Europe, Human Rights and Keeping People Safe at Home and Abroad

Andy Burnham Excerpts

Tuesday 24th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)]

This has been an excellent and informative debate, during which we have been treated to the marvellous maiden speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Chris Elmore). He told us that his constituents have set him the goal of being half as good as Huw. On today’s evidence, and given that he is already making the case for steelworkers who will lobby Parliament tomorrow, he will pass that test with flying colours. We wish him well.

A clear majority of speakers, particularly my hon. Friends the Members for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe), for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) and for York Central (Rachael Maskell), have made the case that Britain will be immeasurably stronger by remaining part of the European Union. Just as the economic case for leaving has crumbled under questioning in recent days, so today’s debate has put the security case for Brexit under intense scrutiny and found it to be illusory. A vote to leave is a vote for isolation, and that simply makes no sense whatsoever in a highly volatile and unpredictable world. Nobody put that case more powerfully than my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), the Foreign Secretary, who gave yet another tour de force in this House. [Hon. Members: “Shadow Foreign Secretary!”] I am sure everyone will agree that it is only a matter of time.

We agree with the Government that our membership of the EU strengthens our security at home and abroad, but we do not agree that the Bills in the Gracious Speech will make our society stronger or fairer. Indeed, they could do the opposite, undermine our standing in the world and expose us to greater risks from radicalisation.

Let me quote from the Gracious Speech:

“My Government will bring forward proposals for a British Bill of Rights.”

That was, in fact, from the 2015 Gracious Speech. This year’s said:

“Proposals will be brought forward for a British Bill of Rights.”

Is it not a little unfair on Her Majesty to ask her to keep reading out a cut-and-paste Queen’s Speech?

One can speculate why this long-promised Tory Bill of Rights has never materialised. Might it be because it springs from an impulse for political grandstanding, rather than a carefully thought-through response to the challenges of the modern world? I fear that the same can also be said of the counter-extremism Bill. In both cases it seems that the Government are opening Pandora’s box without fully knowing where they are going or what they are trying to achieve. In areas as sensitive as these, that is a dangerous thing to do.

Let me take each Bill in turn. A few weeks ago, the Home Secretary gave a speech in which she called for Britain to leave the European convention on human rights. What a terrible message that would send to the rest of the world, but what a boost for regimes that seek to deny human rights to their own citizens to claim that Britain is doing the same, as the former Attorney General, the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), eloquently pointed out in his speech. Of course, the nuances of our debate would be lost on the other side of the world, and Britain’s moral authority on the world stage would be severely dented.

A few days ago, however, The Daily Telegraph reported that the Prime Minister did not support any change to the ECHR, so we have the Home Secretary saying one thing and the Prime Minister another. How can we possibly have confidence in what the Government are proposing when their position is so confused?

They have lost sight of a simple point, which might explain why they are so muddled on this matter: the Human Rights Act is a British Bill of Rights. These are the basic rights that Britain wrote and promoted around the world in the post-war period—rights that protect ordinary people from the unaccountable power of the state and vested interests.

Look at some of the examples of how those rights have helped people fight injustice. I think of the elderly couple, Mr and Mrs Driscoll, who had lived together as a married couple for 65 years but who were then put in separate care homes by a local authority. They used the Human Rights Act to be brought back together. I also think that if the Human Rights Act had been in place in 1989, the Hillsborough families would have had much more ability to challenge the cruel decision of the original inquest to impose a 3.15 cut-off time, which prevented them from finding out basic details about what happened to their loved ones.

One can only surmise that the Government’s purpose in legislating in this area would be to water down the rights in the Human Rights Act and to add more qualifications. I ask the Home Secretary: how is that going to build a stronger and fairer country? It will not do so, and that is why Labour will proudly defend its Human Rights Act and fight any attempt to weaken human rights laws in this country.

Similarly, I struggle to see how the proposed counter-extremism Bill will do anything other than undermine community cohesion. I would be the first to say that the Government are right to want to tackle extremism, and I support them in that aim. However, the question is not whether we do it, but how we do it. I am genuinely concerned that the Government are getting their approach drastically wrong. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) was at her best on this subject today. I say this not out of party politics nor a desire to score points, but because I am worried about the deep despondency caused by the existing legislation, as I hear in the Muslim community when I visit mosques and madrassahs. If the House legislates in haste once again, the damage could be profound.

At the weekend, the Home Secretary received a letter from police representatives, faith groups and civil society organisations expressing major concerns about the proposed Bill. She cannot just ignore this and plough on regardless. The Prevent duty to report extremist behaviour is creating a feeling that the Muslim community is unfairly targeted and monitored. It is building a climate of suspicion and distrust. In my view, if the Government legislate further and extend what is perceived to be an illiberal and discriminatory approach, far from tackling extremism, they will risk creating the conditions for it to flourish.

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

I understand the shadow Home Secretary’s concern, but the rest of the nation knows that the real threat we face is a specific one. As I said in my speech, for which he was not in the Chamber, the threat is specific: with Islamic fundamentalism, barbarity on a scale previously unimagined is being carried out in the name of Islam, and it is up to the Muslim community in Britain to address this problem in its midst.

[Andy Burnham]

The way to address the hon. Gentleman’s point is not to tar everybody with the same brush and throw suspicion on the whole community. That is the language we have heard from Conservative Members. We have heard the Prime Minister say that parts of the Muslim community are “quietly condoning” extremism. That does not win hearts and minds in the community, and we need 99.9% of people to work with the Government to find the very small number of people who may be at risk of radicalisation.

Rather than compounding the damage by legislating in haste, I urge Ministers to take a step back and to set up a cross-party review of how the statutory duty is working in practice. That would be much more beneficial than pushing on with further legislation.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman would accept that when we dealt with the totalitarian theories of communism and fascism in the past, we never made illegal the holding of such views; we made illegal the carrying out of such views with any form of violent action. However, does he also accept that where children and indoctrination in secret are concerned, we must intervene if we are not to see the radicalisation of a new generation?

[Andy Burnham]

The right hon. Gentleman makes an important point. That is why it is important to step with great care into the space that the Bill proposes to tread into. Talk of gagging orders and closure orders will be perceived as an attack on the whole community. That is how people in this country feel right now. There is no difference between those of us on either side of the House: we want to tackle extremism and radicalisation in the most effective way. I simply put it to the Government that they are not achieving that at the moment.

Britain must remain a place where everybody is free to express and develop their beliefs without the fear of being spied on. That freedom is what makes this country a wonderful place to live and worship in, and we must never lose it. At the same time, we must be steadfast in fighting all forms of extremism—including Islamophobia, anti-Semitism and far-right extremism—to prevent any suggestion that extremism is the preserve of just one community.

Let me touch briefly on prisons. We welcome the Government’s efforts to reform and modernise our prison system, with a greater focus on rehabilitation and prisoner education. It was a pleasure to hear the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) speak on that topic. However, there is a real issue with our prisons. The former chief inspector of prisons, Nick Hardwick, has talked of prisons being in their worst state for 10 years and as

“places of violence, squalor and idleness.”

My hon. Friend the Member for St Helens South and Whiston (Marie Rimmer) spoke very powerfully about prison safety and the need to improve staffing numbers. I hope the Government listen to her before they proceed with the prisons Bill.

I will end on a more constructive note. There are two carry-over Bills in the Gracious Speech on which it might be possible to build more consensus. As the Home Secretary knows, we share her goal of putting an updated law on the statute book governing the use of investigatory powers and giving the police and the security services the tools to do their job in the digital age. But we continue to have serious concerns about the Bill as currently drafted, as it does not yet contain sufficiently strong safeguards and human rights protections.

A few weeks ago, I wrote to the Home Secretary setting out seven issues on which we want significant improvement. Yesterday, she wrote to me on two of the issues I highlighted. I have to say that I found her letter extremely encouraging. She gave a commitment in the letter to an independent review of the operational case for the bulk powers. That review was called for in Committee by the shadow Immigration Minister, my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer). It is not only the right thing to do, but could build trust in the whole process. I am pleased that she has agreed in the letter to look at having a review and has approached David Anderson QC to lead it. The Opposition strongly welcome that development, which we believe will build trust and support behind the Bill.

The second issue that the Home Secretary has written to me about is our concern about the targeting of trade unions. The Opposition have not just concerns but proof that in the past the security services have targeted trade unions, in particular, in the case of the Shrewsbury 24. The Home Secretary’s letter contains a suggestion that she will change the Bill to ensure that investigatory powers cannot be used to monitor legitimate trade union activity. That is a major concession—historic, even—and I am certain that it will go a long way to reassuring Opposition Members. There is still a considerable way to go before the Investigatory Powers Bill becomes acceptable, but this letter shows that the Home Secretary is listening, which bodes well for the rest of the Bill’s passage.

I will touch briefly on the Policing and Crime Bill. Colleagues on all sides of the House will know that I have written to them seeking support for a number of changes in response to the Hillsborough verdict. Those include making sure that bereaved families have parity of legal funding at inquests where the police are represented and removing any time limit on misconduct proceedings to prevent retirement from being used as a route to avoid them. I am grateful for the support I have had from colleagues from Plaid Cymru and the Green party, and I urge other parties to offer the same support. The best message we could possibly send to the Hillsborough families—this point was made very well by my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald)—is to come together across the Floor of this House to make Hillsborough a moment of real change.

My experience of working with the Home Secretary on Hillsborough is a reminder of the incredible power we in this place have in our hands to change lives for the better when we put differences aside and work as one. But we do not always choose to use that power. I believe that the issues we have discussed today—the promotion of human rights and the eradication of extremism—are bigger than party politics. They are issues on which our most vulnerable communities will look to us to achieve the maximum amount of political consensus, because that in turn will give strength back to those communities. I urge the Government to keep that point in mind as they bring their new Bills forward.