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Baroness Park of Monmouth: My Lords, I find it difficult to follow that moving speech. I support the amendment because 60 days is still a great deal better than 28. The arguments for more time remain the same, although more urgent. The two key problems which inhibit the chances for a charge being made within the time limit are the same. The pressure on insufficient resources is greater. There really is a very limited supply of people with the highly technical linguistic and decryption skills to extract from masses of complex material the necessary evidence—and it has to be evidence—to allow a charge to be formulated.

If the police arrest four presumed terrorists, that will produce four sets of complex and sophisticated material. I shall be very surprised if there are four such teams available, particularly as they must work under great pressure and are meanwhile not available for other work. Indeed, the press this week reports an MI5 trawl through transcripts and video footage alone, which suggests that there has been a serious lack of resources there. They and the police both need people with specialised linguistic and decryption skills; they are both looking for needles in haystacks.

Then there is the problem of the time needed to follow up clues in the international dimension which characterises the present terrorist threat. The IRA was a relatively domestic problem. Asking for answers from a foreign security service with its own agenda and own pace is not the same as checking with a domestic police force, where we can set the priorities.

In a previous debate on this issue, the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, described convincingly the difficulty of following up leads abroad through friendly intelligence services, each with their own agenda, and most far less well organised than ours, in time before the detention period runs out. Suppose that the resources team finds a clue in the first week of detention, which leads abroad. At present, the police and the intelligence services have a maximum of three weeks after that and only if they have secured extensions after 14 days to follow up these inquiries. How practical is that? How can they possibly get the answer in two and a half weeks? Unless they can secure at least up to—it is always up to—60 days, there is a very real chance that the suspects will have to be released before the crucial evidence, if it exists, has been obtained.

I want to quote the wise words of the late Lord Merlyn-Rees, whom we have so sadly lost, in Hansard on 13 December. He said:

If suspects have to be released before the follow-up of clues both domestically and abroad, the police then have to begin all over again and no one, incidentally, will know whether the suspects were or were not innocent.
 
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Even up to 60 days would give the police and the security services at least a chance to find the evidence on which to base a charge. Does it make sense to ignore the advice of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, who believes that, given the role of a senior judge, 90 days is probably a practical and sensible option. I do not know whether he would settle for 60 days. He advocated, however, that more could be done in terms of a more searching system of control week by week to recognise the seriousness—and we do recognise the seriousness—of the state holding someone in high security custody for as long as three months.

Returning to the main issue of proof and of the deprivation of liberty, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris of Aberavon, recognised that:

And arguing for earlier arrest and therefore a greater need for the burden of proof, he said that if the wrongdoer slipped the net before there is enough evidence to charge him it could be too late.

Some of the opposition to 90 or even 60 days springs from the view that we are sending a hostile message to the whole Muslim community, and here I echo what the noble Lord said. We are told that it would be counter-productive as the present terrorist threat comes in the wake of the events of July last year. It is not unnatural that, at this time, we should relate our action to that sector of international terrorism. We are told that this will be counter-productive and encourage young men to martyrdom because those who advocate terrorism and challenge the values of the West will point to this provision—90 days—as illustrating why they must challenge our values and norms. But that is allowing would-be terrorists to set our national agenda. I am sure that law-abiding decent Muslim communities, who are as British as we are, would wish us to do all that is necessary to bring terrorists from whatever culture to justice and to protect the public of which they are part. It is not right for us to assume that in preventing a handful, though a deeply dangerous handful, of young people from taking to themselves the right to set our national agenda through terror, we are failing to show respect to the Muslim community, who are British themselves and by no means wish to become part of a worldwide Sharia state—certainly not through terror.

