Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism

Debate between Andy Burnham and Keith Vaz

Wednesday 13th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)]

I would customarily start a speech such as this by saying something like, “Where is the Home Secretary?” but even I will admit that the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) has better things to do today. I want to take this opportunity on behalf of the Opposition Benches to pay tribute to her tenure as Home Secretary. I have found that she has certainly been prepared to listen, particularly in the case of Hillsborough, on which her work was outstanding for the families who had faced a terrible injustice for all those years. I hope that she will continue to listen, and I have every hope that she will go on to make a good Prime Minister.

I also pay tribute to the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes), the Minister of State—for now. With the fast impending reshuffle, he will be twitchy on the Front Bench, but I suspect that his obvious talents will be rightly rewarded.

The order before the House today arises from the Terrorism Act 2000, which was passed by the previous Labour Government and was intended to provide a flexible framework to deal with the changing and emerging threat of new forms of terrorism. It is fair to say that we have seen unimaginable events in the 16 years since that legislation was originally enacted. Specifically, we have seen the rise of terrorism based on a distortion of Islam and its values. It is important to describe it as such rather than use the shorthand “Islamic terrorism”, because that is inaccurate and makes life harder for those in the Muslim community who face a daily and monumental battle against this perversion of their faith. Let us be careful in our language and help those battling radicalisation, not those who foment it.

The BBC has taken to using the phrase “so-called Islamic State”. In my view, that is not helpful. The use of “so-called” does not undermine “Islamic” or “State” and those are the two words that the public hear. It gives undeserved status to the organisation and makes it sound as though it is an authorised branch of Islam. I urge the director-general of the BBC to review that editorial decision and to move, as the Government have, to the use of Daesh. That is important, as I said at the beginning, because we face a highly changeable and challenging terrorism landscape.

Figures from the “Global Peace Index 2016” report show that deaths from terrorism increased by 80% in the past year. Only 69 countries did not record a terrorist incident. The intensity of terrorist activity is also increasing. Last year, 11 countries reported 500 or more deaths from terrorist incidents—double the year before—and incidents are happening all the time. Last month, a police officer was killed in France, for which Daesh claimed responsibility, and 44 people were killed and 239 injured by a bomb at Istanbul airport, for which it is suspected that Daesh was again responsible. Those are big increases on a rising trend. The year 2014 saw some 13,500 terrorist attacks around the world and 32,700 deaths. This is the context in which we are considering today’s order. As the terrorism landscape changes, the Government are right to be vigilant and to try to keep one step ahead.

We are being asked today to give agreement to the Government to proscribe four organisations linked to terrorism. Two have links to al-Qaeda and the others have links with Daesh. The public and political debate is obviously focused on the activities of Daesh in Syria and the wider middle east. It would however be a mistake for this House to lose sight of what is happening in Asia, particularly south-east Asia, as the Minister rightly said. It would be a further mistake for the House to focus on Daesh and to lose focus on al-Qaeda and its efforts to regroup. That is why the Government are right to bring this order for consideration today and to disrupt the activities of the relevant organisations before they establish a stronger foothold. The evidence that the Home Office put before the House makes it clear that there are grounds to proscribe the organisations.

We accept that evidence and will support the order this afternoon, but I want to make one point before I close that I ask the Minister and the Government to take into account. I want to go back to when the legislation was first introduced and to the first group of organisations to be proscribed under the 2000 Act, which included the International Sikh Youth Federation. There were objections at the time and what followed was a protracted legal argument in the courts, which ended only recently, and led to the Government coming to the House to lift the proscription. Learning from that experience, I say to the Minister that evidence does change over time. There may have been grounds to proscribe that organisation back then, but those grounds clearly expired some time ago. However, the people to which such orders relate may find that they stigmatise a section of their community.

[Keith Vaz]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. The fear of stigma is very much in the minds of communities. An example is the LTTE, which was correctly proscribed by the Government. Its leader was killed and the organisation no longer exists, but a stigma is still attached to members of the Tamil community. That is why it is so important to have a time limit, after which proscriptions can be reviewed, rather than people having to go to court each time. We of course support what the Government are doing on this occasion—we always have—but it is important that we are able to review without the need to go to court.

