Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill

Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 21st September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB) [V]]

In thanking the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, for his very clear and careful introduction of the Bill, I thank him, the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice for making the changes that need to be made to sentencing legislation in the form of amendments to the code. This was a vital first act in that respect. Of course, it may not appear easy to follow as incorporated in the Bill before us, but it is plain from the way in which the code will be developed that judges will have before them all the provisions in the right place in one document. This is a huge step forward. The ministry and the Home Office deserve thanks for adhering to this Bill, unlike what happened in 2003.

I want to make three points of substance, two relating to the provisions in Part 1 of the Bill and one relating to Part 3. The first, in relation to Part 1, relates to the sentencing of youths and, in particular, Clause 4. It is clear that sentencing those under 21 is the most difficult task for a court. In relation to terrorist offences it is particularly difficult, partly because they are the people who are most suggestible or susceptible to persuasion to embark on terrorism and, in my experience, at least some of those who have committed offences have had learning or other difficulties. I think there can be little doubt that evidence exists to say that such persons are deterred by the prospect of long sentences. It seems to me that the clause ought to be examined in terms of whether the emphasis is in the right place on dealing with someone for the future and ensuring that that person does not in the longer term pursue a career of terrorism. It is an area where it is essential that the judge has full information and should be left to form a judgment.

The second point that I want to make on Part 1 is on the provisions for minimum terms, whether for life sentences, extended sentences or custodial sentences. The general principle should be that there should not be minimum terms unless there is a compelling justification. This is particularly so in relation to offences where there is a huge range of conduct that can be brought within the section, some less serious and some of the utmost severity. Section 5 of the 2006 Act is a very clear illustration of the range that can be encompassed and the difficulties to which it gives rise.

There are guidelines now and I have no doubt that the Sentencing Council will produce new guidelines to reflect the changes. The judges who try these cases are few and, by and large, the courts have been very tough. We need to be very careful in our scrutiny of the provisions for minimum sentences as applied by the Bill.

On TPIMs, perhaps I may make one or two brief observations. First, the use of control orders and TPIMs has a long history and it is clear that they have played an important role in dealing with terrorism. However, that long history makes two things clear. There needs first to be proper judicial scrutiny of all aspects of them. In looking at the amendment made by Clause 37 to the standard of proof, we need to be particularly careful about whether the test set out there is capable of good judicial scrutiny. The second concerns the need for a maximum period. There is quite strong evidence that one of the worst effects of imprisonment for public protection where there are no defined limits to the end point is that the lack of a defined limit can lead to people losing hope and becoming more dangerous. We ought to examine carefully whether we do not wish to impose a maximum, or at least subject that maximum to judicial approval.

Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill

Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 9th February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hamwee (LD) [V]]

My Lords, given the experience of those who have put their names to the amendments in this group, I wonder whether I should say nothing so as not to damage the arguments—but I will join in.

It will be clear enough to the Committee that we on these Benches have considerable concerns about this part of the Bill. I hope that the Committee will understand that this does not mean that we do not take very seriously indeed the threat and actuality of terrorism and the work undertaken by our agencies. I say that because our amendments to the Covert Human Intelligence Sources Bill, which we completed earlier, seemed to be heard by some noble Lords as opposition to covert sources period when we were directing ourselves to authorisations to commit crime by the mechanism of making the action not a crime. I do not want too much to be read into what I am saying. This is not opposition, as I say, to the work of those who keep us as safe as they possibly can.

We are not hugely keen on TPIMs, especially on their acquiring extensions that take them back closer to control orders. We consider it appropriate to test these administrative measures in terms of how they measure up to the presumption of innocence, fair trial, liberty and all the matters that we as a society hold to be important, knowing the damage that might be done by letting them slip. We are of course aware of the Government’s argument that it is not the TPIMs themselves that we should be looking to, but the application of particular measures. If you look at that from a slightly different perspective, it is a good argument for legislative safeguards.

At the time of the last three-monthly report to Parliament on 30 November, only three TPIM notices were in force, there having been six the previous May. That begs the question as to the need for these clauses. The Home Office fact sheet on lowering the standard of proof tells us that this would

“increase flexibility by making it more practical for operational partners to demonstrate an individual is, or has been, involved in terrorism-related activity.”

That requirement should indeed be more than merely suspected.

