Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill

Lord Marlesford Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard - continued): House of Lords & 2nd reading (Minutes of Proceedings - continued): House of Lords
Tuesday 9th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marlesford (Con)]

My Lords, I would like to say, first, what a wonderful brief the Library produced for this debate and, secondly, how excited I am that we now have my noble and learned friend Lord Garnier and my noble friend Lord Tyrie with us. They are a great addition. I have never been an MP, but I know them both and have huge admiration for them.

The Home Secretary said in the Commons Second Reading debate that,

“the wide-ranging Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill … is about keeping the people of this country safe”.—[Official Report, Commons, 11/6/18; col. 630.]

I strongly support the Bill, as it seeks to widen and deepen action against terrorism. But for the purpose stated, some of its provisions seem to be rather theoretical and almost metaphysical rather than practical. They risk, as we have heard during the debate today, allowing the argument to be between lawyers and libertarians. The result is likely to be slow and amorphous. In short, it bears the hallmarks of Home Office drafting.

I hope during the passage of the Bill to fill in some of the gaps with a couple of practical steps that can and should be taken. This is a subject in which I have been involved for well over a decade, and I am afraid that I have found, under successive Governments, that the Home Office constantly resisted taking the steps necessary to keep the people of this country safe. I remember that, in 1997, I got Parliament to agree to the introduction of a centrally held electronic register of all legitimate firearms, and I got Ministers in successive Governments to support that. The Home Office resisted and resisted it; the provision eventually came into force in 2006 and is working extremely well.

Even when I have convinced Home Office Ministers, the trouble is that the officials usually oppose them. In fact, the attitude of the Home Office to its own Ministers sometimes reminds me of my early youth, when I started my national service as a recruit at the Caterham guards depot. In those days, probably rightly, the response to any of us who began a statement, “Sergeant, I thought …”, would be—I am deleting the expletives—“You are not here to think. You are here to do what you are told”. Of course no civil servant would dream of addressing a Minister in that way, but the attitude of the Home Office reflects that approach all the same. I hope that the appointment of Sajid Javid as Home Secretary, with the advantages that he has over some of his predecessors, may produce a more effective counterterrorism policy.

But let me first mention the backdrop we face. There is no need for parliamentarians to be made aware of the scale of the threat, surrounded as we are by dozens of armed police. But it is not just we who work or live in London who have suffered a monstrous intrusion into our normal way of civilised life. It has been bad enough to lose the former ease and flexibility of air travel; now it appears that we may face a similar challenge to road travel.

The cost to the economy of terrorism is a serious and growing factor. In May this year, the European Parliament published a report by the RAND Corporation which makes some estimates of the human, physical and GDP cost of terrorism in each EU member country. The highest cost is in France: some €38 billion for the four years from 2013 to 2016. The UK comes second at €16 billion, which is €4 billion a year. This is over 25% of our total annual spending on foreign aid, which is around €15 billion. Of course, the opportunity cost to public spending is a significant factor in keeping down the standards of our social services. There is no doubt that the threat of terrorism and the cost of countering it has expanded rapidly since those figures were calculated for 2016.

We used to have enough problems with the IRA, but that was nothing compared with the threat of Islamist jihad. That of course became a whole new dimension in April 2014 with the formation of the Islamic State from the Iraqi franchise of al-Qaeda. It called itself ISIS—Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. It has as its stated and implacable aim the installation of a worldwide caliphate under sharia law. Although its military forces have suffered heavy defeats, it is active in many other countries. In Europe I suspect that the main country in which it is making progress is Spain.

Let me turn to a couple of proposals which really need to be taken seriously by the Home Office and could be incorporated in the Bill. First, a nation state, even one at peace, needs to know who its citizens are—and by citizens I mean inhabitants, whether of UK or other nationality. I do not advocate identity cards. They are dangerous because they can be forged and thus convince those who need to know of a false identity. This applies especially if there are biometrics in the card because of course any competent criminal or terrorist—and by competent I do not mean the amateurs who now operate for the Russian GRU—can ensure that their biometrics are on the identity document. What is needed is a national identity number with centrally held biometrics of the holder. These could enable the holder to be checked against the central record. This would replace the plethora of other ID numbers used, including those on driving licences and passports.

My second point is on something that I have been advocating for a long while. I believe it has long been essential that the UK passport authority should know what other passports are held by British passport holders. I emphasise that I am not for one moment suggesting that people should not be allowed a second, third or even fourth passport. All I am asking is that their possession of such passports is recorded in such a way that the scanning of a passport at the UK border reveals their existence; otherwise, as I was told years ago, people travel to a place on one passport and do things that they should not do on another passport.