[Andy Burnham]

I strongly agree with the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee. The experience of the Sikh community in challenging the proscription of the International Sikh Youth Federation was pretty dispiriting, in that it had to pursue a lengthy legal process while facing an unresponsive Home Office. There may be good grounds to proscribe organisations—my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) accepted that there was a case with the organisation that he mentioned—but the stigma does affect a much wider community.

When the evidence changes, so should the Government, who should act quickly to remove any perceptions. I hope that they listen to what my right hon. Friend said—and they would be right to, because he is full of judgment and wisdom on such matters. My only request of the Government is that they institute a regime of the kind that he suggests, that there is a regular process of review, and that there are up-to-date assessments of the organisations that pose a genuine threat to the safety of our country. We should also make the challenge process easier than it was found to be by members of the Sikh community.

That is the only caveat that I place on our support for the order. Terrorism is a threat to our country. It is right that we take every possible action to root it out and we should work with the communities that struggle to deal with it. The Government are right to bring the order before the House today and we will give it our full support.

EU Nationals in the UK

Debate between Andy Burnham and Keith Vaz

Wednesday 6th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House notes that there are approximately three million nationals of other EU member states living in the UK; further notes that many more UK nationals are related to nationals of other EU member states; rejects the view that these men, women and children should be used as bargaining chips in negotiations on the UK’s exit from the EU; and calls on the Government to commit with urgency to giving EU nationals currently living in the UK the right to remain.

This debate directly affects the lives of millions of people living in this country, so let me start by inviting the House to join me in sending a very clear message to the EU nationals living in the UK, which I think they need to hear right now from this Parliament: you are truly valued members of our society, and you are very welcome here.

Let us remember that the people affected are the mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles, and grandmas and grandads of British children such as mine. They are our friends and our neighbours; valued members of local communities; doctors and nurses who look after us when we are ill; teachers who educate our children; and people who run companies employing thousands of British workers. To throw any doubt over their right to remain here in the future is to undermine family life, the stability of our public services, our economy and our society.

But, sadly, that is what the Home Secretary has done. Instead of showing leadership and sending out an immediate message of reassurance in the aftermath of Brexit, she has added to the uncertainty that many people were already experiencing, and she has left them feeling like bargaining chips in the Brussels negotiations.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

I share my right hon. Friend’s sentiments absolutely. The problem is that the Home Secretary has made certain statements, and other members of the Government have made other statements, and it is that uncertainty that is the problem. If there was a clear statement about the intent to keep EU nationals here without any further discussion, that would help to deal with the problems we have at the moment. It is that uncertainty that has led to a lot of problems in local communities, which we heard about in the debate last night.

[Andy Burnham]

I could not agree more with the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee. People have been left feeling uncertain. As I will say later, that has created a hostile climate on the streets of our communities, and this is not what people are looking for in someone who seeks to lead our nation. It will not be lost on people that, for the second time in three days, the Home Secretary has failed to come to the House to clear up the confusion. I think we were entitled to hear directly from her, having called this important debate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy Burnham]

That would be something. If the Minister got up today and said that, perhaps these people would feel a little more valued than they do. We will have to wait to see whether anything is forthcoming. It is right for the hon. Gentleman to say that putting obstacles in people’s way and making them pay fees just increases their sense of alienation from our country. I do not believe that any Labour or Scottish National party Member wants to see that; neither, I suspect, do Conservative Members.

I was talking about the climate. There continue to be attacks, and the Metropolitan police have received three reports an hour of abuse since the referendum—a rise of more than 50%. Yesterday in Torquay, graffiti that read “EU rats go home now” was sprayed on a health centre. This is not on. The Government could do something about this. If this climate carries on, it could have serious implications for the NHS and other public services. People who voted leave—I say this while looking at the hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip—did not vote for this. They did not vote for their country to become a less welcoming, more hostile place, but in the absence of action and leadership from the Government, that is exactly what is beginning to happen. Only they can change it, and they need to do so now.

[Keith Vaz]

rose—

[Andy Burnham]

I will give way a couple more times before I finish, and of course I will give way to the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee.

[Keith Vaz]

I am most grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way a second time. Does he agree that it would help the Government’s bargaining position with the other EU countries immensely if the next British Prime Minister went to Brussels for the negotiations and said that he or she had already granted the right to remain? The position of the 1.3 million British citizens would therefore be secured. That would help them; it would not hinder them, as the Home Secretary has suggested.

