Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Bill

Debate between Shabana Mahmood and Pat McFadden

Monday 5th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving me that indication. I am also grateful for his support. He was of course a fellow member of the Public Bill Committee.

[Mr McFadden]

Does not this go to the heart of the issue? It is risky enough to legislate, as the Government are proposing, to give terrorist suspects increased freedom of movement and increased access to mobile phones and the internet, and then to admit, as the Government do, that this will put increased pressure on the police and the security services, without also trying to implement the legislation before the police and security services are fully ready to cope with the increased risk. Does my hon. Friend agree that, if the Government do not produce better evidence of the capability of the police and security services to meet this increased risk, they will be adding irresponsibility to increased risk for the public?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr McFadden]

Not at the moment.

Let us deal with the point about civil liberties. The Minister has said several times that the motivation behind the Bill was a perceived imbalance in the last Government’s civil liberties legislation. The notion that we are some sort of quasi-police state or overly authoritarian state is complete nonsense. In this country we enjoy freedom of expression, religion and association that is the envy of the world. That is why so many dissidents from regimes around the world have sought refuge here. Indeed, the criticism that is sometimes levelled, and perhaps with validity, is that we have been very generous in accommodating dissidents from other regimes, and that sometimes our freedoms have been abused by some of those individuals. It is simply the wrong analysis and the wrong starting point to say that civil liberties in this country have been fundamentally compromised. That is not the case, but because the Government believe it and have carried forward into government the wrong analysis that they developed in opposition, that is leading to the wrong policy and to greater risk for the public. New clause 5 addresses that to some extent, but people will not understand why it, and the draft emergency legislation, were not put into the Bill.

[Shabana Mahmood]

I am conscious of the time and the fact that we have to get on to new clause 1, on relocation, ahead of Third Reading, so I will try to keep my remarks reasonably brief.

I endorse the remarks of my right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins) about the draft Bill. He spoke having been a member of the Committee that considered the draft Detention of Terrorist Suspects (Temporary Extensions) Bill, the findings of which are important and directly relevant to the draft emergency legislation that the Government printed a few days ago. As he pointed out, although that Committee understood the Government’s reasons for proposing that contingency powers to extend the maximum period for pre-charge detention should be provided in primary legislation so that they could be subject to parliamentary scrutiny, it still found a number of problems. Those problems exist also in relation to the draft enhanced TPIMs Bill, and it is important that we take a moment to remind ourselves of what the objections were.

The first objection was in relation to parliamentary scrutiny of a draft Bill as primary legislation. The debate that would take place would be so circumscribed by the difficulties of explaining the reasons for introducing primary legislation that it would not be possible for the House to be given proper reasons why we needed to proceed along that route. In relation to the 28-day detention powers, the risk was that a court case might be prejudiced. In this case the objection is even more important, because we are talking about intelligence evidence that has been gathered by the security services, which of course cannot be discussed openly. That is the whole reason why we have closed sessions of courts to consider such matters—they cannot enter into the public domain. That rather defeats the purpose of having any debate on the Floor of the House.

The second objection was that there would be an unacceptable degree of risk that it would be impossible to introduce and pass the legislation quickly when Parliament was in recess. Although that objection referred to the 28-day detention power, it is also important in this case. Counter-terror investigations are fast-moving, and it is not acceptable to say to the police that their reaction to investigations should be hampered while Parliament debates the matter, perhaps in a limited way, and decides to pass an Act. That would not be an acceptable way to proceed.

The third objection related to the period when Parliament has been dissolved, but as we can see, that is precisely what new clauses 5 and 6 are intended to address.

I say to the Minister that it is clear from the draft Bill that the Government have no principled objection to the control order powers that would suddenly be available once again. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden) said, the draft Bill is an insurance policy that the Government are taking out on their TPIMs regime, which will decrease and weaken the powers available to the police and the Home Secretary to control the behaviour of terror suspects. It is extremely unacceptable for legislation to be conducted in such a way. Control order powers are either needed or they are not. This Bill has used up many hours of parliamentary time to take us round in a circle and bring us back to exactly where we started, with control orders.

Rather than introduce this confused and fudged Bill, which raises many more questions, the Government should have been honest and admitted that sometimes, stringent control order measures such as relocation and 16-hour curfews are necessary. They should therefore have put them in the Bill that we are debating today.

I am afraid that the “argument on context”—that there is a standard context that would require only the standard TPIM, and an emergency context in which the enhanced TPIM might be required—does not hold up to any kind of scrutiny, because control orders and TPIMs, if they are introduced, are at the emergency end of what we do. They are not brought in lightly and have always been emergency measures.