Brussels Terrorist Attacks

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rosser (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement made in the House of Commons earlier today. We share fully the abhorrence and condemnation expressed in the Statement about the attacks in Brussels yesterday, which were in reality yet another attack on all Europe. We support the Government in confronting this threat. Our thoughts are very much with the families of those killed and of the missing British person, with those injured and their families, and with the people of Brussels and Belgium—and indeed the people of Ankara and Istanbul, who have also been the subject of attacks in recent days.

I have a few questions and points to raise. Can the Minister say what guidance is being offered to our citizens who were intending to travel to or through Brussels over the holiday period in particular? Can he say more about the collaboration that is taking place with Belgium and other European partners, including the support or expertise that had already been given or offered to Belgium prior to this attack? If ever the case still needed to be made for closer working and collaboration and sharing of intelligence to combat these acts of terrorism, this is it.

On the issue of border security, we welcome the steps that have been taken to step up checks at our air, sea and rail borders with Belgium and France, and security on our own transport network. Are all passports now being checked on exit from the UK, as the Government said they would be by the end of last year, and were 100% passport checks in place between the UK and Belgium in advance of yesterday’s attacks?

Border Force operates juxtaposed controls at, I believe, six locations in France, covering ferry services, the Channel Tunnel and Eurostar. As I understand it, however, in respect of Belgium juxtaposed controls cover only Eurostar foot passengers and not ferry terminals. Is that the case and if so, will there be a review of our borders with Belgium with a view to strengthening them?

Further cuts are coming following the spending review. The Border Force has faced years of cuts and is already stretched. Are further cuts to the force going to be made in 2016-17? Surely now is the time to strengthen our borders, not to go in the reverse direction.

We know that a number of terror plots have been foiled in the past year and we take this opportunity to express our gratitude to all those in the police and security services who work so determinedly to keep us safe. The public, however, will want reassurance about our ability to thwart a Paris or Brussels-style attack. We know about plans to improve firearms capability in London but there is concern about the ability of cities outside London to cope. Last year a Home Office report on police firearms capability found that the number of armed officers had fallen by 15% since 2008, including a fall of 27% in Greater Manchester and 25% in Merseyside. Have the Government reviewed the ability of all major cities to respond, and can they provide reassurance that, if there were a Paris or Brussels-style attack outside London, our police and fire services would have the necessary capability to respond?

In his statement on the strategic defence and security review, the Prime Minister promised a new contingency plan to deal with major terrorist attacks, with up to 10,000 military personnel available to support the police. Can the Minister update the House on those plans and say when the full 10,000 military personnel will be trained and in place?

We know that at moments like this, great anxiety will be felt in the British Muslim community over fears of reprisal attacks and hate crime as a result of the acts of terrorism in Brussels—which are simply that, and a perversion of Islam. Do the Government recognise that concern, and will they send an unequivocal message that anyone who seeks to promote division or hate on the back of these attacks will be dealt with severely?

Will the Government also condemn the ill-informed comments from Donald Trump on UK television today and take this opportunity to distance the Government from them? Mr Trump appears to have suggested that Muslims do not come forward to report concerns in order to assist our security authorities in combating potential acts of terrorism. Generalised slurs, from whatever source, on all Muslim people, who have the same revulsion over what happened yesterday as everyone else, serve only to drive a wedge between the Muslim community and the rest of our diverse country. This is a time for maximum unity among people of all faiths—and none—in rejecting those who preach extremism. We stand together as a united country, and we stand with our neighbour Belgium in its time of need, determined that whatever it takes, and however long it takes, we will face and defeat this threat to our way of life together.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, if I may start on a personal note, while watching the television report on the Istanbul attack I noticed that it took place only a few days after I had walked down that street between meetings in Istanbul. To see the pictures of Brussels, where my wife was walking through the site the day before this happened, is to make one feel that we are not cut off from all this. This is part of our world. I find it despicable that the Brexit campaign should have tried to suggest that we could cut ourselves off from the world and that what happens 100 miles away from London, in Brussels, is no concern of ours. This was, after all, an attack by Belgian citizens in Belgium. We should recall from the IRA campaign in Britain that what was in many ways a domestic terrorist campaign also included cells and co-operation in Spain, Gibraltar, France, Belgium and Libya and that, in dealing with a series of global terrorist threats, we are forced to co-operate with others as closely as we can.

