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Mr. Tom Harris (Glasgow, Cathcart) (Lab) rose—
Mr. Grieve: But as I said to the Minister—I said it two weeks ago and I say it again—[Interruption.]
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst): Order. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman. The House must come to order. We must hear both sides of the argument clearly.
Mr. Grieve:
As I have said before to the Home Secretary, we are prepared to accept that control orders
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may in the short term be necessary, but at the moment we do not have the input from the security services that the Minister has, which is why we have spent the last week trying to improve the orders to remove those aspects that we consider intolerable. The Minister has not been willing to engage in that process, and I greatly regret that. He is showing no signs of doing so tonight.
Huw Irranca-Davies: On control orders specifically, the very fact that the security services and the police forces are asking for this measure seems to suggest that, however imperfect, we are trying to deliver a vehicle that is fit for purpose. What the hon. Gentleman is suggesting is that in nine months we scrap the vehicle entirely, as opposed to looking at it, revising it and renewing it. I suggest to him that the Government have at this stage of the morning bent over backwards to try and comply with some moderate way forward on this and he is now setting his face against it, and on Monday morning we may well have terrorists walking the streets of this country.
Mr. Grieve The alleged terrorists are going to be walking the streets tomorrow morning, irrespective of whether this legislation is passed or not and that is a measure of the Government's failure to address this issue over the last 12 months.
It is a straightforward issue. If the Government believed that civil liberties were important in this country they would consent to a sunset clause, if only to come back in 12 months' time and explain why, reluctantly, they had to continue with these measures. The fact that they will not taints the entire way in which they have approached this matter. I am left with the unpleasant sensation that the Government—[Interruption.] It is unpleasant, because I would much rather have had the Government persuade me of the necessity of these measures. I am left with the unpleasant sensation that the Government have been playing the cheapest form of politics with this matter, and we on this side of the House will vote to uphold the Lords amendments.
Mr. Heath: In my experience it is very rare that we have a rational debate at this time in the morning, and I think that the experience of the last few minutes has proved that point. It is unfortunate that yet again we are having to face an abbreviated debate on a matter of huge importance, and that we seem to be making so little progress in what ought to be a substantial debate on how we can improve the Bill.
The Minister says that no one has come up with any other proposal to meet her requirements. May I invite her to read Lords amendments Nos. 1, 8 and 12—Lords amendments ad nauseam that do the job that she has asked Parliament to do, which is to provide an adequate response to the agreed threat of terrorism and an adequate response to the needs that the security services and the police have identified? They provide her with the control orders that she has asked for, and they provide a court procedure that is adequate to meet the needs and the balance that the Home Secretary has suggested is the essential part of balancing the threat with the commensurate judicial procedures. All those things are in place, and she and her right hon. Friend have rejected them, so we are left debating the same topics, time and again.
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We have made some movement—I accept that, and the Minister knows that I have welcomed it—but we are left with these clear distinctions between our positions. Let us be absolutely clear what they are. First, we have the arbitrary distinction between derogating and non-derogating orders, which the Government perversely insist on, despite the advice of not only those in another place who have looked at this and who have a very clear view that there is no such arbitrary distinction, but Labour Members sitting behind her now who have indicated their complete dissatisfaction with that arbitrary distinction. So there is no distinction, yet we have a different judicial process.
Mr. David Watts (St. Helens, North) (Lab): Can the hon. Gentleman tell us whether any of the Lords or lawyers that we are talking about will be held accountable for any terrorist threat?
Mr. Heath: I can tell the hon. Gentleman that every Member of this House and every Member of the other House will be held responsible if we get this law wrong. If he believes that any Member of this House or any Member of the other House does not hold that as their prime responsibility, he is very mistaken, and I challenge him to find anyone who does not. The fact is that if we get it wrong, and if we produce bad law that creates resentment among many communities in this country, we are creating the circumstances in which terrorism breeds and increasing the dangers to the people of this country. That is what he needs to remember.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff, West) (Lab): On the sunset clause, Baroness Hayman, who moved the 12-month clause, has said in another place that, as the elected House has rejected it, the unelected House should now give way. Does the hon. Gentleman and his party agree with that?
Mr. Heath: I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman has understood the fact that we are elected. This is the elected House, and we reject the view of the Ministers.
Mr. Heath: We reject the view of the Government that there should be no end to the suspension of habeas corpus and the substantial departure from our traditional laws.
Kevin Brennan: Just to clarify this for the hon. Gentleman, Baroness Hayman, who moved the 12-month sunset clause, has said that the unelected House should give way at this point to the views of the elected House. [Interruption.] That is what she said. Does he agree that that should be the case and that the elected House should have its way—yes or no?
Mr. Heath:
The hon. Gentleman should be very careful with this. He is quoting in aid a Labour Member of the other House who made a perfectly sensible proposition that was agreed by 250 peers and disagreed
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to by but 100 peers. That view has been reinforced by the most recent vote of the House of Lords, and she abstained. I believe she was right.
2 am
I say again to Ministers that I welcome the small amount of movement this evening. Let us get back to the serious content of the amendments. I welcome what the Minister said about the independent reviewer, who will have a crucial role to play in the process. As she knows, we would like a Privy Council Committee in addition to the independent reviewer, because we believe that that could do a better job of deriving the legislation we need to fight terrorism effectively. It has been admitted from the Dispatch Box in another place that this measure is not adequate, that we need new laws to fight terrorism properly, and that that will be the first responsibility of an incoming Government, of whatever persuasion, after the general election. It is an essential and urgent task. That makes it even more bizarre that the Government are prepared to accept this inadequate legislation—described clearly as inadequate from the Dispatch Box in another place and implied by Ministers in this place, as well—and that there is no proposal to make that legislation come to the end of its natural life next year so that it can be replaced by better legislation.
Let us look at amendment (a), which the Minister did not greatly amplify—[Interruption.] All those Members who jeer and say that they will always reject a sunset clause should note that 33A begins:
"Except so far as otherwise provided under this section, sections 1 to 6 expire at the end of the period of 12 months beginning with the day on which this Act is passed."
The House has gone quiet. That is a Government amendment saying that the Act will expire. The proposed new clause goes on to qualify that provision in ways that I find unacceptable, because they do not actually do the job. But let us not pretend that there is a great divide of principle between the Government and the Opposition on what happens to terrorism legislation. The Government have given the game away.
I close with this point. Earlier, my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) referred to the frank, and hardly surprising, comment made by the Lord Chancellor in another place. He was asked directly whether the security services had recommended that the Bill should have no sunset clause, and he said "No"—in frank contradistinction to what the Prime Minister said on Wednesday at the Dispatch Box in Prime Minister's questions. It was nonsense when the Prime Minister said it then. The Lord Chancellor has let the cat out of the bag. There is no argument that we should not have the clause. We should. That is why it is right that the amendments should go back to another place—[Interruption.] The Minister is shaking her head. Perhaps we should have an answer. Will she tell us? Have the security services recommended that or not?
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