Terrorism Act 2000 (Proscribed Organisations) (Amendment) Order 2011

Debate between Lord West of Spithead and Baroness Falkner of Margravine

Thursday 20th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord West of Spithead]

My Lords, I support the Motion. I am sure that, now the Minister is in government, she realises how unbelievably difficult these decisions are. The TTP was around when I was Minister for Security. It was extremely difficult to pull together enough information to make certain that one needed to do this because, as the Minister pointed out, this is quite a step to take. One has to weigh up not just what it does to stop it being able to do the dreadful things it wished to do, but how much it might garner support within certain ill-informed parts of our community and abroad. That is very difficult to do.

My noble friend Lord Reid mentioned HuT. While I was in government, we were continually lambasted about it, but it was very difficult to highlight and pin down specifics to enable us to do this within our law. We must not step forward quickly and do these things. To do that quickly and wrongly is a terrible mistake. My noble friend Lord Reid mentioned that. We have to be very measured and careful. Each time, we have to think about what the effects are within our communities in this country and overseas. Partly in answer to my noble friend Lord Harris, I think that the judgment has to be that if the threat is to our people abroad, not just our civilians but also our servicemen who are out there doing things for our nation, that is just as great an issue as things happening within this country, and all of those issues are an important balance. I support this Motion. These are very difficult issues. They are not at all party political, but are very important for the nation. We have to be very careful, and we need to scrutinise each decision.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine]

My Lords, I broadly concur with what other noble Lords have said in support of this order. I wonder whether the House is aware that over the past decade 60,000 to 70,000 people have been killed in terrorist attacks in Pakistan, yet not a single successful prosecution has been brought in the Pakistani courts. While proscribing an organisation is indeed an extremely grave and serious matter, one has to live with the reality that if a country that has less than ideal procedures for taking people through due process is unable to take control of these elements of its population, it rests on the rest of us to ensure that our populations are secure and safe.

I am a little disappointed that it has taken this long to proscribe this organisation, as I know from a great deal of openly available evidence in the Pakistani communities that it has left its signature against some of the most heinous crimes committed in recent years. It has a rather innocent sounding name “the community of the learned students of Pakistan” and sounds entirely inoffensive, but in fact it is armed to the teeth, it has some of the nastiest propaganda at its disposal and it particularly selects people who support human rights to target. The Minister told us of its attacks on the Ahmadiyya community in Pakistan, a peaceful, law-abiding, extremely well educated community that provides professionals, such as doctors and others in the most difficult professions, who work across the country to alleviate poverty and hardship. They specifically target this community because they have a warped view of what their religion comprises. In the past two years, they have also taken to targeting journalists and lawyers. I personally know of people in Pakistan who have been sent anonymous letters, whose fax numbers have been obtained and who have been told by this group, “We are watching you, we are going to come and get you”. I would have thought there was sufficient evidence to have proscribed them some time ago.

The Government’s statement talks about the possibility of de-proscription and my noble friend mentioned that 46 organisations have been proscribed under these powers. Can she tell us how many have applied for successful deproscription because as a liberal at heart I am very conscious of free expression? It worries me that organisations, once proscribed, would find themselves in that situation and unable to be deproscribed. I wonder if she could tell us how many applications there have been and how many have been successfully de-proscribed. We must recall that freedom’s struggles in other parts of the world involve organisations that—due to the exegesis of their operating circumstances—might have been somewhat implicated in some kinds of violence. Yet when they revert to the path of peace, it is also right that we reconsider their standing at that time.

I hope it is not too wide of this particular order to ask the Minister what steps the Government are taking to train up judges, police officers, forensics teams and so on, so that Pakistan is better equipped to bring people to trial itself rather than waiting for them to be unable to travel to other countries.

Finally, on the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, a lot of these organisations are known, the minute they are proscribed, to sail under a new flag. In other words, they find another innocent-sounding name but their aims continue as before and many of the same individuals are involved in the same heinous activities.

Several noble Lords have made reference to the Hizb ut-Tahrir, which is established perfectly legally in the United Kingdom. I would not therefore draw that analogy as it is an entirely different ball game, but can my noble friend tell us, since it is not clear to me, whether this organisation is established in any sense openly in this country?