Terrorist Attacks

Debate between Earl Howe and Baroness Warsi

Tuesday 5th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, I pay tribute to the noble Lord’s knowledge and experience in this area. He will know that policing requirements are assessed almost day by day, and a particular situation may well require more armed police officers to be stationed in particular locations. I cannot generalise about that, but I am sure that noble Lords will all be conscious that the Palace of Westminster has seen a much tighter degree of security from armed police in recent months, for which we should be grateful.

On the noble Lord’s general point, I agree. Surveillance is important but, as David Anderson himself acknowledges, it is impossible for the authorities to prevent every single terrorist attack. In his executive summary he says in terms that the recommendations, if accepted, would not remove the risk of a terrorist attack—to do so would be manifestly impossible in a free society. He also mentions that MI5 and CT policing have thwarted 20 Islamist terrorist plots in the past four years, resulting in 10 life sentences from the seven plots that have so far come to trial. So we can point to some signal successes achieved by MI5 and the police, but they cannot possibly be expected to pick up lone-wolf attackers.

[Baroness Warsi (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for repeating the Statement. I agree that it is the responsibility of us all to ensure that we do all we can to prevent these terrorist attacks. Much of this evidence is now in the public domain, but can he confirm that in each of the attacks by so-called Muslims—Khalid Masood, Salman Abedi and Khuram Butt—these individuals had been reported to the authorities by friends, family or members of the communities in which they worked and operated? In the light of the Government’s commitment, can he also undertake to ensure that all those attracted to terrorism are prevented from going down that route, and that the Government will look again at the recommendation of David Anderson, Human Rights Watch and individuals in the security services and the police to now have an independent review of the Prevent strand of the Contest strategy?

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, as the Statement made clear, a number of the attackers in each of these incidents were, to put it loosely, on the radar of the authorities as either open or closed subjects of interest. I am afraid I am not aware of how exactly those people’s names came to the attention of the authorities but, if I am able to shed further light on that, I will of course inform my noble friend.

I hope my noble friend will agree that, if we did not have the Prevent strategy, we would need something very like it, because it is all about taking an end-to-end approach in the community and ensuring that partners work together to share information and that those who are vulnerable and susceptible to malign indoctrination are protected and not radicalised. I will write to my noble friend to let her know where the thinking in the Home Office has reached on the progress of the Prevent strategy, but I think it is doing very good work, and we can point to some welcome statistics on the number of people who have been successfully counselled.