I believe that the powers to take some action envisaged in Clause 4 are long overdue, but rather than designating areas of no travel I prefer the approach suggested by my noble friend Lord Faulks of introducing modern treason legislation. We should look more closely at some of the proscribed organisations. In this context, I think particularly of the Muslim Brotherhood. It was founded in 1928, and practically its first action was to kill the Prime Minister of Egypt in 1947, I think. Its leader was then assassinated and it has been behind huge troubles all over the world, but it keeps its face clean. It is really like Sinn Féin was to the IRA.

We should be more discriminating over those to whom we grant refuge. When David Cameron proposed to take 20,000 refugees from Syria, some of us asked for priority to be given to Christians and Yazidis, who were particularly subject to persecution. Up to now, the Government have resisted this.

It is a disgrace that more than 1,200 members of the UK Muslim community were able to join ISIS and it is an even greater mistake that 400 of them have been allowed to return to the UK. To take up arms against forces of which Her Majesty’s military form a part should be grounds for the immediate withdrawal of UK citizenship.

A national identity number system would be of value not only for national security but also for the administration of social services and health services where the present mess of identity through national insurance numbers and NHS numbers is laughable. The potential saving in that area would easily pay for the introduction of national identity numbers.

Finally, I shall comment on what my noble friend Lady Warsi said. She wants the Government to re-engage with the Muslim community. I am all in favour of that, of course, but the best way to do that would be for the leaders of that community to exclude and excommunicate those who support Islamist jihad. Only then can we really get together to prevent and fight terrorism.

Immigration Detention: Shaw Review

Lord Marlesford Excerpts

Tuesday 24th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord. I have an updated position on torture. The vulnerable state in which victims of torture will present themselves has to be sensitively dealt with. That goes to what the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, said: we must treat people with humanity. It is paramount that any of the problems from their experience will be picked up immediately in the risk assessment that people enter into when they arrive in a detention centre. They will be dealt with sensitively and accordingly.

[Lord Marlesford (Con)]

I will quickly follow up the point made by my noble friend Lord Deben. The Statement says that,

“we will increase the number of Home Office staff in immigration removal centres”.

What is the present size of the staff? How many people are in the centres of the moment? How many illegal immigrants are there who are not in the centres?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I have a feeling that we do not release the number of staff that we have in our detention estate, but I will double check. If we do I will get those figures to the noble Lord.

Amesbury Incident

Lord Marlesford Excerpts

Thursday 5th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marlesford (Con)]

Does my noble friend agree that it sounds unlikely that this was an attack aimed at individuals? In its social, economic and psychological impact, is not an incident such as this much closer to something such as a cyberattack and does it not underline the vulnerability of modern societies to these new, mysterious and amorphous risks?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

On the first question, clearly I cannot comment, because the investigation has not reached its conclusion but that certainly seems to be what is promoted in the press. In terms of likening it to a cyberattack, agents such as Novichok have in fact been around for some time—it kind of reminded me of the Cold War, where such methods were used; I know that, after the first attack, people seemed to compare it with the Cold War era. The number of different ways, including cyberattacks, that can debilitate a town, region or even a country are growing and we are right to be concerned.

Financial Exclusion

Lord Marlesford Excerpts

Wednesday 4th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

That reason, among others, is why the Government announced in March a review of and consultation on cash and digital payments in the new economy. That is precisely the type of question that is being looked at now as part of that consultation, to which we will bring forward a response in the autumn.

[Lord Marlesford (Con)]

My Lords, are those who retail goods and services legally obliged to accept cash?

[Lord Bates]

I am pretty sure that the answer is yes. There is a piece of legislation: the Bill of Exchange Act 1882, or something like that. I will probably have to write to the noble Lord. If it is not that Act, another serious piece of legislation is the Equality Act 2010, which carries certain mandates that need to be there to provide access for the wider community to ensure financial inclusion, particularly for the most vulnerable.

Police and Crime Commissioners

Lord Marlesford Excerpts

Thursday 28th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marlesford (Con)]

My Lords, I completely support and agree with everything that the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong, said. One useful thing that has come out of this debate is that it is clear that the PCC system, which I support, needs some modification. A great deal more care needs to be taken over a new system for selecting the candidates: the sort of people who should become PCCs.

