Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill

Lord Lamont of Lerwick Excerpts

Wednesday 4th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick (Con)]

I apologise. I have just rushed into the Chamber and caught my noble friend’s words. What interests me is the phrase used in the guidelines to which we shall come later. That phrase is “non-violent extremism”. My noble friend has talked about extremism and terrorism, but will he talk specifically about non-violent extremism? We heard the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, about the teaching of Plato and other people talked about classes in which they had discussed the pros and cons of authoritarianism versus democracy. I once attended a meeting at Queen Mary College where a lot of Muslim students said—very politely and while making it clear that they opposed violence and terrorism—that they did not believe in western-style democracy. That was what the discussion was about. What sort of non-violent extremism are the Government worried about? Some people might consider some forms of modern art to be non-violent extremism.

[Lord Bates]

The definition that we are working to—I shall put it on the record for my noble friend as we have been through this a number of times in Committee—is,

“vocal or active opposition to fundamental British values, including democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs”.

We also include in our definition of extremism calls for the death of members of our Armed Forces. People may want to argue with that or take issue with it, but that is the definition we are working to.

The point that I wanted to make, in referring back to the earlier Statement, relates to something that the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, asked me about. In Rotherham, one of the central findings of Louise Casey’s report was that because of “cultural sensitivities”, people had failed in their duty to protect children at risk in that area. We cannot be in that position. All that we are interested in here is protecting the liberty of the entire community of the United Kingdom. That includes people of all faiths and none, from a range of different backgrounds and traditions. I wanted, first, to put a marker down for that principle—that we need to focus above all on the values of democracy and individual liberty, which some people would seek to undermine.

The second point made was a fair one—that what we should be doing with Prevent is, at best, not something imposed from the top down. The noble Lords, Lord Hussain, Lord Scriven and Lord Judd, and my noble friend Lady Hamwee made that point. That is why, in the consultation on the guidance, we have said that we want people to come up with their own plan. We cannot not have a plan for dealing with something that is focused on trying to undermine the things that free speech, universities, schools and British values are all about. We cannot step aside from that. But if ideas come from the bottom up, so much the better. That would be entirely compliant with the spirit and the letter of the Bill.

I shall now deal with a couple of the specific points in the amendments. Amendment 13A probes the use of the word “due ” in the context of the requirement in Clause 25 to have “due regard” to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism. The amendment probes why the word “due” appears here but not in Clause 28, which requires specified authorities simply to “have regard” to guidance issued relating to compliance with the Prevent duty. This is quite a technical drafting point, but I will seek to address my noble friend’s concerns. The term “due” in Clause 25 indicates that, in the exercise of their functions, specified authorities will need to have regard to a number of different factors and the intention is that by stipulating that they must have,

“due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism”,

they place sufficient, proportionate weight on this consideration among the many that are relevant to the performance of those functions. In complying with the Prevent duty, however, authorities should have regard to only one guidance document, so there is not the same requirement to weigh up competing guidance and “due” is therefore unnecessary here.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve (CB)]

My Lords, I add my voice to these questions about the guidance that may be issued. I very much welcome the fact that such guidance would have to be approved by both Houses before it came into force but we have heard about one sort of guidance which raises particular fears for anybody who cares about freedom of speech or academic freedom.

I must declare an interest. Yesterday evening, I was a visiting lecturer at Canterbury Christ Church University, speaking on an extremely dangerous topic: freedom of expression. I distinguished different conceptions of freedom of expression and had a very engaged audience who had a great deal to say and came from many directions. Now, I said the other day in our debate that I am not one of those lecturers who always has her full text available in advance. I give too many visiting lectures in the course of a year—probably about 40—for that. At that rate, as this is an ancillary, unpaid activity, I cannot be held responsible for producing text at some defined moment such as a fortnight ahead. I would simply have to give it up. I hope the Minister realises how much of the intellectual life of our country flows through visiting occasions—seminars, lectures, panel discussions and the like—in and also beyond universities for which providing prior texts is just not feasible.

I have a definite point to make here. The first arguments about freedom of expression—which we then called freedom of speech or freedom of the press in this country—opposed the idea of prior restraint. The former Member of Parliament for Hull, Mr John Milton, put this argument admirably in the mid-17th century in his great work, Areopagitica. Prior restraint is what he called “licensing” and “misdoubt”. Can the Minister give the House an undertaking that we will not get into prior restraint, thereby taking British values back to where they were in the middle of the 17th century, if not further? Without prior restraint, some things can go on. It is not enough but I think the House would probably welcome an undertaking from the Minister when he winds up that prior restraint will not be one of the methods by which guidance is imposed.

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick]

My Lords, I will be extremely brief but I support the very powerful speech made by my noble friend Lord Deben. I was actually in the audience when he and Kenneth Clarke debated with Sir Oswald Mosley. I remember shouting out some rather abrasive heckles at Sir Oswald Mosley and getting a rather rude reply. My noble friend was absolutely right in what he said: the meeting demonstrated very much the shortcomings of the arguments put forward by Sir Oswald Mosley, and the British movement before the war as well.

