Here, Tony Blair defends the Prevention of Terrorism Bill, which will allow the Home Secretary to put terrorist suspects under house arrest. And here are some extracts from Hansard:
[The bill] involves serious and fundamental departures from the normal processes of British law. It grants powers of detention…in respect of subjects of the United Kingdom which would otherwise be condemned without hesitation as contrary to the principles of British justice….
Either someone is a terrorist, in which case he should be in detention, or he is not, in which case he should be able to move freely. If such a person is under suspicion, he should be under surveillance…
The [bill] allows an extension of detention not by the judiciary but by the Executive… prima facie the power is offensive to the basic principle of the rule of law, which is that deprivation of liberty should be through the courts and not through politicians…
The purpose of judicial intervention--which the Home Secretary appears, with all due respect, not even to understand--is to make sure that the powers of detention, extraordinary as they are, are exercised in a proper way. It is not good enough to say that the Home Secretary will exercise them in a proper way, because the very principle of the rule of law is that that decision should be made by a court, not by a politician…
The notion that one should be detained by Executive power rather than by order of the court is contrary to the provisions of the convention on human rights. If [a man] cannot understand that, he cannot understand the basis of British law…
We passed the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 so that, after 36 hours, a person should be brought before a judge. We did not say that he should be brought before a civil servant or a politician but a judge. Let me educate…Members. It is important that the power is vested in a court because in this country we believe that powers of detention should be exercised by courts, not by politicians, civil servants or parts of the Executive….
To claim that the suggestion that someone who is detained should have the right to go before a judge rather than a politician is an outrageous breach of what we need to fight terrorism stands sense, reason and decency on its head. To describe that position as soft on terrorism and to decry it as giving succour to terrorists says far more about the desperation of the [government] than about the fight against terrorism.
All hon. Members abhor terrorism. Everyone believes that we must act against it with all the powers we have. Of course that might involve measures which restrict civil liberty in a way which may otherwise be repugnant. However, if we go beyond what is necessary to combat terrorism effectively, if we cravenly accept that any Act introduced by the Government and entitled "Prevention of Terrorism Act" must be supported in its entirety without question, and if we adopt the attitude that anyone who dares to question it is a closet supporter of terrorism, we do not strengthen the fight against terrorism : we weaken it.
Which brave and noble guardian of our freedoms spoke such words?
Tony Blair himself, opposing the extension of the Prevention of Terrorism Act in 1993.
Hands up anyone who's remotely surprised by this volte-face. It's par for Labour leaders: I can remember Kinnock banging on about Oxbridge being a "cancer on the face of British education" and then sending a son to Queens' College, Cambridge.
Posted by: dearieme | February 24, 2005 at 04:02 PM
I can remember Kinnock banging on about Oxbridge being a "cancer on the face of British education" and then sending a son to Queens' College, Cambridge.
Doesn't Kinnock's son have a mind of his own, then?
Posted by: Phil Hunt | February 27, 2005 at 08:18 PM
Fair question: he then went on to work where Mummy and Daddy work, in Brussels. Wadyafink?
Posted by: dearieme | February 28, 2005 at 02:43 PM