The noble Lord, Lord Anderson, referred to the statement in the Commons by the Minister. The current standard of proof does not seem to have prevented the imposition of TPIMs. The current independent reviewer has made the same point, so this is not even a matter of administrative convenience. These measures may be civil but they can, quite understandably, be perceived as a parallel system of punishment without trial, but currently on the basis of the civil standard.

The noble Lord, Lord Anderson, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, seek to meet the Government part way. We take the view that the alterations are not justified. I have referred to the current Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation. To quote from his note on this part of the Bill,

“it is inevitable from the nature of intelligence that mistakes may be made. The significance of an individual’s actions may potentially be misinterpreted; their adherence to a cause overstated; their intentions misunderstood, if only partially. A safeguard that requires the Secretary of State to consider the intelligence presented to her by officials, and decide whether the individual has actually been involved in the terrorist-related activity that is alleged against them, and which allows a court to review that decision in the light of all information presented to it, is not an impediment to safeguarding national security.”

We oppose this clause standing part of the Bill.

[Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB) [V]]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, spoke with such eloquence in making all the points that I can confine myself to making four short points.

First, as he rightly stressed, this is an important part of the conditions for TPIMs because it enables a judge and the Home Secretary, when making the decision, to concentrate on the factual evidence in relation to terrorist activity. The other conditions are more difficult to establish, or it might be more a question of judgment, but this at least concentrates on the facts.

Secondly, the amendment seeks what some may feel is an overgenerous compromise. I do not think so; I think that it is right to say that, for the first and initial period, a lower standard can be acceptable.

However, thirdly, that cannot be acceptable when one is looking at longer periods where a person’s liberty is to be constrained—particularly with the amendment that we will come to next, which concerns the indefinite detention period.

Fourthly, and finally, it seems to me that there can be no justification for making such a change unless there is evidence. Indeed, what was said about the position in the other place has been clearly set out.

I ask the Minister to set out fully what he believes is the evidence for this change. If he cannot do so in public on this occasion, there must be a means of informing those who are interested in this matter of the evidence so that it can be carefully reviewed before we impose on people accused of obviously very serious issues a standard of proof that really is completely unacceptable in any civilised society.

[Lord Faulks (Non-Afl) [V]]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, has given your Lordships a very clear and succinct history of control orders and TPIMs—as one would expect, given his experience. He pointed out very fairly that control orders had the very same test that it is now proposed in the Bill should be used to decide whether a TPIM is appropriate. It is also worth pointing out that control orders were highly controversial and subject to a considerable number of challenges in the courts to see whether they survived a proper challenge based on the European Court of Human Rights and the convention. They survived that, which will reassure your Lordships.

I accept that the amendment put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, which is supported by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, is relatively modest, and I understand the reasoning for it, whereas the amendment put forward by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, goes rather further and seems to involve a degree of subjectivity—although I will listen with interest to what he says—and that subjectivity might be difficult to satisfy.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, has withdrawn from this group, so I call the next speaker on the list, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd.

[Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB) [V]]

I want to add only one point to what the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, has just said, because I agree with the entirety of it. That one point is derived from my own experience of dealing with people who were imprisoned indefinitely under the IPP regime. During the hearing of several appeals, it became apparent that indefinite detention often makes someone more dangerous because you take away hope. I very much anticipate that we would never get to the stage where we made TPIMs that lasted for a person’s entire lifetime. The TPIM would have to come to an end at some stage, and, to my mind, giving someone a clear expectation of when the period of restriction is to end helps in dealing with the individual and prevents making him more dangerous by depriving him of any hope.

[Lord Strasburger (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I wish to argue that Clause 38 should not stand part of the Bill. In my contribution on Clause 37, I mentioned my general worries about the TPIM regime and how it circumvents all the safeguards in the criminal justice system. Those safeguards are there for a very good reason: to ensure that our trials are fair and that we do not punish people without a high degree of certainty that they deserve it. However, for the purposes of this debate, I will focus on the process that the imposition of TPIMs follows in place of a proper criminal trial and how unsatisfactory that process is by comparison with the real thing.