Perhaps the Minister would care to confirm this: if we were to try to secure our borders completely, we would have to return to the sort of controls that we had in the 1960s. I first began to travel between Britain and France then; all bags were opened and it often took 10 to 15 minutes for each person to go through passport control. Given the enormous increase in cross-border travel between Britain and the continent, it would be a severe disincentive to all our citizens—and, incidentally, an intense inconvenience to the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, in travelling each week between his home in France and the House of Lords. It would also be very difficult given the large Middle Eastern presence we now have, particularly in London. There are not just people from the Middle East working here and living as refugees but rich Arabs from countries from which money flows, unfortunately, to mosques and madrassahs in Britain to support a radical version of Islam. We all have to be deeply concerned about that.

I second everything that the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, said about visible co-operation and contact with our Muslim community. I was extremely proud to take part in a service in Westminster Abbey some months ago in which an Imam read from the Koran, as a representative of one of Britain’s faiths in one of our national Christian institutions. I suggest to the Government that they need to do more in demonstrating how far we accept British Muslims as part of the British community, and the moderate version of Islam as the appropriate representation of their faith.

Can the Minister say a little about the importance of the Prüm convention and British participation in it, in terms of the rapid exchange of information among different services across Europe on suspected terrorists and others? I noted the reference to the counterterrorism group in the Statement which, as the Statement recognises, brings Britain together with other EU members and with Norway and Switzerland, as all are concerned with this. Can he say a little about further moves that we think may be necessary towards the closer exchange of intelligence, information and co-operation among national police and security agencies with our neighbours, all of whom are also members of the European Union?

[Lord Bates]

I thank both noble Lords for their remarks and I agree very much with their points and observations. Let me start with that point about the Muslim community. Following the experience of previous attacks, we have sadly seen an increase in Islamophobic-style attacks around our country. One of the things which we put in place to retain confidence, as part of the counterextremism strategy, was to ensure that the police are visible in those areas and offering some protection and reassurance, particularly at sensitive spots within those communities.

I also make it clear to those overseas in the United States who wish to intervene in our affairs that in this area, as in many others, a little knowledge would be helpful because the police have gone straight on the record to point out that in so many of the cases which we have had success in disrupting, the intelligence and information has very much come from within that community. It is an absolute partnership—an essential partnership—that we have with that community and anything which drives a wedge between it and the wider community in the UK will serve only to weaken our security. We do not want that to happen. I know that my noble friend and ministerial colleague Lord Ahmad, who leads on the counterextremism area and sits in the Home Office and in the Department for Transport, is working on a daily basis in that respect.

Let me go through some of the points which were raised, in order if I can. The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, asked about the travel advice. It has already been updated for Belgium and while it does not advise against travel, it is stressing the importance of maintaining vigilance in that area. We will continue to keep that under review and change it if necessary.

On broadening the number of locations, these special juxtaposed controls which we have are of course a tremendous part of our defence. The Channel is an important part of our defence but the juxtaposed controls are a crucial part of our security at our borders. The Immigration Minister, James Brokenshire, has had meetings with his Belgian and Dutch counterparts about the possibility of strengthening relationships, particularly at some of the ferry terminals, in the light of intelligence. We hope to have more to say on that in future.

In relation to the Border Force, I know that the story is in a sense running because we have not yet announced the final budget for that. We will need to come forward with that very quickly indeed. But I hope that all noble Lords will be reassured that when we have talked about putting an extra £2.5 billion into the intelligence and security apparatus and recruiting another 1,900 people to the security services, and when we have protected in real terms the police and security budgets and announced uplifts for firearms, we are not going to do anything which would do other than strengthen these crucial front-line capabilities in the face of the threats that we receive.

The noble Lord, Lord Wallace, asked about Prüm. We did opt in to Prüm, which again is an important part of our co-operation with our European colleagues in this area. We have so many areas in which we co-operate with them, such as on criminal information networks and in Schengen information sharing. Prüm was very important because it has those elements of sharing data on DNA, on vehicle licensing and on fingerprints. We have signed up to those elements and they will be ready in 2017-18. Without tempting members of the Home Affairs Sub-Committee of the European Union Select Committee, if it is represented here, to leap to their feet the committee wrote a strong report saying that we need to go further and faster on that. In fact we organised a meeting with the very people who are introducing this at the Home Office, from a technological point of view. They have promised to come back with regular updates for the House on how we are doing.

I was asked what more could be done through counterterrorism. There are some items on the agenda. The Home Secretary has said that it is very important that we have passenger name records, not just for flights from outside the EU area but within it. It is vital that that happens; it was supposed to be on the agenda of the Justice and Home Affairs Council, which was to meet this week. Understandably, it has either been pushed back or, potentially, postponed. I thank noble Lords for the concerns in their questions.