Vince Cable Quizzes PM On National Security

5.02.00pm GMT Thu 15th Nov 2007

[Nov 14] . . Vincent Cable: I add my welcome to the statement. I totally agree with the Prime Minister that, as far as possible, we should proceed on national security issues on the basis of political consensus. As someone who once worked in government alongside the intelligence and security services, I have always respected their professionalism and the need for them to be properly supported.

There is already a great deal of consensus and progress on areas where we have common ground. We welcome the progress made on post-charge questioning. Many of the ideas put forward by Lord West on building design seem, at first sight, eminently sensible and worthy of support. The Prime Minister has reported the progress on intercept evidence, for which we have argued. We have also long argued for a unified border force, and share the concern expressed about the lack of integration with the police and the danger of two forces working in parallel. Perhaps he will set out what the O'Donnell report concluded on the matter, so that we can make progress.

Pre-charge detention remains our main concern, and the issue is not separate from that of confidence in the minority communities, about which the Prime Minister spoke at length, because it is of great concern to them. On the issue of all-party consensus, there is already substantial consensus that we should not proceed beyond the present 28 days. That consensus embraces both Houses of Parliament, the Home Affairs Committee, the Joint Committee on Human Rights and many bodies outside. Let me quote to him the evidence of Rachel North, one of the victims of the 7/7 bombing, who had no party political axe to grind and summarised the situation admirably: "I have not seen anything that convinces me that longer than 28 days is needed to stop people such as...Mohammed Sidique Khan...detonating his bombs in the future...it's fundamentally important to us as a country that we do not hold people without them knowing what they're being charged with and why".

Does the Prime Minister agree that the decision on the issue must be evidence-based? Is it not the case that of the 1,143 arrests under the Terrorism Act 2000, it has not been argued seriously in a single case that extended detention would have helped in their prosecution? Has not the Home Secretary acknowledged in parliamentary testimony that there has not yet been a single case that would have been helped by an extended period of detention?

Does the Prime Minister agree that comparative experience is highly relevant, and that other countries with experience of dealing toughly with terrorism do not have such long periods of pre-charge detention? The United States has, I believe, two days, Turkey has seven and Spain has five. Why is Britain so fundamentally different in those respects?

Finally, I want to ask the Prime Minister a series of specific questions, some of which are on issues that he touched on in his statement. First, on control orders, the previous Home Secretary acknowledged that the system was full of holes and that six of the controlees had absconded. Is the system to be preserved or scrapped, as it does not seem to work?

Does the Prime Minister accept the growing volume of opinion that additional plea bargaining in terrorist cases would be useful to enable a wider range of witnesses who are peripheral to terrorist organisations giving evidence in court?

Can the Prime Minister update us on the police radio issue, as there are reports that police radios still do not work in parts of the underground system and in many tall buildings? Will he indicate what progress has been made on that?

Will the Prime Minister give us a report on the review of the relationship between MI5 and MI6? Clearly, they are distinct organisations with distinct mandates, but what has been done to improve information flow and co-operation between them?

In relation to international co-operation, will the Prime Minister update us on his comments on 25 July about the co-operative work with President Sarkozy and the Germans on terrorism in Europe? Has that work advanced? In view of the crucial importance of cross-border co-operation, does he think that it was perhaps premature to have achieved an opt-out from the European treaty provisions in relation to counter-terrorism?

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Gordon Brown (Prime Minister): I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, and welcome the fact that he has supported most of what was contained in the statement. On control orders, yes, we continue to use them, and their use was upheld in the courts recently. As for plea bargaining, that is allowed. On the police radio, the Airwave system is now being spread out across the forces, and considerable investment has been made. Co-operation with the French and German Governments is moving forward, and there is an attempt not just to have cross-border co-operation on immediate terrorist issues but to find a way to encourage a European Islamic scholarship across the countries of Europe.

International co-operation will form part of the greater detail of the national security strategy. As for the national border agency, a detailed report published today sets out the relationship between the immigration and customs services, and all the work being done at the moment. The most important consideration is that those who work at the single point of entry have power not just to deal with the traditional cases with which they have had to deal in their own areas, but to stop people for reasons related to terrorism and take action.

The hon. Gentleman raised, primarily, the question of the 28-day limit. I understand that the Liberal Democrats have taken a strong view on the matter, although Lord Carlile, the independent reviewer and a member of the Liberal Democratic party, has stated categorically that in the work he has done he has accepted the need for further days at some point. He says that there will be "cases in which the maximum of 28 days will be proved inadequate".

The hon. Gentleman raised the issue of what evidence we had. At the time of the last airline plot the police had to deal with 400 separate computers and 8,000 discs, including compact discs and DVDs. They had to deal with people with false identities and false passports who were operating from numerous addresses with numerous bank accounts. Sometimes it is difficult in the first instance to know exactly who has been arrested.

I have had the same experience as Home Office Ministers and police in relation to the freezing of terrorist assets. I did not answer a question from the Leader of the Opposition about why asset-freezing required new powers. The availability of information and the ability to use it in one's defence in the courts if challenged has been the central issue in regard to asset-freezing over the past few years, and that has made it more difficult for us to do the things that we need to do.

I hope that, over time, the Liberal Democrats will come to accept that there are instances in which it may be necessary for people to be detained beyond 28 days. In such instances, there would be full safeguards that would include not just the approval of a judge but the involvement of the Director of Public Prosecutions before any action was taken, and a proper report to the House of Commons and a study by the independent reviewer so that people would know what was happening in each specific instance. It seems to me that in such cases the issue is not the arbitrariness of the procedure, because we are protecting against that, but whether we are satisfied that there are occasions on which either multiple plots or complex investigations will require more than 28 days' detention.

There is one point on which I disagree with the hon. Gentleman. It is not possible to make an exact comparison between the legal and policing systems of all countries. I think the hon. Gentleman will agree that under the British system, people who are arrested are brought to court very quickly. That is not the case in other countries. When the figure of 20, 30 or 15 days is used in those countries, it sometimes relates to the time that it takes to bring people to court in the first place. Under the British system people are brought to court early, and the safeguards that we are trying to incorporate will require a judge constantly to determine whether a detention is still justified.

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