For TPIMs, a criminal trial is replaced by civil proceedings before a High Court judge. The Government present evidence to support their case for the target person to have their liberty and their other rights curtailed. I have called them “the target person” rather than “the defendant” because they have not been charged with anything and they are completely unable to defend themselves. That is because the evidence against them is presented in private to the judge without the target person’s knowledge. They are unable to see, challenge or contradict the so-called evidence because neither they nor their lawyer is aware of it. This process, known as closed material proceedings, is a very poor substitute for a proper trial, where evidence is presented in open court and the defendant’s lawyer can challenge it, present other evidence that contradicts it and cross-examine the person who provided it.

I mention all this because Clause 38, if enacted, would mean that a person made the subject of a TPIM in such an unfair and unsafe manner and confined to their home and subjected to other losses of their rights could find themselves in this position indefinitely, for ever, even for the rest of their lives. That is extremely harsh treatment for someone who may be innocent and has not been convicted of any crime. This treatment is far harsher than if they had been convicted in a criminal court and been sentenced to a few years in prison. In the worlds of the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, when he was the Independent Reviewer of Terrorist Legislation:

“TPIMs … are as stringent as anything available in a western democracy.”


He considered the case for lifting the two-year cap, as Clause 38 would do, in his report on TPIMs in 2012. He concluded that the two-year limit was an acceptable compromise because two years was a serious length of time in the life of an individual and TPIMs should not be allowed to become a shadow alternative to criminal prosecution. Indeed, the Government themselves endorsed the two-year limit and in 2015 cited the observation of the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, that there was no need to “put the clock back”. The Government went further and said:

“The two-year limit is a reminder that executive constraints of this kind are no substitute for the criminal process, and no long-term solution”.


What has changed the Government’s mind such that they wish to turn it into a long-term process? I am hoping the Minister will enlighten the House when he responds, and I hope that this time he can come up with something better than a meaningless reference to flexibility or that there is no need for it now but who knows what we might need in the future. To abolish the two-year time limit and replace it with an indefinite period of successive extensions, without even troubling the court, there would need to be a compelling operational case, would there not? However, no such compelling case has been made. In fact, no case at all has been offered by the Government, so far as I am aware. Given that fact, and given, as I mentioned earlier, the flimsy and unsatisfactory nature of the TPIM process as an alternative to our proper and fair criminal justice system, we cannot countenance allowing TPIMs to be made indefinite by means of Clause 38. It must go.

Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill

Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd Excerpts

Report stage & Lords Hansard
Wednesday 3rd March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strasburger (LD) [V]]

I speak in support of Amendments 15, 17 and 18, which would remove Clauses 34, 35 and 37 from the Bill. Each of those clauses would, if retained, significantly increase the severity of the TPIM regime or reduce the safeguards against the misuse of TPIMs and miscarriages of justice. Their combined effect would result in a dramatic increase in the powers of the Secretary of State, all to the detriment of fairness, justice and the freedom of those subjected to TPIMs.

The existing TPIM regime gives the Home Secretary the power to confine an individual to a property, perhaps located a long distance from their home, with a plethora of restrictions on how they live their lives and communicate. These clauses would give the Secretary of State new powers to impose a total 24/7 curfew, which is effectively house arrest, and to make this non-stop detention unending, permanent or until the person dies.

The subjects of TPIMs, who may never have been convicted of anything, could be condemned to a far longer period of incarceration than violent criminals and terrorists who have been convicted and sentenced by a court. That could happen without them knowing the allegations against them and without them having had any chance to see the evidence on which those assertions are based, let alone to challenge and refute them. Clause 34, even after being amended by the Government, makes it even easier for the Secretary of State to decide, at the stroke of a pen, to put an individual under this tough house arrest regime.

As the law now stands, she needs to believe, on the balance of probabilities, that the person is or has been involved in terrorism. I am no lawyer, but I can still do arithmetic and I take “on the balance of probabilities” to mean that there is a greater than 50% chance that she is right and the person is a terrorist. The clause changes the threshold from “on the balance of probabilities” to “reasonable belief”. Since the Government accept that this change lowers the burden of proof, I calculate that that means that the probability of them being a terrorist could be less than 50%, but they could still be locked away indefinitely. That means that the probability of them not being a terrorist threat could be greater than the probability that they are.

