This week, the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee reported back on the Countering Terrorist Fighters Legislation Bill. The Government had been seeking, among other things, the ability of the SIS to undertake 48 hour warrantless surveillance, and for the Government to revoke passports for three years.

Quite why these measures were required were never addressed. After all, our terror threat level may have raised, but it remains on ‘low’. MPs such as Jamie-Lee Ross muttered darkly of tales of terror disclosed by the SIS: if we meek citizens only knew what the MPs knew, we would quake in our boots and immediately provide ringing endorsements of the Government’s planned changes. Of course, we mere citizens weren’t allowed to know. The SIS’s briefing was conducted in secret, open only to MPs, on the grounds of protecting national security.

The SIS’s briefing may have persuaded Mr Ross, but the opposition…