Finally, I well understand and share the deep concern felt by many that in seeking this extension of up to—only up to—60 days, we are in danger of eroding our precious heritage of civil liberties, and especially the principle of innocent until proved guilty. I do not wish to do that; none of us does. There is, however, a sunset clause in this Bill which means that we can think again. In a year from now, or better still, two, there will have been time to increase to some extent the specialist resources without which the police will almost certainly be unable to find the evidence, if it exists, to make a charge or not. In that time it should be possible to create the further safeguards advocated by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, and Sir Swinton Thomas. Can it be right to deny the police,
 
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as 28 days will almost certainly do, the time to do their job, and yet to require them to start the hopeless process again with undiminished zeal as and when more suspects are identified? I urge the House to vote for up to, and only up to, 60 days, to be reviewed under the sunset clause, to give time for international checks to be made where necessary, but above all, for more resources to be built up.

5.15 pm

Baroness Ramsay of Cartvale: My Lords, I support the amendment. Following an outstanding debate in this Chamber in Committee in December, on an amendment that I proposed, supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Park, the noble Lord, Lord Imbert, and my noble friend Lord Foulkes, for pre-charge detention of up to 90 days—a debate described by the Minister at the time as one of the most extraordinary in this House for some considerable time—I think that the House is owed an explanation as to why we are not bringing forward such an amendment at Report but are supporting a provision that would allow detention of up to 60 days.

The amendment is an attempt, after much consultation and consideration, to deal with the doubts of those noble Lords who genuinely feared that up to 90 days was a step too far or who did not feel that it was right to send back to the Commons something that had been fully debated and decided there. Because of Commons procedures, the amendment allowing detention for up to 60 days was never considered at all there. Personally, I would prefer to accept the advice on adopting 90 days from the counter-terrorism experts in the Met, ACPO and ACPO Scotland, as I am convinced by their arguments. Those arguments are summed up in the detailed and compelling seven-page attachment to the letter from Assistant Commissioner Hayman to the Home Secretary, which we have all seen—the points are very much echoed in paragraphs 57 to 60 of the report of the independent reviewer, the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew. It is crystal clear to me that 28 days is totally inadequate to meet the current needs of our police and that, if Parliament would agree to up to 60 days, that would give them at least a better opportunity to deal with the time-consuming complexities that are now facing them.

Standing here today, I feel very much the loss of two noble friends, for whom I had much affection and who were supporters of my amendment for 90 days in Committee—the much admired and respected Lord Merlyn-Rees and Lord Stratford, who was new to this House but a long-serving and distinguished parliamentarian. It is very sad that, for both of them, their interventions in support of that amendment on 13 December were their final parliamentary speeches.

As I have said before, the complexity and difference in nature of the current terrorist threat demands complex and different responses from previous counter-terrorism measures in this country. The police have to move in to detain suspects at a much earlier
 
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stage than is the practice in other criminal cases, when suspects can be allowed to continue under surveillance so that evidence is accumulated. In the case of terrorist suspects, no one can dare to allow a case to run, as that would risk losing track of a suspect and enabling a terrible terrorist attack to take place. We are now faced by fanatics aiming for maximum havoc of death and injury, who are ready to sacrifice themselves to achieve it. Those people often have international links—organisational or individual—which have to be painstakingly traced through foreign liaison services of varying degrees of capability and resources, and even willingness, to co-operate. The suspects use advanced technology, often involving encryption, resulting in masses of material to be sifted and analysed.

The provision of an adequate supply of technical experts as well as of interpreters and translators to deal with that huge volume of material all slows the process. As Assistant Commissioner Hayman has pointed out, it is not a question of resources alone, because the procedures—some of them inevitably consequential—will take time, a point that was echoed in the report of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile. I cannot see how a maximum of 60 days of pre-charge detention, with a senior judge having to be satisfied every seven days that there is just cause for a further seven days' detention, would be an unjustified infringement of civil liberties, especially with a sunset clause in the Bill.

For me the issue is clear and stark. We are faced with an extraordinary threat to our national security and those who are tasked to meet that threat have asked us for a longer pre-charge detention period, which they consider necessary for them to fulfil their responsibilities. They have made a cogent case, supported by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, for more time in which to establish evidence. I will not repeat here the words that my noble friend Lord Sewel quoted in introducing this amendment, which he said were "chilling"—indeed they are. It is clear to me that 28 days is wholly insufficient and wrong. I urge the House to give the Commons the opportunity to consider 60 days, and to vote for this amendment tonight.

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