How could that come about? It could just be an honest mistake, based on flimsy evidence. We had a very strong hint that this does happen, when the current Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, who has access to classified material, gave evidence to the Public Bill Committee. He said:

“There is a risk that mistakes can be made about assessing intelligence. I have reason to believe that. My concern is that you are opening up a greater margin of error if the standard of proof is lowered. It is a fairness issue based on the authorities having all the cards.”—[Official Report, Commons, Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill Committee, 25/6/20; col. 6.]


Answering another question, he said that he knew of instances where the intelligence had been misunderstood. There you have it: a highly reputable and well-informed person is warning us that innocent people are being punished under the current standard of proof, let alone the lower standard to which the Government would have us agree, under Clause 34, as amended.

What sort of country are we becoming if we are prepared to lock somebody away, all day and all night, indefinitely, even if the chance of them not being a threat is greater than the chance that they are, and having given them no chance to defend themselves? Why, you might ask, are the Government seeking to tilt the scales, not once but three times, towards even more draconian powers, with less justice and fewer safeguards against mistakes or abuse? You would think that there must be strong and compelling reasons for this triple assault on the fairness of our justice system, but the sad truth is that the explanations that have been offered during the passage of the Bill are utterly threadbare and unconvincing. They have the appearance of having been retrofitted, long after these clauses were added to the Bill, in a forlorn attempt to justify the unjustifiable.

The Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, with all his inside knowledge, searched for a good reason to lower the burden of proof and failed to find one. He said that

“it is not clear why there is any need to change the law in the manner proposed …where harsher measures are to be imposed, safeguards should be encouraged, not jettisoned.”

He also said that

“there is reason to doubt whether there exists an operational case for changing the TPIM regime at this … time.”

That is as forthright a condemnation of these three clauses as we are ever likely to hear from someone in his position.

What reasons have the Government come up with to justify lowering the burden of proof and therefore diminishing the safeguards against mistakes and misuse? We have been told that it will be easier to impose a TPIM, which frankly is a transparently circular argument. We have been told how hard it is to gather evidence to satisfy the current burden of proof. We have been told about pro-ISIS fighters returning from Syria being difficult to investigate. We have been told that it would simplify administration, although that is hardly a good reason for increasing the probability that innocent people are incarcerated by mistake.

All of these supposed justifications and all the others that have turned up and disappeared along the way were comprehensively holed below the water line by the Government’s star witness giving evidence to the Bill Committee. Assistant Chief Constable Tim Jacques gave evidence of behalf of the police and the intelligence services on 25 June last year. In answer to a question from Joanna Cherry MP, he made it clear that the current standard of proof is not an impediment to authorities getting a TPIM when they want it. His exact words were:

“MI5 has pointed out that there is no case thus far where the standard of proof has been a blocker.”


We have been told by the police and the agencies that there is currently no problem to be solved. The Government’s last resort in devising an excuse for these clauses is to tell us that we do not know what problems are coming down the track, and that it would be nice to have another tool in the toolbox. Well, on that basis we can justify just about anything—we could use the prospect of impending but unknown doom to excuse all manner of assaults on our liberty and our lives. This “just in case” style of legislation is fraught with dangers. Powers that we were told would never be used can quickly become heavily used and set the new standard. We cannot, in all conscience, allow the Government to get away with such slapdash explanations for making their powers even more draconian while reducing the safeguards against injustice.

Clauses 34, 35 and 37 are not needed. The Government have not come close to finding a cogent and convincing justification for them. They have no place in the Bill and must go. As Jonathan Hall QC, the independent reviewer put it so eloquently in his evidence to the Bill Committee:

“If it is right that the current standard of proof is usable and fair, and I think it is, in a word, if it ain’t broke, why fix it?”—[Official Report, Commons, Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill Committee, 25/6/20; col. 7.]


I invite noble Lords to support Amendments 15, 17 and 18 should the House divide on them.

[Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for the time he has given to speak about this Bill and for government amendment 14 on the burden of proof. I welcome the change of heart in that respect.

As to the other area on the potential length of TPIMs, I very much hope that the Minister will accept what is essentially the compromise in Amendment 16 between indefinite periods for TPIMs and the current period. It seems to me that the gap that divides us is not that great. TPIMs can be imposed not merely because criminal conduct is suspected, but also because of activities that may not be criminal. It is imposed by the Executive. Although, of course, there is a right of review to the court, a right of review is very different from the decision of a court or independent tribunal in deciding whether the grounds exist.

