Counterterrorism Policy: Syria and Iraq

Lord Robertson of Port Ellen Excerpts

Monday 2nd March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Robertson of Port Ellen (Lab)]

Does the Minister agree that there is something absurd about the security services being blamed in any way for what has happened where people may or may not have gone to Syria to fight for ISIL? Instead of criticising the security services, which have a huge job not only in detecting or identifying people who might be involved in this kind of terrorism but all other kinds of terrorism at the moment, we should be giving full support to them. Is it not completely unrealistic to think that everybody who is followed or identified by the security services should somehow be locked up? There is no prison system yet invented that would be capable of identifying and imprisoning all those who might conceivably in the future be guilty of some terrorist act.

[Lord Bates]

The noble Lord is absolutely right that when it comes to this, we should pay tribute to the security services for the immense work which they have done. Since 2010, 750 people have been arrested for terrorist-related offences, 210 have been charged and 140 have been successfully prosecuted. It is in the nature of these things that we focus on the one or two who got away rather than the many that the security services have detected.