I have one or two points about the guidelines. I know we will come to an amendment on them later, but given the way that this House works I suspect a lot of future debates will get collapsed into this particular amendment. As I said earlier when I intervened rather rudely on the Minister, what particularly bothers me is this whole concept of non-violent extremism. I listened to his answer but, to be honest, did not really feel that it really met the point—I will study it very carefully in the Official Report tomorrow in case I missed something.

The point I addressed particularly was about this meeting where I spoke, along with the editor of the Sunday Telegraph, at Queen Mary college in London. The meeting consisted entirely of Muslim students, a large number of whom made it very clear that they did not support terrorism or violence but wished to dispute the basis of western democracy and elections. They preferred a more consultative process—shura—rather than western democracy, and I and the editor of the Sunday Telegraph argued with them. I believe that it was a good thing to hold that meeting openly, on the campus, and have that thoroughly aired. At the end of the meeting, some expressed some sympathy with what was said and some did not. However, I do not believe for one minute that it would have been right to ban such a meeting. That seems to be an example of exactly this phrase, “non-violent extremism”. We should be careful here. As the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, said, so many things restrict freedom of speech in this country already.

There are many things in the guidelines that I think are open to argument. The noble Lord, Lord Morgan, highlighted the talk of “pathways”. That struck a chord with me, because there is a sentence about,

“intervening to stop people moving from extremist (albeit legal) groups into terrorist-related activity”.

How, precisely, is one to stop people moving from a legal group into something that is illegal? There is also the sentence:

“Islamic extremists specifically attack the principles of civic participation”.

That relates directly to the meeting that I attended at Queen Mary college in London—and I would say it was a very good thing that we discussed whether to participate or not to participate.

Various people have commented on the guidance for speakers at universities, and stressed the point—I shall not make it again—that it is most unlikely that speakers will have a full text. I gave a lecture at a university last week, and I shall not disclose, for fear of offending the university, how late I left the preparation of my remarks.

The guidance also mentions:

“A system for assessing and rating risks”.

If ever I heard of a box-ticking exercise, it is “rating risks”. Are people going to give someone seven out of 10 because he is more dangerous than someone who only gets five out of 10? This, I am afraid, reminds me of the FSA—or the FCA, as it now is—which thinks that it will somehow prevent a financial disaster if risks are rated on a scale of one to 10.

Lastly, there is the point that my noble friend Lord Renfrew raised last week in an intervention on the Minister, when he asked, “What about societies at universities, as opposed to universities themselves?”. If my recollection is right, and if I heard the Minister correctly, I think he said that there would be no problem with societies. However, the guidance document contains a whole section on “Student unions and societies”, in which we are told that they must have regard to who comes to speak to them, what the speaker’s platform is, what supervision there is to see that people can be allowed to challenge them, and so on. There are even phrases about “managing prayer … facilities”. Why should prayers be managed by some sort of authority? This all seems to me far too intrusive, and I would be grateful if the Minister gave the assurance that a lot of these things will be looked at—and, I hope, dropped.

[Baroness Warsi (Con)]

My Lords, I support the comments made by my noble friends Lord Deben and Lord Lamont. It may give my noble friends some comfort—or perhaps some concern—when I say that I have many a grey hair from having held these very conversations over a period of four years. Conversations have gone on within government over and over again about what the definitions of “extremism” and “non-violent extremism” are and about where legitimate debate ends and concerns about terrorism and extremism start. Fortunately, the Government did move to a position of providing further definition, but that now has consequences that affect what we are trying to do with the Bill.

I want to raise two specific practical issues in relation to the amendments. The first is about Islamic societies. There is no doubt that there is a battle of ideas within Islam. Certainly there are conversations going on among British Muslims about the flexibility within Islam and the parameters of how Islam should be interpreted, especially within a state where it exists in a minority form, as opposed to a country where Islam is in the majority. These are very real discussions, which need to be had. They will determine what Islam looks like in Britain in a decade’s time and how Britain can feel at ease with a religion that is more comfortable within that environment.

Those debates need to be had, and they are being had, and one of the places where they need to take place is within universities. Specifically, they need to take place in Islamic societies within universities. We have all heard of individual incidents of Islamic societies in universities having had speakers, or having said something, or having configured their meeting, in a way that could be considered unacceptable. Many British Muslim parents who send their children to universities have, in the past, sat down and had “the talk”. That talk does not relate to drugs, sex or anything else that may be more freely available at university. It relates to Islamic societies, and it goes something like this: “When you go there, you need to be careful about some of the ideas you’ll hear. You may want to stay away from those ideas, because you could get in with a group who may have very extreme ideas, and those are not the people we want you to get involved with”.

However, the talk in my household goes further. It says, “Yes, you will meet people who don’t have great ideas, and have ideas you may not agree with. That’s why you’re going to university, because part of your job is to challenge those ideas. So make sure you turn up at Islamic societies. Don’t let people with extreme views take over those societies just because the majority of you want to stay away because they have views you don’t agree with”. But if the provisions in the Bill are enacted without these amendments, the talk from parents like me will become, “Stay away completely, because you could be caught up in something that would label you as an extremist”. That would not be encouraging debate—that very real debate that needs to happen within Islam about the battle of ideas and about what British Islam will look like in a decade. We must not stifle that debate.