Holborn and St Pancras MP Frank Dobson says no politician should have the power to imprison another citizen

NO British citizen should be imprisoned without trial. That has been the law in this country for more than 300 years. That is why I voted against the government’s Prevention of Terrorism Bill.
No one can deny that the scale and, more particularly, the nature of terrorism has changed in recent times or that we must respond to that change.
Up to now, our criminal justice system has been geared to detecting criminals after they have committed their crimes, and then punishing them. The threat from suicide bombers has changed that because, for them, the prospect of punishment is clearly no deterrent. So we must try to prevent terrorist crimes being committed in the first place. I accept that requires some changes in the system.
That is why I supported the earlier prevention of terrorism legislation as a stopgap. That is why I have argued for some time that detention in Belmarsh should be replaced by measures such as control orders to cover some people suspected of involvement in terrorism who cannot be prosecuted.
So I reluctantly support, in principle, the government’s proposals to introduce control orders that might, for example, restrict suspects’ freedom of association, use of communications or access to particular venues or neighbourhoods. However, I cannot and will not support any law that permits these restrictions to be placed on a British citizen just on the say-so of the home secretary.
There is nothing personal about that: the present home secretary is a decent man. But no home secretary should have the power to curtail the liberties of a fellow citizen without having to lay convincing evidence before a court and letting the court decide.
Above all no one should be imprisoned without trial.
The home secretary has said he is responsible for the safety of the country, and so it is constitutionally right for him to initiate the control order process. I have no problem with that, but the power that he has been seeking from Parliament is not just to initiate control orders but to implement them. That is why I cannot support what he has been proposing. There is a greater constitutional principle at stake here than the duties of the home secretary: the fundamental constitutional principle that ministers cannot lock up fellow citizens. Only courts can do that.
Under the existing law suspects can be arrested immediately and held for 14 days. Therefore having to bring each case to court would not prevent the home secretary from acting promptly if he believed innocent lives were at risk. I use the word ‘court’ deliberately. That may mean a judge sitting as a court, but the judge and his judgment would be subject to court rules and procedures designed to ensure consideration of the facts as well as the law, and to balance justice with security in what we must all admit are difficult and perplexing circumstances.
The home secretary has now conceded a major point which Labour MPs have been pushing both in public and private. A control order involving house arrest will have to be decided by a judge.
Having conceded this change, in the case of the most dangerous suspects who might need to be locked up, it is difficult to understand why the home secretary is not prepared to do the same for the less dangerous suspects he thinks can be made less of a threat by restrictions short of house arrest.
Because of the way the bill was rushed through the House of Commons in two days any improvements will have to come by way of amendments in the Lords. The elected Commons should not franchise out its duties in this way.
Elected MPs will not have the opportunity to check in detail safeguards such as the right of the judge to all the information known to the home secretary and the opportunity for the accused to check important facts. The right for our case to be heard before a court is the bedrock of our system of justice.
That brings me to my final point. No mature democracy has ever been overthrown by terrorists.
Their aim is not to destroy Britain but to provoke responses from us that damage us in the eyes of the people whom the terrorists wish to impress.
In the case of this country, one of the things that they want to do is abandon our long-standing and honourable claim to be a society that rejects arbitrary imprisonment and rests instead on the demanding and constraining concepts of natural justice and the rule of law.
That is why I cannot accept the government’s proposals. They undermine the timeless rights of British citizens, and would undermine our standing in the world.