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| It is my job to stand up for
our liberties |
Frank Dobson MP explains why it was his duty
to vote against the government’s terror legislation
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Flowers for July 7 victims
Frank Dobson
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THE murderous explosions on the King’s Cross underground
and on the bus in Tavistock Square were both in my constituency.
So was the attempted atrocity at Warren Street two weeks later.
I live in the area. The windows of our flat were rattled by the
Tavistock Square bomb. I travel on public transport. So I know how
vulnerable we all feel and how we want to stop the terrorists. It’s
not a question of whether we counter terrorism. The question is,
how best to do it.
Unlike some people, I recognise that suicide bombers pose a new
and more dangerous threat. They will not be deterred by the fear
of being caught, tried and punished. So we need to change the law
to help the police prevent further terrorist outrages – to
help them get one step ahead of the terrorists.
That is why I accepted that it is probably right to double the period
a suspect can be detained without charge from 14 to 28 days. That
is what I voted for. But I wasn’t prepared to grant a six-fold
increase to 90 days because that trenched too far into our civil
liberties without making us any safer.
We have to remember that no terrorists have ever overthrown an established
democracy. They know that as well as we do. What they aim to do
is to panic us into abandoning our open society and the rule of
law by giving up liberties we hold dear.
And the right not to be detained without being charged is a liberty.
It isn’t some fashionable piece of political correctness. It
goes back centuries and it is one of the aspects of our society
we proudly draw attention to when preaching to other countries about
democracy and the rule of law.
So we have to have very pressing reasons for changing that law.
Most MPs, including me, were convinced that the police did need
more time for questioning people suspected of terrorism and checking
up on them by such time-consuming work as scanning CCTV records,
emails and other communications which might be encrypted and also
information from abroad.
But the police never put forward a convincing case that they needed
an increase from two weeks to three months. Nor, in my view, did
they expect to get such an increase. I believe they asked for three
months in the hope that they would get two months or six weeks.
They could give no hard examples of the need for three months. One
example they did give proved to be an embarrassment.
Ministers quoted the words of one Metropolitan Police deputy assistant
commander who said: “Had we had this provision in 2002, the
outcome of a recent court case, the so-called ricin trial, might
have been very different. Mohamed Meguerba was one of the suspects
in that case and it is likely that we would have held him or applied
for his detention for sufficient time to find that his fingerprints
were on the ricin recipe and he would have stood trial as a main
conspirator in that case had he not fled the country. As it was,
he was not available to stand trial and so the jury were not able
to benefit from his presence in the court. I cannot say whether
the jury would have come to a different decision but I think it
would have been possible for the prosecution to present the case
in a way which was easier for the jury to understand.”
You might have concluded from this that the police had been forced
to release the man in question after 14 days. In fact, he was released
by the police after two days so they can’t argue they could
have charged him if they had been able to hang on to him for 90
days. It is also a fact that every terrorist suspect held for 14
days has been charged. None have been released, re-arrested and
charged.
All these arguments against 90 days are to do with historic liberties
but there are practical objections as well. Extending detention
without charge to three months would not make us safer. In practice,
it might have made things worse. The police aren’t infallible
so they arrest and hold some people suspected of terrorism who turn
out to be innocent.
What if innocent people are kept locked up and uncharged for 90
days – the equivalent of a six-month prison sentence with remission?
They would be likely to turn against the police. Extremists would
exploit their cases to stir up wider antipathy to the police and
to portray our society as hypocritical and oppressive. Not a good
idea at a time when the need, above all, is for unity of purpose
against the terrorists.
So, I am glad that the 90 day rule didn’t get through. I realise
that some of my constituents may disagree with me. But if it isn’t
my job to stick up for our liberties and argue for policies which
reduce the threat of terrorism, then I don’t know what is.
• Frank Dobson is the MP for Holborn and St Pancrras. |
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