not cost public—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. That question suffers from the disadvantage that it has absolutely nothing whatever to do with the socio-economic duty.

Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism

Dominic Raab Excerpts

Wednesday 14th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)]

I welcome the forthcoming review of the 28-day limit, the measures that the Home Secretary has already taken on ID cards and stop-and-search powers and the wider review announced yesterday. We have an opportunity with the coalition and, as the hon. Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick) made clear, we have support across the House to restore our freedoms, while strengthening our security. This is not the zero-sum game depicted by countless, hapless Labour Home Secretaries, but it is crucial that we have an open and honest debate on these matters, and for that we need clear and accurate information.

I ask the Home Secretary to clarify a slight discrepancy between the answer that I received from her Department on 28 June and the quarterly bulletin of last November. My understanding is that only one person, not two, held for the full 28-day period has ever been convicted of a terrorism offence. I also ask her to provide in table form basic information that her department has previously refused to give. First, I should like to know, year by year, the number of people subjected to control orders, with a breakdown indicating the number of UK citizens and foreign nationals. That is relevant to our ability to deport terrorist suspects whom we cannot prosecute. Secondly, I should like information setting out the number of foreign nationals who have not been deported, broken down by category of reason—whether administrative, legal or based on human rights—so that we better understand why we have been failing to deport so many of them. That information is not impossible to collate, and it is vital for this issue and the wider debate on counter-terrorism.

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend asks for a number of figures, but it is only fair to the House that I should pick up the first point that he makes, which relates to a parliamentary question that was answered in the name of the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert), who has responsibility for crime and policing. Unfortunately, an inaccurate statistic was included in that answer, and he will correct that in the Hansard record very shortly. The figures on pre-charge detention are indeed as I indicated in my speech. Eleven individuals have been detained for 14 days or longer. Six individuals have been detained for 27 to 28 days, of whom three were subsequently charged and three released. Of the three who were charged, two were convicted and the case of one was not proceeded with. In the answer that my hon. Friend was given, reference was made to the number of individuals who had been arrested as a result of an operation by Greater Manchester police. It was indicated that two individuals were involved. In fact, only one of the 11 arrested as a result of that operation was involved.

[Mr Raab]

I thank the Home Secretary for that clarification. It is refreshing to get clarification from the Home Office so swiftly.

Twenty-eight days’ pre-charge detention was an emergency measure introduced on a temporary basis. We need a clear and convincing justification to retain it, because it undermines the ancient right of habeas corpus, which goes back to Magna Carta. We now know that, in relation to Operation Overt and the Heathrow plot of August 2006—the most challenging counter-terrorism investigation that we have ever faced as a nation—only five suspects were held for the maximum period of 28 days and only two were charged. Contrary to what Ministers said at the time, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) has said, all the evidence relied upon was available well within 14 days. That Operation Overt was used by the last Government to justify proposals for 42 days’ detention was deeply irresponsible.

Since Operation Overt, only one person has been held for longer than 14 days—an isolated case of 19 days’ pre-charge detention. Last year, in 2009, no suspects were held in pre-charge detention for longer than 14 days and 70% were dealt with within 48 hours. So the raw facts in the debate are that, in four years, we have not needed longer than 19 days’ pre-charge detention, let alone 28 days. If we are judging the necessity of the order on the pressures that the police face during the pre-charge period, the evidence no longer supports a limit beyond 21 days at the very most.

In truth, those data are not the only relevant information. Briefings by the heads of MI5 in 2006 and 2007 showed a rise in the number of terrorist suspects being monitored by the authorities from 1,600 to 2,000. In 2008, the head of MI5 stated publicly that the volume of late-stage terrorist planning had fallen that year. I am not aware of any more recent assessments from the head of MI5 or the agency more generally. The House will recall that MI5 refused to support the last Government’s proposals for 42 days’ detention. Ministers stated at the time that it would be inappropriate for MI5 to give a view, yet Tony Blair publicly relied on MI5’s support for the increase in the limit in 2005. It cannot be in the interests of the intelligence agencies or the public that MI5 assessments are relied on by Ministers only when it is politically expedient or they want to publicise blood-curdling assessments of the terrorist threat. I ask the Home Secretary to put these arrangements on a more clear and stable footing. Either we should not have such briefings and public statements by MI5, or we should have regular, objective assessments of the domestic terrorist threat based on hard data that avoid any risk or perception of politicisation.

Paragraph 7 of the explanatory memorandum to the order claims that all the specific grounds cited as reasons for increasing the maximum limit to 28 days in 2006 “remain relevant”. It is difficult to accept that sweeping assertion without further information. First, has the challenge of encrypted computers not been eased at all by the enactment in 2007 of a criminal offence of withholding encryption keys? Will the Home Secretary give us data on prosecution and conviction rates under that offence?

