Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Tuesday 13th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, it is inevitable in a debate that has taken more than seven hours already, and will continue for some time to come, that the focus of much of what we have said has been on the current Islamicist terrorists. However, one of the most important tests for this Bill is ensuring that it covers other terrorists as well; we should not forget those. Noble Lords have mentioned the IRA in the past but 10 years ago there were terrorists in the animal rights movement who were leaving pipe bombs—certainly in Hertfordshire, where I lived. In Europe there is a threat from far-right racists who, as we know, can also perpetrate acts of terrorism.

The 2.5 million Muslims who live in this country are currently finding it very difficult to be heard, so I want to start by giving one example from my home town of Watford. On Sunday, Watford’s Muslim community came together to turn their procession—which should have been in honour of the Prophet’s birth—into a solidarity march for the people of Paris. They were joined by ordinary people in Watford who would not normally have done that. It was recorded and commented on much in the local media. Sadly, there has not been much comment in the press, but that sort of activity shows that Prevent is working in this country. The attitude of many in our community, particularly those who were criticised in the Muslim community 10 years ago for not having the dialogue about extremism, is at last beginning to change. Of course, there is much more to do.

Much of the Bill is important and it will be vital if we are to follow through on everything that the independent reviewer, David Anderson QC, has set out as being necessary. Liberal Democrats are very supportive of those measures which will combat terrorists and help the police and the security services in all they need to do to monitor people, arrest them and deal with them in a judicious way. As other noble Lords have mentioned, there is a difficult balance between human rights and having the tools to catch those committing the most heinous of crimes. Even moving towards that has to be balanced, and that is what this legislation is about. Many noble Lords have spoken about that today and I will not add much more, except to say that there is a key role for Parliament and the judiciary to have oversight. We must ensure that it is not left to the Home Secretary or the department to make judgments. We must always check to make sure that the balance between human rights and security is there.

What will otherwise happen is that all those we seek to catch will move to the dark web. There was discussion earlier about IP addresses. I have been in this Chamber when we discussed the young and how they work their way around pornographic filters far too easily. They are way ahead of us, their parental generation. The same is true, I am afraid, of those who will subvert any route we set up. If we think that we have resolved the issue by being able to identify IP addresses, they will immediately find another way around it. In fact in Russia, I understand, Putin is talking about moving back to typewriters to avoid anything being written in a form that can be traced via the internet.

I worked in the university sector for over 20 years, not as an academic but as an administrator. I was the bursar of a Cambridge college for 10 years and then ran a unit that looked at universities working together with communities and employer engagement. I have read the Bill with an eye to how practical the implementation of the duty will be. I am concerned that those in the Home Office who have drawn it up do not understand the way in which our universities are structured. The duty on curbing free speech that is being asked for to protect us from terror will require primary legislation to change universities’ current duty to ensure that there is free speech. That debate will take some time because, fundamentally, it lies at the heart of what we believe our universities are there for. It is not an add-on to be sorted out in regulations, as has been suggested by the briefing notes for the Bill.

As a bursar, I would be horrified to have to sit and debate whether a student society—over which my college and the university would have no control because it was an autonomous body—was making the right decision to allow somebody there, let alone to demand in my role to see the presentation of a speaker and try to understand whether it just went over the boundaries of extremism. How do individuals in institutions decide what is or is not extremism? This is madness. It is the sort of thing that is done in haste. I notice that this part was not debated when the Bill went through the Commons but has been introduced only recently. It is utterly impractical and I hope that before we move to Committee next week, serious consideration will be given to whether this duty will work for universities. Certainly, there is no time to look at changing the primary legislation required for universities to make this possible. I liked my noble friend Lord Phillips’s phrase about “a lumbering part of the Bill”, but it is more than lumbering. It will kill this part of the Bill if it goes through.

I support my noble friend Lady Berridge, who referred to the funding of terrorism at the moment through looted works of art and religious icons. The Walk of Truth charity that she spoke of is a 21st-century equivalent of “The Monuments Men”, a splendid film which recognised the work done by service men and women at the end of the Second World War to restore looted arts. There is nothing to restore in the current system because works of art are being sold through traders, some of it coming to this country. I hope that, in Committee, it will be possible to at least put down a probing amendment and perhaps to have reassurance from the Minister that we are making sure that works of art coming into this country have effective provenance, to show that they are not being looted from the Middle East.

The Guardian reported on 15 June that a series of flash sticks was discovered after a courier was killed in battle. These flash sticks revealed that ISIS had taken $36 million-worth of goods from al-Nabuk alone, including a large number of antiquities up to 8,000 years old. Each item could be sold for between $20,000 and $50,000. That is the scope of how ISIS is funding its activities. We have a duty to ensure that religious art, icons and murals are not coming into this country and being sold on; and that that flow of money for terrorism stops. At the moment, the Bill is very light on the funding of terrorism: it is rightly saying that other things should be stopped. This may be small, but it is important that we dry up that flow of money for terrorism, whether it is in this country or in the Middle East.