Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill

Debate between Baroness Hamwee and Baroness Manningham-Buller

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 29th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, I tabled Amendments 21 and 22 in this group. I was not surprised, given the authors, to be more attracted to Amendment 17 than to my own amendment, but I have a couple of questions related to points already raised. I too wonder about the word “solely”. If, for one or more of the reasons listed, someone went for a reason authorised by the legislation or in regulations but did something outside them, might that cause a problem? Perhaps more importantly, I also have a question about the registered charity, regarding the jurisdiction in which it would have to be registered. It is important to address the position of charities, not just for charity workers but because the trustees will have a duty of care towards their staff. They will have an important interest in ensuring that what their staff are doing is appropriate within what the law allows.

I turn to the phrase,

“visiting a dependent family member”.

I wonder about the word “dependent”. A sick mother would be unlikely to be dependent if the son or daughter is not there supporting the family member. Perhaps one might look at extending that. However, I like the approach. I do not think it is an alternative to what is set out in Amendment 22. That would provide for regulations for authorisation—not just the grounds for applying for authorisation but also the “procedure for applying”, the “timescales for determining” it, which might be important in particular circumstances, and “rights of appeal”, which should be dealt with by some means or other. As I say, this is not an alternative; rather, there are procedural points in this that should be addressed.

I am grateful to the organisation Bond for briefing me about the position in Australia and Denmark, to which the noble Lord referred. It has put a note at the end of its briefing to remind me that the proposal for the restrictions was promoted at the exact time that nine people were arrested for travelling to Syria to become foreign fighters—proving that the existing legal provisions are “rather effective”, to use its words.

I am aware that in Australia there is an overarching exemption for the International Committee of the Red Cross, but I understand that it can be extended to other humanitarian organisations. I do not know whether any noble Lord taking part in this Committee knows how far that has been extended. I take the points about monitoring and, while putting forward these provisions, I am aware that we must balance that against the administrative burden, to which I suspect the Minister may refer. There will be an administrative burden but the benefits that could be achieved by amendments such as the ones we have been debating outweigh that. I simply wanted to anticipate that argument.

[Baroness Manningham-Buller (CB)]

My Lords, I support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Anderson. We should be grateful to the Parliaments of Australia and Denmark for the prior work they did, which he has refined.

I have only three small points to make arising out of the debate. The first relates to the point from the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, on prior authorisation. In addition to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, about the difficulty of monitoring compliance, and the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, which I am sure is relevant, of the administrative overheads of doing that, there is a practical problem of the risk of authorising people who travel to a designated area and have no intention at all of meeting any of the criteria in the noble Lord’s list.

To make a minor point on dependent family members, later on in the Bill we will talk about the Prevent strategy. One of its purposes, whatever people think about it—views are divided—is to prevent young people being drawn to terrorism. I can absolutely imagine circumstances where a parent might wish to go to a designated area to try to retrieve a dependent family member or young person who had been drawn into this and rescue them from involvement.

Finally, the view from the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, that we are doing this only to stop them fighting us is an oversimplification. There is much more going on here. There is a real concern that people will not just come back and conduct terrorism here or elsewhere in the world, or fight us or others there, but learn techniques, radicalise and train new generations of people. It is much broader than simply attacking us. We need to bear that in mind when considering what we are trying to do here.

Justice and Security Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Hamwee and Baroness Manningham-Buller

Monday 9th July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, like other Members of the Committee I am a bit puzzled about how polarised the debate became a few minutes ago. It seems to have swung back now. I do not see all the distinctions that have been drawn, and I certainly do not see the distinction between the committee being there to ask questions in public or as something different to get to the bottom of an issue.

I agree, of course, that the committee must have the confidence of the agencies and that it must have public confidence. I would add, perhaps as a subsection of that second point rather than as a third category, that it must also have the confidence of those affected by events. When I was a member of the London Assembly, I was involved in some work following the events of 7/7, and one of the benefits of our being able to undertake some work was that it fulfilled the need of some who had been affected to tell their story and to have their story listened to. I am not suggesting that this is a pattern or even relevant to the majority of the ISC’s work, but I would not want it to be forgotten.