[Andy Burnham]

Of course. It is impossible to deny the simple power of what my right hon. Friend has just said. The generous, open-minded gesture of saying now that people are welcome here would not just improve our position in negotiations and strengthen the position of British nationals living abroad; it would say something very important about our country and how it has not changed after the referendum. That is why the Government should do it.

I want to end on a personal note. My wife, Marie-France, is a Dutch national, and she has been here for 26 years since we met at university. In that time, she has been a volunteer working with young people who have learning disabilities. She has been involved in our children’s schools. She has run a business and employed people. Following the death of her sister Claire a decade ago, she has raised thousands and thousands of pounds through Race for Life for Cancer Research UK. I will be honest; she cried and cried after the Brexit result was announced. Although she has paid tax here for more than 20 years, she was not able to cast a vote in that momentous decision. She has never been able to vote for me in a general election, although she often threatens that she would not vote for me if she could. As a result of Brexit, she and other EU nationals could even lose their right to vote in local elections—that is no longer guaranteed unless there is a change in the law. The old saying “No taxation without representation” does not currently apply to the 3 million EU nationals living among us. We could say that this country is already treating them as second-class citizens; they will be even worse off if we do not rectify the situation we are discussing today.

Policing and Crime Bill

Debate between Andy Burnham and Keith Vaz

Monday 13th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

That promise was made not just to the victims and their families but to the Chairs of three Select Committees in the Prime Minister’s room before the inquiry was announced. My right hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that it is important that we get Leveson 2—perhaps not with Leveson, because he has moved on to do other things, but with somebody else. There is nothing wrong with the Government beginning the process, choosing a chair of the committee and getting the mechanics together. We do not really have to wait until the end of the criminal proceedings.

[Andy Burnham]

I wholeheartedly agree with my right hon. Friend. There is a huge amount of unfinished business. These issues are present in so many of the injustices that we have seen, where there has been inappropriate contact between police and press. We await the conclusions of the Daniel Morgan panel, for instance, which might best illustrate some of these issues.

That is true of other events as well. We remember the way in which the media were manipulated in the case of the Shrewsbury 24, for example. There have been many examples of this over time. Indeed, part 1 of the Leveson inquiry found unhealthy links between senior Met officers and newspaper executives, which led to the resignation of the then Met police chief and others. The issue cannot be left there. Public officials and police officers have also been convicted of offences related to these matters.

The Minister really needs to provide an explicit answer on this specific point today. He cannot wriggle out of this commitment. It is not the kind of commitment you can wriggle out of, given everything that those people have been through. A promise should be a promise, when it is made to people who have suffered in the way that many of the victims of press intrusion have suffered. I know that the Hillsborough families feel exactly the same. They were the victims of the biggest example of inappropriate police briefing of newspapers—and it was not just one newspaper. People think it was just one newspaper that reported the lies, but many of them reported the lies that were given to Whites news agency in Sheffield, and those lies went round the world. Only this week, I had an email from someone in the United States saying that they were astonished to find out the truth when they watched the recent BBC2 documentary on Hillsborough, and that for 27 years they had thought that the events were the result of hooliganism. It is impossible to exaggerate the harm that those lies caused.

I say to the Minister tonight that we need a better answer. If he were to stand up now at the Dispatch Box and say clearly to the House that there will be a second-stage inquiry into the culture of relations between the police and the press, I would be the first to say that we would not press our new clause 64 to a vote. However, there is growing suspicion among organisations—Hacked Off, obviously, but others too—and campaigners for justice that they are slowly being let down and that this matter is being slowly slid into the long grass. We have had anonymous briefings from people close to the Culture Secretary and others in Government to suggest that it has already been canned. Well, we on the Labour Benches are not prepared to accept that, so I say clearly to the Minister that unless he can provide a much more direct reassurance, we will push the matter to a vote this evening to force the Prime Minister to honour his own promise—it is not our promise; it is his promise—to the victims of press intrusion and hacking.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy Burnham]

I would certainly say so. I cannot understand why there is any doubt about this, given the clarity of the Prime Minister’s statements, which I have read out, and given that the Chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), has just said that the promise was made not only to the victims but to senior parliamentarians. I do not see how this commitment can be negotiable.