Secondly, will the Home Secretary inform the House of any case in the past two years in which the presence of chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear material has been a direct factor that has prolonged the period of pre-charge detention? Thirdly, will she explain the extent to which the new powers of post-charge questioning that were enacted in 2008 have alleviated the problem of having to intervene early in some terrorist investigations because of the threat to public safely? Alternatively, is it correct, as Liberty and several hon. Members have stated, that the relevant power was not even brought into force by the previous Government, despite all the hubris on that specific point?

The truth is that gaps remain in the UK counter-terrorism strategy, despite the excellent work and unstinting commitment of our police and intelligence agencies. If it is correct that the terrorist threat has remained constant and at its highest level, it must be worrying that the number of arrests leading to charge under terrorism legislation dropped by more than a fifth last year. The number of guilty pleas in terrorism investigations also fell by a third, while the number of convictions under terrorism legislation halved. Counter-intuitively, there was a conviction rate of 93% in terrorism cases, compared with rates of 31% for conspiracy to murder, 30% for wounding and 38% for rape, and that raises the more basic question of whether, as a matter of policy, we are taking a sufficiently robust approach to the exercise of prosecutorial discretion in terrorism cases—I am talking about not a case-by-case approach, but the overarching strategy on prosecution.

We need a review of prosecutorial strategy as part of a broader shift away from the previous Government’s ineffective authoritarianism and towards an approach that deploys rather than sidesteps the British justice system. That means the greater use, when necessary, of the threshold test to prosecute when evidence is not available but is in the pipeline. It also means lifting the ban on intercept evidence, coupled with a more proactive use of plea bargaining, to increase the number of convictions, as well as the conviction rate, especially in cases involving wider conspiracies or joint criminal enterprise, as it is commonly known. Above all, however, it requires a change in the professional culture of this country’s intelligence and law enforcement authorities. That would be in line with the approach in other common law jurisdictions, most notably the US, where pre-charge detention is limited to two days. That is the way in which we can fight terror while defending our historic freedoms in this country.

I will support the order. I recognise that the Home Secretary needs time to examine these difficult issues further, but in the absence of convincing new evidence, I will be inclined to oppose renewal in six months’ time.

Identity Documents Bill

Dominic Raab Excerpts

Wednesday 9th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and may I take this opportunity to welcome you to your elevated status in the Chair? I commend hon. Members on both sides of the House for their maiden speeches, and welcome the Home Secretary and other Home Office Ministers to the Dispatch Box.

I wholeheartedly support the Bill for three reasons, the first of which is basic principle: I believe in a country in which the state is accountable to the citizen, not the other way round. ID cards would reverse that relationship through the national identity register, a central database that hoards vast amounts of personal data on every citizen and that is open to the sprawling arms of Government, who would be able to widen access still further by order, not primary legislation. In addition, the database is run by the state sector, which has an appalling record on safeguarding our personal data. Despite all the spin from the previous Government, they planned eventually to have a compulsory ID card regime: they would not rule out making it impossible to renew or apply for a passport without one.

My second reason for supporting the Bill is that ID cards simply cannot, will not and could never do what it says on the tin. They were proposed in the aftermath of 9/11, initially as a preventive counter-terrorism measure—not any old kind of counter-terrorism measure—yet we know that ID card regimes in Germany, Spain and Turkey did not and could not stop the 9/11 bombers who were based in Hamburg, the Istanbul bombers in 2003, or the Madrid bombers in 2004. Next, it was said that ID cards would stop benefit fraud, yet as we heard earlier from the Home Secretary—persuasively—most benefit fraud involves lying about personal circumstances, not identity. It was then claimed that ID cards would help to tackle illegal immigration, which is an equally spurious reason—it was scarcely credible given that under previous plans, foreign nationals would not need an ID card for the first three months of any stay.

Last year the Government changed tack altogether and tried to sell ID cards as a way to help young people to access services. A cost of £30, with a potential fine of £1,000 if they move home or marry and forget to tell Big Brother, is the last thing the average young Briton needs today, which helps to explain the very low take-up. However, in retrospect the most extraordinary thing is the long journey that ID cards have travelled from security panacea to friendly service provider. This is a veritable chameleon of a project that seeks to hide its real nature with every change in presentation.

My third reason for supporting the Bill is cost, and we have heard plenty in the debate about the billions of pounds it would cost to maintain and run the scheme. Although the future cost of ID cards was always much higher than the previous Government could ever bring themselves to admit, there is a further point to make: the flawed design and inherent vulnerability of the database to fraud, as attested by expert after expert, represent a massive contingent liability that this Government and the taxpayer should relinquish at the very first opportunity.

In sum, ID cards are intrusive, ineffective and ludicrously expensive. This is Labour’s great white elephant of a project that has been left lumbering around Whitehall, and Britain can well do without it.