I want to refer to the case of Edward Heath. I first knew him when he was shadow Chancellor and I was working in the Conservative Research Department. Along with my noble friend Lord Cope I worked for him on the 1965 Finance Bill. Subsequently I knew him when he was Prime Minister and I was working in Whitehall. There are very few people in my life for whom I would put my hand in the fire for their total integrity and personal morality. Ted Heath is one of them. What confuses me is the reluctance of the Home Office to accept widespread advice that an independent inquiry is needed. Now the police and crime commissioner for Wiltshire has refused to do his duty. I assume he has good reasons for doing so and I suggest that those reasons themselves should be brought into the public domain. Now that we know that we need a public inquiry, why is the Home Office being so difficult? I fear that I have a great suspicion of the Home Office itself.

It is awful to say it, but the Home Office has been shown, in part of its organisation, to be deeply corrupt. It is deplorable, but I have asked Parliamentary Questions and the Home Office has revealed that numerous members of its Civil Service staff have been convicted of serious criminal offences in relation to their duties. More recently, it has been very reluctant to disclose the names of those concerned. In January 2012 my noble friend Lord Henley, and in August 2013 my noble friend Lord Taylor of Holbeach revealed in Written Answers that there had been 37 convictions of Home Office staff, most of whom went to prison, sometimes for long periods of up to nine years. Their names were given in those Parliamentary Answers. On 1 June my noble friend Lady Williams gave a further Written Answer adding 22 cases to the list, but she refused to give the names of those concerned to protect the statutory and data protection obligations. These people were convicted in open court and their names therefore should be open to the media, and are. Indeed, the most recent case was of someone called Shamsu Iqbal, who in April this year was sent to prison for 11 years for assisting unlawful immigration in a case on which millions of pounds of public money was spent. This illustrates why we must have a public inquiry by a retired judge into the case of Wiltshire Police and Sir Edward Heath.

EU Settlement Scheme

Lord Marlesford Excerpts

Thursday 21st June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I think that it became clear, when my right honourable friend became Home Secretary, that culture change was afoot across the Home Office. He talked about a more humane approach to decision-making and about the end of the hostile environment, which would instead become a compliant environment. The wording of the Statement today was no accident. It reflects a much more positive attitude to people who make applications and tries to help them. As I say, I do not think that that is accidental and, since my right honourable friend became Home Secretary, his actions have shown that.

[Lord Marlesford (Con)]

My Lords, how does this settlement relate to the agreement with the EU on reciprocal treatment under the NHS? My noble friend will be aware that, under the present system, HMG pay for UK citizens who require medical treatment in the EU and we are meant to be repaid for treating EU citizens here. The trouble is that for some years it has been totally out of balance. The last time I looked at the figures, HMG paid out some £500 million for the treatment of UK citizens in the EU and received only about £50 million for the treatment of EU citizens in the UK. How is that relevant to what the Prime Minister said about the Brexit dividend?

Asylum Seekers

Lord Marlesford Excerpts

Tuesday 15th May 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Lord is absolutely right to point out that this sort of thing should never happen again. I assume the most senior member is the most senior management person within the detention estate who organises these things. I do not have that sort of detail before me. I hope the noble Lord will appreciate that I have had very short notice of this Question. I am not trying to avoid his question. I will get back to him in writing.

[Lord Marlesford (Con)]

My Lords, that exchange of questions illustrates perfectly the point I want to make. This is yet another example of the incompetence of the Home Office in not being able properly to supervise the performance and activities of its subcontractors. This is not a major management problem. If the Home Office really cannot manage that then truly, as a noble Lord who is a former Home Secretary said, it is not fit for purpose. What is it going to do about it?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I just explained that a service improvement plan will be released very shortly. We always have to learn from events such as this and make sure that we improve our processes and treat people properly.

Refugees (Family Reunion) Bill [HL]

Lord Marlesford Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 11th May 2018 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Marlesford]

Clause 1, page 1, line 4, leave out “one or more” and insert “up to two”

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Marlesford (Con)]

My Lords, I move this amendment for two reasons. First, I believe that legislation and the privilege that we have in introducing Private Member’s Bills should be taken very seriously. By this I mean that legislation is something that requires precision for implementing the intention. From that, it follows that the intention should be reasonably clear and realistic. In this, legislation is crucially different from debate on resolutions, propositions or aspirations. One can, for example, debate the need for a settlement of the Middle East conflict, but to put forward legislation for that is unlikely to be helpful. It is perfectly reasonable to debate all sorts of views on immigration but proposals to uncap it in an unmeasurable way are really not suited to a declaration of policy, let alone legislation.

I remember as a journalist when I had to attend all the party conferences, in 1976 at the Liberal Party conference—the first conference that the noble Lord, Lord Steel, had when he was leader of the Liberal Party—the Young Liberals, who are always inclined to anarchism, had a resolution that there should be completely free immigration into the UK. The noble Lord rebuked them, saying that if they wanted the party to have those sorts of policies they should find another leader. Perhaps the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, was a Young Liberal at that time.