It is therefore important to appreciate that the very significant restrictions on liberty are imposed by the Executive, something generally alien to our tradition. It would be even more alien to our tradition to go to the extent of enabling the Executive to impose such a restriction for an indefinite period of time. Such restrictions should only be available on people’s liberty where people are convicted of serious criminal offences. Quite apart from the humanitarian and liberty and traditional aspects of that argument, there is the further argument which I raised, and will not repeat, on Second Reading: namely, indefinite orders can, as experience has shown, give people a loss of hope, and in effect make them more dangerous and less susceptible to being reformed.

The compromise that we have put forward in this amendment is further emphasised by the fact that of course if there is new evidence of activity during the period, the four years is not an absolute cut off.

Finally, there is a great deal of sense in having a cut-off period. It is very easy for any decision-maker, particularly one who is worried about the consequences of not extending the TPIM, to go on extending and extending it. It is very wasteful of resources, because enforcing a TPIM is very expensive. It is also fundamentally unfair that someone should be subject to a decision that can go on being rolled over indefinitely rather than someone—to put it in the vernacular—having to put up and charge with an offence or to shut up.

I very much hope that the Minister will think again about the compromise offered in this amendment and accept it.

[Lord Paddick (LD) [V]]

My Lords, this group deals with changes to TPIMs. The current Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, someone who has unique access to secret intelligence, operational partners and government officials, has previously stated that the changes proposed in the Bill to the TPIM regime were not necessary. We agree, as my noble friend Lord Strasburger so powerfully set out in his speech.

In relation to Clause 34, the current independent reviewer says that he is not aware of any case where operational partners had wanted to impose a TPIM but were unable to do so because the burden of proof was too high, as confirmed by the representative of operational partners in the Bill Committee in the other place.

Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill

Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Thursday 25th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Anderson of Ipswich (CB) [V]]

My Lords, behind today’s limited and so far rather civilised debate lies perhaps the most divisive and hard-fought civil liberties dispute of this century. In the frenzied weeks after 9/11, we saw the British answer to Guantanamo—a scheme of indefinite detention in Belmarsh prison at the behest of the Executive for foreign nationals who could be neither deported nor put on trial. When that scheme was declared by our highest court to discriminate unlawfully on grounds of nationality, the control order regime of 2005, applicable to British citizens also, was put in its place.

Control orders were replaced by the more liberal TPIMs regime in 2011, after intense debate within the coalition Government. Then the pendulum began to swing back: relocation of subjects was restored in 2015, and this Bill, as it was first presented to your Lordships, would have allowed these uniquely draconian measures, now including the possibility of daytime curfews, to be imposed indefinitely and on the basis of nothing more than a reasonable suspicion of involvement in activity only indirectly related to terrorism.

It is not fashionable to claim that the institutions of our liberal democracy are in good health but, on this occasion, I suggest that they have succeeded in their function of resolving strongly felt differences in public opinion decisively, firmly and in a rights-compliant manner. Let there be no mistake: the measures about to be passed into law are severe and indeed draconian, as public opinion no doubt demands. But it is at least something that a 20-year struggle to reconcile the requirements of security and civil liberties, a struggle in which Belmarsh, control orders and TPIMs have been on the very front line, has been reduced to a dry-sounding choice between Motion A and Motion A1 on the Marshalled List.

In supporting the Government on the compromise that is Motion A, I first acknowledge the consistency and moral force of the Liberal Democrat position. The addition of the fifth year to the maximum duration of a TPIM may have been the straw that broke their back, and, as I indicated to the Minister, it came close to breaking mine. However, I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, is consoled by the fact that during the passage of this Bill her party has helped to restore two of its earlier vital achievements in government: the time-limiting of TPIMs and the requirement of at least a reasonable belief that a TPIM subject should have been involved in terrorism-related activity.

I further thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, for co-signing the relevant amendments, and the Labour Front Bench for their support and votes—not perhaps a foregone conclusion, given that it was Labour which devised the original control orders back in 2005. I thank the Government for the equal flexibility which they displayed when confronted with the mood of this House, for the important assurances given just now by the Minister, in particular for the assurance that five years will not become the new normal, and for the accessibility and courtesy of all Ministers towards me. On one call with the noble Lords, Lord Parkinson and Lord Wolfson, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Stewart, I was impressed to see that no less a figure than the noble Earl, Lord Howe, had also been fielded, presumably as a kind of sweeper in the event that any of his freshly capped young ministerial colleagues might be tempted to give away the ball. What drills are performed on the ministerial training ground I cannot know, but I mean it as a compliment to all concerned when I say that no intervention by the noble Earl came close to being needed.

