Terrorist Asset-Freezing etc. Bill [HL]

Baroness Hughes of Stretford Excerpts

Tuesday 27th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford]

My Lords, it is with a great sense of honour and privilege that I speak for the first time in this House. I have, as some of your Lordships may know, spent the past 13 years as a Member in the other place and most of that time as a Minister. I thank all my family—especially my husband, my children and my fiercest champion, my mother—for sustaining me through the inevitable ups and downs and constant red boxes of ministerial life. I treasure that experience, although I am already acutely aware, after only a brief period as a Member of this House, that this is a very different place—one where the weight of history, knowledge and experience inspires in me both humility and trepidation. Yet I hope that, with support from your Lordships, I can in time rise to those challenges and make a positive contribution to our collective work here. The astonishing warmth of the welcome that I have been given suggests that that support will be forthcoming.

I am grateful to the Lord Speaker, to my noble friends and noble Lords across the House, and to the staff and the doorkeepers for their generous assistance and for making me feel very much at home. I am especially grateful to the executive officer for Black Rod and the staff in the Dining Room with whom I exchanged numerous e-mails arranging for my very large family to attend my introduction yesterday. They were unfailingly prompt, patient and helpful. I should also like to thank my sponsors, the noble Lord, Lord Laming, and my noble friend Lady Corston, whom I have worked with in previous positions. They are people of great stature and I am honoured that they agreed to sponsor me.

I should like to tell your Lordships that residents in my former constituency, to whom I am also grateful for support over many years, were as delighted as I was at my ennoblement and took it as an honour for the area as much as for me personally. There was intense interest in what my title would be. I did consider Baroness Hughes of Old Trafford, a community in that constituency which is dear to my heart and to which I will refer later. However, as my husband and son are ardent Liverpool supporters and so many people throughout my wonderful region of the north-west of England see everything through the lens of football allegiance, I decided that that would be too contentious, so my full title is Baroness Hughes of Stretford, which honours my former constituents, of Ellesmere Port in the County of Cheshire. The latter is a tribute to my parents, to whom I owe everything. My one regret is that they are no longer here to share this with me.

My parents had no prior association with this House and, both coming from large working-class families in an era when they had no access to higher education, leaving school to work at 14, would have had little chance to do so. However, they wanted the best for their eight children. Although while growing up—10 of us in a little council house—we did not have a great deal in the way of material wealth, we never felt poor. Our parents worked unstintingly to give us everything that they had never had, encouraged us to believe that we could be whatever we wanted to be if we worked hard and gave us strong values of community and family, which have become the bedrock of my political beliefs and are the theme that I want to introduce on what might seem the unlikely topic of anti-terrorism.

As we have heard, the Bill deals with important provisions in the international response to terrorism—that is, the ability to freeze the assets of people suspected of being involved in or facilitating terrorist activities. As a former Minister of State with responsibility for counterterrorism, I am very familiar, as are your Lordships, with the threat faced by the United Kingdom still and I believe that there is a wide consensus in this House and beyond that this country remains a target for terrorists. As the Minister said, the United Nations requires us and other countries to take action, including asset freezing against terrorism, through a series of resolutions that intensified following the attacks of 9/11.

I had some personal involvement in the Government’s response to 9/11 as the cross-government Bill Minister for the emergency legislation that became the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001. As the Minister said, Part 2 of that Act contained provisions for an asset-freezing regime. As we know, the orders that give rise to our proceedings today were made under different legislation—the United Nations Act 1946—and have now been declared ultra vires by the Supreme Court. Hence, the purpose of the Bill is to give comprehensive lawful effect to Security Council resolutions in a proportionate manner, which seeks to strike that difficult balance between executive decisions and some independent scrutiny of those decisions, and the important balance between safety of the public and the freedom of individuals—a balance that is inherently difficult but critically important. These and other national measures that challenge and, if possible—this is the point—prevent acts of terrorism are essential elements in the armoury of counterterrorism. I support them in principle and look forward to hearing the broader arguments about the detail as the Bill takes its course.

Equally important is action at the level of locality and community. It was no accident that my full former title as a Minister at the Home Office was Minister for Counter-Terrorism and Community Cohesion. I think that we ignore the community dimension—and the importance of strong community relations as another effective counterterrorism mechanism—at our peril. That is illustrated nowhere better than in Old Trafford in my former constituency. The community is hugely diverse, with a large number of substantial minority ethnic groups, the largest of which is the Asian community. Because of the conscious efforts of community leaders, especially faith leaders, and their willingness to work with others such as me as the then Member of Parliament, this community as a whole has taken a strong position against acts of terrorism and the ideology that fuels it. I pay tribute today to the imams and ministers who have shown such leadership and courage in challenging members of their own communities. I also pay tribute to Trafford Asian Women’s Network and to local community volunteers from all faiths and none who work to sustain dialogue and good will.

The reach of terrorism is global to local. That is why national measures and international actions such as those that we are discussing today are absolutely necessary, but not of themselves sufficient. Young people now receive information at the click of a key in their bedrooms, linking them to the other side of the world. I was reminded of the potency of this messaging only a few weeks ago when, during the general election, a very earnest young man sought me out to tell me that 9/11 was a fabrication, part of the West’s propaganda to discredit Islam. The most effective challenge to his views came from those of his own community and family in Old Trafford. They were prepared to stand up, tell him that he was wrong and denounce terrorism. I think that it is our job—I certainly saw it as my job—to support those who will do that, particularly with members of their own communities. It is also a key job for government to ensure that all young people, from whatever background, have the same opportunities for success that we all want for our own children. These are themes to which I hope to return as I embark with your Lordships on our work in this House.