The second reason why I am moving the amendment is to probe into the actual figures. Clause 1 specifies nine categories of family members of an individual who have been granted refugee status whose application to enter or remain in the UK the Secretary of State would be obliged to grant unless the refusal was in the interests of national security. Immigration statistics are always complicated, but at its simplest I would point out that the number of people who have been granted asylum over the 10 years up to 2017—and this is the lowest figure—is 56,921. Each, I suggest, would be likely on average to apply for entry for more than one person. In the ninth category of people in Clause 1(2) are included,

“any dependent relative not otherwise listed in this subsection”,

so it is really pretty open wording. No limit is really envisaged.

I believe that any Government are obliged to limit immigration to a number that can be absorbed into the community. My definition of “absorbed” in this context is for the basic state provision of housing, health services generally and education to be able to be provided without diluting, to an extent that is democratically unacceptable, the standard of living of those already resident in the UK. I recognise at once that my own amendment of up to two family members could well amount to over 100,000, and that would probably be over my own measure of “absorbed”. In that context, I remind your Lordships that the latest 12-month figure for net migration into the UK is 244,000.

In practice the Bill would open the door to large numbers of economic migrants. We know that the potential number of those from Africa alone is measured in the millions and it is not really possible to estimate it. All that can be said is that market forces suggest that migration would continue until the standard of living in the receiving country was no longer high enough to attract economic migrants—thus, the only way of limiting those who want to come is by restricting numbers.

I must mention one other deeply worrying aspect of immigration control in the UK: the capacity of the Home Office to administer it. It is now 12 years since the then Home Secretary, now the noble Lord, Lord Reid of Cardowan, famously declared on 4 May 2006 that the Home Office was “not fit for purpose”. It is sad and deeply worrying that this is clearly still the case, and I am not talking about the deplorable incompetence over the “Empire Windrush”. On that matter, I am wholly on the side of the migrants. In my 20s I was lucky enough, in my first job working for a British chemical company, to be posted for over a year to the Caribbean, living out of a suitcase and travelling from island to island, selling pharmaceuticals to doctors in what was then the British West Indies. I got to know many West Indians and learnt that they have the best sense of humour of any people in the world, and I like and respect them enormously.

I am talking about the fact that it seems that the Home Office immigration service is systemically corrupt. In a Written Answer on 10 January 2012, the Home Office revealed that over the previous five years there had been,

“29 convictions of Home Office staff in connection with their official activities”.—[Official Report, 10/1/12; col. WA36.]

The great majority, nearly all from the immigration department, resulted in prison sentences, two of them for nine years. I fear that that is continuing. As recently as 5 April the Times carried a report of a Home Office official, Mr Shamsu Iqbal, who had been found guilty of falsifying the records of over 400 people, amounting to some £6 million of profit to him and his colleagues. Surely one must ask why the Home Office recruitment and vetting procedure has not been tightened up between the previous figure and today.

At any rate, this Bill is aspirationally attractive, and all of us who have any liberal sensibilities like the idea of families being able to be joined together, although it may well be that better facilities are needed for that purpose. However, the Bill as drafted would make immigration an open season for doubtful and corrupt activities, leaving Ministers little opportunity for questioning what was happening. My amendment would be a small, though probably still too large, step in enabling a practical limit to be imposed. I beg to move.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

It may be for the convenience of the Committee if I speak at this stage. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, for the opportunity to return to the Bill, especially because it enables me to give a plaudit to the Government. The Minister would not have expected that.

We have debated the subject of family reunion on previous occasions, but I think the most recent was during the course of the EU withdrawal Bill, when the Minister responding to the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, and resisting his amendment, did not mention the pull factor, which on every other occasion that I can remember the Government have included in their argument. I do not subscribe to the pull factor, described by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, as implausible. I hope that that was a significant omission.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, the Home Office often comes in for negative comments, so it is always nice to hear noble Lords pay tribute to the dedicated staff who work tirelessly for the right reasons and for the right outcomes for the people who apply. I look forward to the analysis of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee.

[Lord Marlesford]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in the debate. I think we all agree that underlying the Bill are the humane intentions which we all support. Every example given was fully valid and I support them all. However, the fact remains that the Bill removes from the Home Office the powers and opportunities to control the total number of people who come into the country. I have indicated that I have a pretty low opinion of the Home Office’s capacity in this respect, but the right reverend Prelate put his finger on this point, which I mentioned in my speech: the only ground on which an application can be stopped by the Secretary of State is that of national security.