I think that this debate is leading us towards there being a Select Committee and that badging it as such is important because of what that says about the focus of Parliament’s responsibility to the public. I do not think it would require the rules to be fiddled with, but it would require them to be made fit for purpose. Perhaps it is naive and untraditional of me, but I do not see why the rules of a Select Committee cannot be made fit for purpose. It might require a lot of work, but I think it ought to be done.

I have some very non-technical and rather inelegant amendments later, but the point that they are intended to raise is that the default should be that the committee works for the public and in public, not as a stage show—absolutely not, because to take up one of the points that has just been made, I for one think that the most important questions that tend to be asked are the supplemental ones. I am glad that we are having this debate because I think that it is taking us in an important direction.

[Baroness Manningham-Buller]

My Lords, I declare what I hope is an obvious interest—my membership of the Security Service for 33 years—although I should warn the Committee that I retired five years ago and so am out of date.

I should like to reiterate a couple of points. I listened with great interest to the points made by both former members of the ISC, current members and others with a close interest in this matter. It is certainly the case—and I do not think that I am out of date in saying this—that it is in the interests of the security and intelligence community to have either a Select Committee or the present committee as it stands seeking to give reassurance to Parliament and the public that these agencies are properly run, obeying the law and doing a reasonable job. As the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, said, they will make mistakes—it would be a delusion to suggest that any organisation was free from making mistakes—but certainly when I was reporting to the ISC I hoped to own up to and discuss those mistakes.

The support of members of the public is necessary not only in terms of general support for the organ of government but because, to do their work, the agencies require that support every day of the week. They need the public to join them as recruits—they want to attract high-quality recruits—they need them as sources of information, and they need them to help in whatever way possible. Someone might be asked, “Can I come and sit in your bedroom with a camera?”. I might say no but people say yes to the officers of the Security Service daily. Therefore, when we talk about public opinion, the services require the help of the public to do their job and, in my experience, they get it.

When we talk about whether to go for a Select Committee—a proposal with which I have a lot of sympathy—or an improvement on, or development of, the last one, I share the view of the noble Lord, Lord King of Bridgwater, that we will get there at some stage, although whether we will do so at the speed at which the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, would like, I do not know.

I am sorry but I feel that I must take slight issue with the noble Lord, Lea of Crondall, about the amount of information on the services that is available in the public domain. For certain, my service took its heart in its hands and commissioned a centenary history of the Security Service. We made the professor of contemporary history at Cambridge a temporary member of the service and allowed him into our records. We said, “You can make any judgment you like. We won’t seek to query it. There will be a few things that you can’t publish for national security reasons but we will keep those to a minimum”. If you look at our website—I must stop saying “our”; I left the organisation. If you look at the Security Service’s website, you will see quite extensive amounts of information.

Why do these organisations exist? They exist to try to protect the United Kingdom and its citizens, and it is in their interests that as far as possible the confidence in them is well founded and, as far as it can be, widely and publicly known. To that extent, I should like to say how much I welcome the arrival of the ISC and how much I look forward to its continuing evolution.

Justice and Security Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Hamwee and Baroness Manningham-Buller

Monday 9th July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hamwee]

Maybe. The Minister says it has not been traditionally considered and is one of those words that only recently has come into normal use. It probably means slightly different things to different people.

[Baroness Manningham-Buller]

I think the problem is the word “operation”. Certainly in the security and intelligence world, an operation is something finite, with a code name, that will come to an end. I think that is what the legislation is trying to get at. It certainly would not be a merged operation such as a jihadist threat or Iraq, which would not be seen in those terms. That may be the difficulty. If we can make that clear in defining it, that might be helpful to the Minister.