[Keith Vaz]

The Culture Secretary—he was the Chair of the Culture Select Committee at the time—was in the room, so he was very clear that a promise was made.

[Andy Burnham]

Well, there you go. That says it all really. The right hon. Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale) seems to be in a different mode these days. One wonders what deals have been done by the Government if they are preparing to unpick this agreement, and we will watch them very carefully.

The Minister makes a fair point that there are ongoing investigations. I take his point that some of the investigations will have a material impact on issues that we are considering. We are not saying that we want the inquiry to start right now. We accept that there are matters to be concluded in the courts before it can proceed. What we are after is the removal of any doubt that it will proceed at the appropriate moment and that the promise the Prime Minister gave to those victims will be honoured. That is what we are seeking to establish tonight. That is what we are asking the Minister to lay down very clearly.

This goes beyond party politics. The victims and their families have suffered enough, and Members on both sides of the House owe it to them to make good on the promise that was given to them. That is why I look forward to Members from both sides of the House joining us in the Lobby tonight, because it clearly looks as though the Government are not going to give way.

Policing and Crime Bill

Debate between Andy Burnham and Keith Vaz

Monday 7th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

Of course the PCC works with the chief constable to set budgets and priorities, and of course that has an impact on the priorities of the police—the relationship is complicated. I am not setting my face against it, but I say to the Government that, as I will come on to explain, just throwing fire services in with PCCs has not been thought through adequately.

One of the most welcome proposals in the Bill, as my hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock) said a moment ago, is the closing of the loophole whereby officers can escape disciplinary proceedings by resigning or retiring. Clause 22 stipulates that disciplinary proceedings may be initiated up to 12 months after somebody has left the force. I welcome the intention, but the 12-month period could, as my hon. Friend said, be unduly restrictive. We know from recent experience that it may take many more years for campaigners to uncover wrongdoing. Many of the Hillsborough families feel very strongly indeed about this, yet the measure would not have helped them. Why is there any time limit at all? Wrongdoing, whenever it occurred, needs to be corrected and people need to be held to account. Will the full range of disciplinary sanctions be applied, including reductions to pension entitlement in the most serious cases? That is what campaigners want to see.

Reform of police bail is also overdue. The current system has been criticised from both sides: that it unfairly leaves people languishing for long periods; and that, for those who pose more of a risk to the public, it is toothless. What is therefore needed is a more targeted approach that does not place unfair restrictions on the liberty of people who are low-risk or whose guilt is far from proven, but is much tougher where it needs to be, in particular in cases of serious crime or terrorism. I have to say, however, that on this the Bill does only half a job. It relaxes police bail requirements for the majority of people, but it fails to bring in tougher conditions for those who pose a greater risk. We welcome the new presumption against bail and the time limits, but it has been suggested that because the threshold for extension is so low it simply requires an officer to have acted diligently the proposals may make little difference in practice. I hope that is not the case.

The big problem is that the Government have failed to act on toughening up the police bail regime. The case of Siddhartha Dhar, who absconded while on police bail and went to Syria via Dover, is a prime example of the unacceptable loophole in the current system. People will find it truly shocking that terror suspects can waltz out of the country without any real difficulty. I find it astounding that the Government have not moved to close the loophole.

[Keith Vaz]

The shadow Home Secretary is right to raise this important point and case, which the Select Committee considered and took evidence on. One issue is the ability of agencies to communicate immediately when passports are to be surrendered. Does not my right hon. Friend agree that as well as changing the law, we need to change practice so that the police immediately inform the Passport Office, which then informs Border Force? That all needs to be done immediately when there is a terror suspect.

[Andy Burnham]

Absolutely. People would expect that terror suspects would be placed on watch lists immediately —the minute they are placed on police bail—but it appears that that did not happen in this case.

The Prime Minister told the Liaison Committee in January that he would look carefully at stronger police bail powers, but the Bill does not deliver them and nor does it close the loophole. The basic problem is that police bail conditions are not enforceable. As such, the Bill misses a major opportunity, so we will press the Government hard in Committee to correct the situation. We need a tougher and targeted police bail regime that, when dealing with more serious offences, can impose enforceable sanctions, such as the confiscation of passports and travel documents in terrorism-related cases.

