Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill

Debate between Lord Carlile of Berriew and Baroness Warsi

Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords & Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 17th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warsi (Con)]

My Lords, with the leave of the House—and I have spoken to both our Front Bench and the clerk—I will refer slightly to the last amendment, which does actually refer to the current amendment. I was in the Chamber when this amendment was called.

I want to put a couple of things on record—first, my views on Prevent. I have written about this extensively. I will not plug the book, but it is available on Amazon. In that book, I talk about Prevent in detail. I talk about how, when the policy was started in 2003 and first published in this iteration in 2006, I supported it. It was effectively an upstream intervention into areas where we felt we could intervene, predominantly with young people and British Muslims at that time, although we are increasingly dealing with far-right extremism now. We were predominantly intervening with young people who may be attracted into terrorism. How could anybody disagree with that principle?

In my book—and this is the issue that I raised with the noble Lord, Lord Carlile—I work through the various iterations of Prevent. It has changed from what it was in 2003 to what it is now in 2018. It started as a policy specifically designed to be run as an internal discussion within communities of what could be considered to be extremist views. It was supposed to be a genuine, non-criminalised safe space and a battle of ideas—something I fundamentally supported—but it became a policy that was done not by the community but to the community. This is an issue I have consistently raised: what the policy became and the way it was then implemented; the level and quality of training, the material being used, the way it was implemented in different schools and differently across different communities. All of this—with 100 pages of citations if that helps the noble Lord—is detailed in the book, because it was important to say clearly that a principle of policy that I supported has, over time, become fundamentally flawed in its implementation and lost the trust of the communities we were trying to influence.

As a British Muslim parent whose children are likely to be vulnerable and to be approached by those who want to lead them astray, whether into extremism, terrorism or elsewhere, I would be the first in line to say this policy needs to be supported. But I do not want a policy on our books, which has statutory basis, which is badly implemented.

[Lord Carlile of Berriew]

I read the noble Baroness’s book with great interest and I am glad to see that she is now taking part in our debate. Does she not agree that the iterations she describes in her book show the progress from a Prevent strategy run by the police to one now not run by the police? All the best examples of Prevent are run by NGOs, private sector groups or local authorities. The police are involved in Prevent only when there is evidence of an offence having been committed. Is that not real progress, which we ought to laud and welcome, in the changes to Prevent? I expect to agree with the noble Baroness on this point.

[Baroness Warsi]

As the noble Lord is aware, I took part in the Bill’s Second Reading debate and made my views clear to the Minister and to many colleagues in the House, publicly and privately. My views on this are on record and, when we vote, I will make them clear.

As I have said, it is not so much a question of who delivers Prevent—the police or third-sector organisations —but that it is delivered so that the communities trust the policy. It is clear that, as it stands, British Muslim communities do not trust Prevent. Therefore, as somebody who supports the principles behind it, I feel it is appropriate and entirely right to have an independent review. We are not asking for Prevent to be forgone completely. Many Members of this House are saying we should keep the good bits.