As the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, said, applications are available, but if there is no government check—the Bill explicitly and deliberately removes the government check—and if the Government do not have the ability to make the final decision, which of course is subject to every sort of lobbying and debate and all the rest of it, you are abrogating the overall control of immigration which I believe the people of this country would always insist upon. That is the fundamental error of the Bill.

My amendment was merely intended to draw attention to this and to reduce the possible number. I have said already that I thought 100,000 would probably be too many to be allowed in, but the Government must take on more clearly a policy on how many people and in what circumstances because I am by no means sure. The Government have always said that they want the brightest and the best, and that must be right for the country. None the less, there are strong humanitarian arguments for individual refugees to be able to be reunited in this country with their families. But it is about the way in which that is done and the avoidance of it being sidetracked by those with less creditable motives. It is important that we safeguard against that, and the only people who can do so are the Government and the Home Secretary.

There is a deep flaw in the Bill, but, equally, it has been worth while, and I hope that this has been a worthwhile debate. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 1 withdrawn.

Brexit: UK Passports

Lord Marlesford Excerpts

Thursday 29th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

It means that it will be subject to negotiations between this country and the EU. The noble Baroness has asked me about a specific point and, as well as my noble friend the Leader writing to her, I shall follow it up.

[Lord Marlesford (Con)]

My Lords, does my noble friend recognise that much more important than the colour of passports is the urgent need, in the interests of national security, to review the whole way in which passports are used? First, there is still not full scrutiny of all passports on departure. Secondly, information on the passports of those who have been excluded or deported is not recorded in such a way that immigration officers can see it and stop them coming in. Thirdly, there is no proper recording of stolen or lost passports with the immigration officers. Fourthly, information on people with second passports is not recorded and not available to immigration officers, who therefore lack the ability to check on the security implications of some movements.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My noble friend asked several questions. It is perfectly legitimate, for most countries, to own two passports if someone has dual nationality. In the case of stolen or lost passports, that should be declared to the passport authorities. On being deported, some people who have been deported will be on the list that border officials will have; others will not, of course, but the security services will certainly be aware of them. On the question about not all passports being checked on exit from this country, I think that most are. I do not know of a situation where one’s passport would not be checked when leaving this country.

Security and Policing: Facial Recognition Technology

Lord Marlesford Excerpts

Thursday 1st March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marlesford (Con)]

My Lords, we are very lucky that we have people like the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, and organisations such as Big Brother Watch. In some ways, I start from the same premise of the requirement that fundamental human rights have within democracy. However, I quite quickly come to a different fork. I would illustrate that fork by suggesting that it depends on which country you live in. If, for example, you live in—to take the ultimate—North Korea, or—to take the intermediate—perhaps Russia or Venezuela, it is rather different to living in a European country, or at least most European countries, and many other countries in the world. For me, that is a practical and philosophical distinction. I describe it as the “two Ts”: T for tyranny and T for terrorism. I do not happen to believe that we in this country are faced with potential tyranny, let alone have tyranny already, but we all know that we are faced with terrorism and other forms of organised crime. That is what makes it essential that we use the implements that are available to protect us.

As I said at the start, I have sympathy for the general need to conserve our liberties. Indeed, I would even suggest that I have a minor credential in that: along with other noble friends in this House, I have been in the advance of trying to limit and check the use of powers of entry into premises without warrant, of which there have been far too many. We have a lot of our people on our side over this, and the committee that looks at statutory instruments now keeps a close eye on that.

However, we need to make the fullest use of all the techniques available not just to keep a check on terrorism and crime but for the proper organisation of the state. I shall like to use my remaining two minutes to say that what is really needed is that the state is aware of who its citizens are, which at the moment it is not. What is needed, therefore, is some form of proper identification. I do not believe in identity cards; still less do I believe in identity cards with biometrics, because biometrics on identity cards can be used fraudulently by terrorists or criminals who, with modern technology, can put their own biometrics on them and therefore appear to be any person that they represent themselves to be.

What we need are national identity numbers. Surely we can have no objection to this. We need our biometrics, whatever the best biometrics are, to be stored within the Government centrally and securely, not on bits of paper scattered around. They should be online and available to those people who should have them. In that way, we would have one number, a national identity number, instead of the current plethora of numbers, so many of which have been devalued by being misused, such as national insurance numbers, national health numbers, HMRC numbers and passport numbers. I was amazed that the noble Baroness was concerned about photographs on passports; of course they are available to the police. It is essential for our national security that those who need to know, as the jargon goes, have access.

I hope the Government will reconsider their repeated refusal to introduce national identity numbers and look at this system, which would make a huge difference to the administration of our public services, social services and National Health Service and guard better our national security.