I finish with a reference to the latest report of the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, published on Tuesday and not, I think, previously brought to the attention of your Lordships’ House. Of Jonathan Hall QC’s 13 recommendations across the whole field of counter-terrorism law, numbers 9, 10 and 11 relate specifically to TPIMs. He recommended that the possibility of prosecuting TPIM subjects, not for breach of their TPIMs but for terrorism-related activity, be kept under closer review than is currently the case. He recommended that the cumulative period for which TPIM restrictions had already applied be expressly recognised as a factor going to their proportionality. He also recommended that legal funding be swiftly made available to all TPIM subjects for the purpose of participating in Section 9 review hearings, as appears, most unfortunately, not to be the case currently. That is the bare minimum, as he rightly recognised, for ensuring the access to court that can alone render these highly intrusive measures consistent with the rule of law.

Each of the independent reviewer’s concerns, as expressed in those three recommendations, can only be deepened by the extension to the maximum length of TPIMs that will be effected by this Bill. The Minister will, I am sure, tell us that the recommendations of the independent reviewer will receive careful consideration. But the Home Office has already had them for more than four months, and I notified the Minister this morning of my intention to mention them. I invite the Minister to go further this afternoon, by assuring the House that the Government accept these recommendations and will implement them.

[Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB) [V]]

My Lords, in view of the eloquent and comprehensive speech of the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, I can confine my remarks to three points. First, it seems to me that the position taken by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, must be right as a matter of principle. Both the areas which the House has examined in detail—namely the burden of proof required and the length of time—are essential for ensuring that this is a regime that does not disproportionately affect the fundamental right of liberty.

Secondly, the considerable importance of the current amendment is that we have moved away from the prospect of orders of an indefinite renewal period. Not only would those have been discouraging and demoralising to the individual and made it more difficult to ensure that he could, on removal of the TPIM, return as an ordinary member of society, but, as importantly, they would have been perceived as unfair by the community. The perception of fairness by the community safeguards us to a much more considerable extent than any other matters.

Thirdly, I profoundly welcome the pragmatic approach of the Minister, supported as he has been in this by the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson of Tredegar, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Stewart. It is wonderful that a proper compromise has been reached here and I thank them for their considerable part in bringing this about. It may not be perfect, but it gets rid of those areas that would have been most damaging to our civil liberties.

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, at Second Reading, I made the point that it is very important that we restate the arguments for these draconian measures. I took the opportunity of talking to my son and others of his generation of young people in their early 20s about these measures which we take in our country. We had an interesting discussion about the proportionality of this and the right of a state to protect itself from potential terrorism. It is right that these arguments are revisited, as they are every year. It is a tribute to this House that many of the Peers who have taken part in these debates have a long-standing involvement in these issues—unlike me. It is, nevertheless, important that these arguments are remade, as they have been.

I too thank the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Stewart, for their engagement; it was an interesting process. They also made it possible for me and other noble Lords to meet some of the experts in the Home Office who are dealing with these issues on a day-to-day basis. It was certainly instructive to meet the psychiatrists and psychologists who are involved in the various programmes that take place in prison and look at how TPIMs are managed outside prisons.

I also acknowledge that the Minister has made a concession in time-limiting TPIMs to five years. The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, put the point well—as she always does—about the principle of having a time limit rather than the issue running on indefinitely. My noble and learned friend Lord Falconer of Thoroton, who was responsible for the introduction of the original control orders in 2005, has changed his view on this, in light of the change in circumstances and the growing learning of how to handle people who are potentially very dangerous. Although the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, proposed four years, we of course accept the Minister’s counterproposal of a five-year limit.

I conclude by paying tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Anderson. He has led us on this, in some ways, supported by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, who also has tremendous experience in this area. If I were to direct my son to read a speech, it would be the final one from the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, which is a very good summary of the situation we have arrived at and the considerations we have made in reaching this compromise.