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Mr. Hain: There is a great deal of concern about hypocrisy on this matter. We find that hon. Members—mostly Liberal Democrats—vote against speeding up the process of evicting noisy neighbours, against issuing fixed penalty notices for antisocial behaviour and dispersal orders to tackle antisocial behaviour, against closing down crack houses in 48 hours and against fines for the parents of truants, and so on. Yet the Liberal Democrat candidate in Hodge Hill says that she supports all those measures. The voters will understand that that is plain hypocrisy.
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Points of Order
1.58 pm
Mr. Graham Allen (Nottingham, North) (Lab): On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. It is clear from the newspapers this morning that the press were informed last night—well before Parliament was informed today, and I have not yet been informed—of the decision to rate-cap certain authorities. May I ask you to underline the strictures that we have heard from you before—that the House should be informed of those matters, so that the Members of Parliament who represent those constituencies can, even at the last minute, make representations to Ministers, rather than being pre-empted by briefings given to the press the day before?
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst): I think that Mr. Speaker has great sympathy with hon. Members who find themselves in that position, but I venture to suggest that such matters may involve difficult questions of timing. The hon. Gentleman has put his point on the record, and no doubt Ministers will consider what he has said.
Alan Simpson (Nottingham, South) (Lab): Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. May I ask you to consider the fact that before today's business questions Members were not able to get the written statement on rate capping that was issued at 10 am today? I was able to obtain it only by getting a copy from the Library. No copies were made available for Members through the Vote Office before business questions.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: The hon. Gentleman has reinforced the point made by the hon. Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen), and I am sure that the matter will be examined.
Mr. Paul Tyler (North Cornwall) (LD): On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. We have been told that the Butler inquiry report is expected to be published next Wednesday and that the Prime Minister will make a statement thereafter. Not necessarily today, but in due course and perhaps early next week, can you give some indication of the likely timetable for that? It is an extremely important issue about which many Members will be concerned. If the statement is not immediately to follow Prime Minister's questions, which I understand may be the case, it would be helpful if, on Monday, Tuesday or whenever, the Chair could indicate when the statement is expected to be made.
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
I will ensure that the hon. Gentleman's point is brought to the attention of Mr. Speaker. There may also be activity in the same direction through the usual channels.
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ROYAL ASSENT
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst): I have to notify the House, in accordance with the Royal Assent Act 1967, that the Queen has signified her Royal Assent to the following Acts:
Gangmasters (Licensing) Act 2004
University of Manchester Act 2004
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Intelligence and Security Committee Annual Report 2003–04
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Joan Ryan.]
2.1 pm
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. David Blunkett): As the House will be aware, my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary and I interchange presentations on Intelligence and Security Committee reports, and it is my duty to lead this afternoon.
I thank the Committee for another thorough and constructive report, which scrutinises, examines and holds to account those in the services and the Ministers who oversee their work in an absolutely critical area. For myself and my right hon. Friend, I express appreciation for the unstinting work of the Chairman of the Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Dewsbury (Ann Taylor). She would be here this afternoon if she were not attending a more joyous occasion—celebrating the graduation of her son, whom we wish well. My right hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley (Mr. Barron) will do a sterling job in her place.
Our thanks are due, once again, to the security and intelligence services, to GCHQ, to the counter-terrorism branch and special branch forces across the country, and to the police. Their work stands between us and disaster. On a number of occasions, my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary and I have made it clear that whatever we do in terms of internal resilience and whatever steps we take in foreign policy, diplomacy and the tackling of causes across the world, the work of the intelligence and security services is vital in protecting our interests, and we thank them again for what they have done over the past 12 months, which has safeguarded us so far.
My right hon. Friend will reinforce my thanks to the outgoing head of the security and intelligence service and to his successor. My thanks are also due for the work of the commissioners for intelligence and interception, of the chief commissioner for surveillance and of the chair and members of the investigatory powers tribunal. I thank them because it is important to highlight on this annual occasion the level of scrutiny and oversight that takes place in those critical areas, in a way that does not exist anywhere else in the world. We are proud of that, and it is important in ensuring that my right hon. Friends the Foreign Secretary and the Secretaries of State for Northern Ireland and for Defence can undertake our duties knowing that there is proper scrutiny and that we are held to account through the monitoring of those bodies and by the House of Commons. Today is one of those occasions on which there is often more light than heat and on which we receive less coverage than we would on a subject featuring more hot air than considered judgment. Nevertheless, this is Parliament doing its job, ensuring that scrutiny is real.
As my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary will outline, there have been horrendous examples across the world over the past 12 months of how the threat is real and how we, in this House, were right in the way that we tackled matters in the aftermath of the events of
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11 September 2001. From Istanbul to Madrid and from Saudi Arabia to Morocco, we have seen incidents over the past few months involving real terror and the taking of life. We have seen, too, the preparation of that terror in other countries. I was with the Spanish Interior Minister when he made a presentation to European Interior Ministers earlier this week. He outlined the material that Spain has gathered, the lessons learned, and how critical it is to be able to track those who prepared the attack in Madrid on 11 March. He outlined the way in which that preparation spread its tentacles across national boundaries, and how people going about what appeared to be their normal business were actually preparing to turn into terrorists. Those people were not suspected, and they were holding down normal, professional jobs. They were not on the very edge of disadvantage, alienated and disaffected. They were, in the old cold war term, sleepers, waiting their opportunity to wreak terror and death on innocent civilians in Madrid.
We are beholden, as we consider how we undertake the work of protection and how we respond to the Intelligence and Security Committee report, to remind ourselves that people, in the House and outside, have been sceptical about whether measures were necessary, whether the threat would continue for years to come, and whether what my right hon. Friend and I have described in relation to franchised terrorism—the network that exists and the loose associations—really constituted a threat that could really require a war on terror. We believed that it could, and the tragic examples that we can give emphasise that that is the case.
In the United Kingdom, we have seen the superb work of our services disrupting and foiling potential attacks. The Metropolitan Police Commissioner, when reporting this morning on his decision to conclude his term in office in January—I thank him for his work, although there will be other opportunities to do so—described the way in which often hidden, unspoken, unpresented work can safeguard our interests in the capital and across the whole country. There are case-by-case incidents of which we do not hear publicly, and when we do hear about them there is often too much heat and not enough light, which gets in the way of the necessary investigations.
Often, cases are continuing. Often, there is an inability to spell out why statements cannot be made. That is just part of dealing with the kind of terror we face. We simply ask, as we have on other occasions, that people be patient about what we can do to make that work more apparent. We have seen how the much maligned and traduced part 4 of the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 has worked in practice. Over the past 12 months, since we last debated it in the House, and since February, when we debated the Newton Committee, Lord Carlisle's report and the annual renewal of provisions, the Special Immigration Appeals Commission has dealt with continuing cases of appeal. Fourteen cases have been dealt with, and 13 led to the original decision to certificate being upheld. I was grateful for how Lord Carlisle's report upheld the process by which those certifications had taken place.
I am grateful to the Special Immigration Appeals Commission, a court of superior record chaired by a High Court judge, for its work. One individual was released, which shows that the fear voiced by some MPs
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when the Act was passed that the commission would act as a rubber stamp was unfounded. The commission did not believe that the individual in question was free of connections with terrorism, but was unable to conclude that he had links with al-Qaeda and the international terrorist network.
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