| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
5.22 pm
Mr. Clive Soley (Hammersmith): All rushed legislation is bad, and rushed legislation on terrorism is particularly bad because, once again, it allows the terrorist to set the political agenda. My hon. Friend the Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) made that point very effectively.
As I understand it, the Leader of the House is asking today--it has been talked about over the past day or two--for very specific powers as an addendum to the prevention of terrorism Act. I accept that the Bill is not part of the PTA, with its exclusion orders and its tendency to round people up, question them and then release them without charge. We should not confuse the two, and I am sure that the Home Secretary will want to make that point.
I say to the Leader of the House that the case for the Bill and the motion is quite simple and bald. He is telling the House, and through the House the nation, that the Government have judged that there is a very real threat over the next couple of weeks, and that that threat arises from the ability to carry bombs more easily than before. I cannot help but believe that that judgment arises very understandably from the fear that something that happened on one of the London buses some weeks ago will be repeated. That is a very real and understandable fear, and if the Government presented their case that way, there would be greater understanding of their position.
When the Home Secretary tries to rush such legislation through, he has to have the support and, as it were, the confidence of the House. I must be critical, and I shall measure my words as best I can. I do not think that the Home Secretary has done that well over recent years.I have said on many occasions that I think that the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland have acted in relation to Northern Ireland with considerable statesmanship. I have to say that that statesmanship feeling is lacking in the Home Secretary.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, West (Mr. Madden) has made the point on many occasions--and he is right--about the transfer of prisoners. It would not be appropriate to go down that road now, but I shall note, and the House will note, that after the hunger strike the previous Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher,
introduced in Northern Ireland changes in the prison service that met many of the hunger strikers' demands. That was done to end hunger strikes.
When the Home Secretary seeks the confidence of the House, he must acknowledge that, fairly or unfairly--perhaps I am being unfair--he is seen as being a Home Secretary who, in the Cabinet, has dragged his feet on the peace process. That may be unfair, but he is clearly perceived as having done that, and at times he almost boasts of it in a macho way. Of course people think of the Tory party's Maples memorandum and the Government's attempt to try to divide the Labour party. Perception is not reality, but the Home Secretary must know that in politics, to coin a phrase, perception is nine tenths of reality. The Home Secretary is not perceived as someone who carries confidence as either the Prime Minister or the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland would have done if they had asked the House for such powers.
I think that the Home Secretary could carry the House with him. The Bill would not be a bad part of what I consider to be generally a bad Act. The Bill is not a renewal of the sus law, and if I get the opportunity to say that later, I shall do so. The safeguards in clause 1 are clear in terms of time and place, and only a senior officer can permit certain things to happen. They are not ideal or what I would want, but if the Government judge that there is a danger in the coming weeks and that the police need the powers for that purpose, we can listen to them.
I say to the Home Secretary, please, if he wants such confidence from the House of Commons and if we are to win the battle, for all the reasons that a number of my hon. Friends have pointed out about the dangers of rushing in to meet a terrorist threat--which pleases the terrorists, because they see the British people rushing around abandoning their democratic procedures to get legislation through to deal with the problem that they have created--we have to be rather more sophisticated than we are being at times at present.
Mr. Jack Straw (Blackburn):
As my hon. Friend the Member for Dewsbury (Mrs. Taylor) said earlier, and as I made clear in the House yesterday, Parliament has always, and rightly, been very reluctant to allow its normal time scales and procedures to be bypassed. Hasty legislation all too often turns out to be ill drafted and unclear. That is why the House has been jealous in guarding its procedures, which ensure due consideration of any measure. The procedures include a strong convention that two clear weekends should elapse between the tabling of a Bill and its Second Reading, and that there should also be a period for reflection between Second Reading, detailed consideration in Committee, Report and Third Reading.
Those procedures are important in respect of any Bill, however trivial. They are doubly important in respect of Bills that affect an individual's liberty and the public's safety. We all acknowledge, as the right hon. Member for
Honiton (Sir P. Emery) said earlier, that the procedures should be foreshortened only in the most exceptional circumstances.
Last Thursday, the Home Secretary asked to see me to seek the official Opposition's co-operation in agreeing the Bill and in getting it through the House today on a guillotine. He gave me the reasons why he had been persuaded of its necessity and why, in his view, it was necessary to pass all its stages by Easter. After our discussion, I told him that I would need to consult my colleagues and that we would let him have our decision by Monday. In the time available, my hon. Friends the Members for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar) and for Redcar (Ms Mowlam) and I consulted as many colleagues--in the shadow Cabinet and outside--as we could. My hon. Friend the Member for Redcar and I sought and received additional security briefings on Monday morning. We then came to the collective view that, although of course we were concerned at the short notice that we had been given, the proposed Bill was a responsible and appropriate reaction to the threat of which we had been made aware.
I told the Home Secretary this, and I also sought from him--and later gained--safeguards additional to those in the draft Bill. We can discuss these safeguards further on Second Reading and in Committee, and we will be able later today to discuss in detail the contents of the Bill. But in coming to a conclusion about the necessity for the guillotine, my colleagues and I examined most closely the powers in the Bill--particularly those in clause 1. We examined how far clause 1 extended the existing section 13A, and we looked at the attitude that we had adopted--as well as the Government--when clause 13A was debated in the Standing Committee on the Criminal Justice and Public Order Bill. We discussed the reasons for the extension and, above all, why it was needed to introduce the extension, along with the other powers, with such speed.
I shall deal with the issues in turn as they affected our judgment on whether the guillotine was necessary. First, we looked at how far new section 13B, in clause 1, would extend the current powers under section 13A. The proposed new section will put the searches of pedestrians on the same basis as searches of vehicle occupants. I must tell my hon. Friends that there are more safeguards for pedestrians than there are for vehicle occupants. I must tell my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Derbyshire (Mr. Barnes) that outer body searches are all that are allowed, and not strip searches.
The power is more circumscribed than that for vehicle occupants, and includes a requirement that if a chief police officer requires the power for more than 48 hours, he must get the approval of the Secretary of State. The Secretary of State's approval can last initially for a further 26 days. No prosecution of any offence arising under the powers can take place without the permission of the Director of Public Prosecutions and, in addition, we have secured safeguards on monitoring. A regular report on the exercise of the powers will also be made to Parliament.
Mr. Madden:
What is the difference between the stop-and-search powers that have been in operation in the past month in the City and the Metropolitan police area
Mr. Straw:
I cannot answer the second question because, with great respect, I am only the shadow Home Secretary and not the Home Secretary.
Mr. Tony Banks:
It's only a matter of time, Jack.
Mr. Straw:
I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who made that sedentary intervention from the Back Benches with his usual good humour.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |