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The Prosser Perspective.... a weekly column from Dover and Deal MP Gwyn Prosser

18 October 2007

It was a particularly busy recess this year and the first week back in Parliament was hectic. On the first day we had the Prime Minister’s statement on Iraq with the announcement of further UK troop reductions. The next day we debated the Chancellor’s Pre-Budget Statement which mapped out the Government’s investment and revenue plans for the next year and later we had Alistair Darling’s 2007 Comprehensive Spending Review which lays down the Government’s spending proposals for the next three years.

But as always, outside the Chamber there’s been lots of hard work which has gone largely unreported in the national press. The work of the influential Home Affairs Committee – where I’ve served for six years – continued with its inquiry into international terrorism and the vexed question of detention of suspected terrorists prior to charge.

I’m convinced that we should listen to the pleas of the police who urged the Government to allow up to a maximum of 90 days detention when considered necessary – and that’s what I voted for in last years terrorism debate.

Unfortunately, Tory MPs – aided and abetted by the Lib Dems and some Labour rebels – voted the powers down and we had to settle for a compromise proposal limiting detention to 28 days. I understand my colleagues' concerns about the principles of habeas corpus but I don’t think they fully appreciate the nature of the current threat.

As the Police Commissioner told our committee last week – the degree of threat from today’s international terrorist is of a different order to that faced at any time in the past.

Some people make the comparison with the IRA terror campaign but without wishing to condone their actions in any way – it’s important to recognise the very important differences between what was happening then and what’s happening now. Firstly, the IRA tried to give warnings of their attacks. Secondly, despite the carnage they caused they didn’t aim to commit indiscriminate mass murder and thirdly the IRA militants were not suicide bombers.

It’s these fundamental differences that make the Al-Qaeda threat so difficult to combat and makes the security services task in investigating cases so much more complex.

Each new terrorism attack, such as this summer’s Haymarket car bomb and the foiled attack on Glasgow Airport – underlines the need to allow police more time to investigate terrorism plots. Just one investigation can involve the deciphering of dozens of computer drives, hundreds of mobile phone accounts and thousands of hours of CCTV film.

Parliament had knowledge of these complexities when the 90 day proposal was thrown out but our opponents argued that the police had not put forward a strong enough case and that the Home Secretary had failed to convince the whole of the House of the need for such a radical change in police powers. But Britain’s top cop thinks we need to anticipate the need for extra powers now, saying it would be folly to delay making the changes until we come under another attack – and I will back his judgement against that of our political opponents