Counter-Terrorism Bill

Part of Points of Order – in the House of Commons at 8:30 pm on 13 October 2008.

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Photo of Christopher Huhne Christopher Huhne Shadow Secretary of State for Home Affairs, Home Affairs, Shadow Secretary of State for Justice & Lord Chancellor, Ministry of Justice 8:30, 13 October 2008

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Far from making us safer, which is the Home Secretary's principal contention, will she now admit that her changes, repeated in this new Bill, would have alienated minority communities in the same way that internment alienated the Catholic community in Ulster? Democracies put a torch to their own traditions at their peril, because they abandon the high ground and get down in the dirt where the terrorists want us. Does the Home Secretary now recognise, in failing to threaten the Parliament Act and in putting forward this fig leaf of temporary provisions, that her majority in the Commons was press-ganged by her Whips, and that she had no mandate from her manifesto and no moral authority to press ahead, since her majority is based on just 35 per cent. of the popular vote?