Schedule 1
Counter-Terrorism Bill
11:00 am
Dominic Grieve (Shadow Attorney General, Law Officers; Beaconsfield, Conservative)
I will move on to that in a moment. One of the most noteworthy issues in our debate has been whether there is evidence that 28 days is proving insufficient. As I think the hon. Gentleman might find himself conceding in the course of the debate, it appears that absolutely no one has been able to come forward and say that 28 days is not sufficient at present. No evidence to this Committee suggested that, and when the Home Affairs Committee took its evidence back in the autumn of 2007, there was no one available to make such an argument. As the hon. Gentleman knows, a number of individuals, ranging from the Director of Public Prosecutions, from whom we heard only a fortnight ago, to Lord Goldsmith, who was the Attorney-General at the time of the debate on extension to 90 days, were utterly emphatic that they could think of no circumstances at present—one cannot go into hypotheses—in which they considered that anything beyond 28 days would be required. In fairness to the police, although I shall come to some of the flaws in the presentation of their case, they have acknowledged that they have never required more than 28 days in any case so far.
I say to the hon. Gentleman that whatever was said in 2006, or indeed in the debate in 2005 on changing to 90 days, in which I was heavily involved, some of the anxieties that were expressed then do not seem to have materialised. Moreover, as he will know, we have pointed out that although the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 is an imperfect instrument for the purposes of lengthening detention, if there were multiple plots sufficient to trigger a state of emergency, which they almost certainly would, it could provide for an extension. I shall return to that in a moment, although I do not wish to take up too much of the Committee’s time.
We are debating whether there should be an extension beyond 28 days not in a state of emergency but on the basis of a decision taken by the Secretary of State, following a report from a chief officer of police and the DPP, on the need to operate a new reserve power. It is not about a state of emergency at all. I say to the hon. Gentleman that the evidence is overwhelming that those who are the most intimately involved have found no objective basis to justify going beyond the already lengthy period of 28 days—a month.
When I consider a month’s detention, it troubles me to think what that means in practice. I know that in at least one case in which an individual was detained for the full 28 days, he had no mental health problems at the start of his detention. At the end of the period, concern was expressed that he was developing serious mental health problems. The case is perfectly documented, and the Minister will know about it. I do not want to go into the detail of individual names and cases. Detaining somebody for such a long period, not in a prison or a normal environment, but in Paddington Green police station, in considerable isolation, is an extremely oppressive thing to do to the human psyche. I have seen a copy of bits of the report of a psychologist who had treated such a detainee, detailing concerns that such treatment was likely to lead to mental health breakdown. These are not slight matters.