The proposed reforms on mental health are timely and much needed. Given the levels of stress and insecurity inherent in 21st-century living, mental health will be one of the greatest—if not the greatest—health challenges of this century, so it is essential that the police and the criminal justice system develop basic standards to deal with it. We therefore strongly welcome moves to ban the use of police cells for children in crisis and to introduce limits on their use for adults, and we also support limiting the time for which people can be held. Our concern is not with the measures themselves, but whether they can be delivered in practice.

As shadow Health Secretary, I revealed in the previous Parliament how the Government had not honoured their commitment to parity between physical and mental health, but instead cut mental health more deeply than other parts of the NHS. As a consequence, mental health services in many parts of the country are today in crisis. Only last week, Richard Barber, a councillor from Golborne in my constituency, contacted me to say that he had worked with professionals for two days to help to find a tier 4 bed for a highly vulnerable young man who was close to suicide. Shockingly, no beds were available anywhere in the country. As the Royal College of Psychiatrists has pointed out, banning the use of cells, as welcome as that is, does not solve the problem of why those cells are used in the first place. Similarly, reducing the time limit for assessment does not itself guarantee enough trained professionals to deliver the new standard.

The combination of the changes could put professionals in a difficult position. Assessments to detain under the Mental Health Act 1983 cannot be completed until a bed has been identified, so the Bill could put professionals in the invidious position of having to choose between breaking the law, by going over the 24-hour period if a bed cannot be identified, and not breaking the law but releasing someone who should be detained. It is therefore essential that, alongside the Bill, the Home Secretary and the Health Secretary issue new instructions to health service commissioners to open sufficient beds and train sufficient professionals to deliver these welcome new commitments.

Serious and Organised Crime: Prüm Convention

Debate between Andy Burnham and Keith Vaz

Tuesday 8th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

In any judicial process, there is the potential for mistakes and a miscarriage of justice. Is the hon. Gentleman honestly saying that he was right about the European arrest warrant all that time ago, and that it has been a bad thing and should be scrapped? If so, I think that he is in a small minority in the House, because people have seen the benefits that have come to UK law enforcement following its introduction.

I mentioned that case at the beginning of my speech because I see a parallel between the debate that took place then and the debate that we are having today. Ten years on, as the Home Secretary said, we find ourselves in the aftermath of an horrific attack in one member state that was conceived and planned in another—and I note the letter that the Home Secretary received from Minister Cazeneuve encouraging our full participation in Prüm.

In these difficult times, we—all of us in the House—have an obligation to consider every possible measure to protect the public. It seems to me that the case for greater data sharing and access to data that are held across Europe is now unanswerable, and that we have an obligation to support that case. It is no exaggeration to say that our national security depends on it. That is why, as the Home Secretary said, the last Labour Government made the original decision to sign up to the Prüm decisions in 2007, recognising their potential for our law enforcement agencies. It is also why, back in July 2013, we explicitly warned the Government against opting out of a whole range of EU justice and home affairs measures including Prüm. As I understand it, the Government received warnings from other senior figures in UK law enforcement, and they should have listened to them because, as was pointed out back then, that decision seemed to be driven less by an objective assessment of the impact on crime prevention and detection, and more by a political desire to appease the never-satisfied forces of Euroscepticism on the Conservative Benches. Tempting as it is to say, “We told you so” to the Home Secretary today, we will try and resist that and instead congratulate her on eventually arriving at the right decision and encourage her to resist the blandishments of the forces of darkness who are again rearing their head today.

[Keith Vaz]

In fact, the Home Secretary’s speech today was a tour de force as to why we should have been in Prüm last year. Think of the number of criminals we could have caught, or potential terrorists we could have found, if only we had joined a year ago.

[Andy Burnham]

The case the Home Secretary has just set out from the Dispatch Box was compelling and powerful, revealing, as it did, the zeal of the convert to the cause. She was right to make her case with such force, and I am sure my right hon. Friend would agree that the problem with the amendment in the name of the hon. Member for Stone and others this evening is that it invites the House to prioritise the civil liberties of British citizens and risks to UK sovereignty over and above risks to national security. That is what the amendment to the motion invites us to do.

Of course our liberties and our sovereignty are important considerations, but the safety of the public must come first. That is the primary duty of any Government, and it is why the Government are right not to listen to the hon. Member for Stone. The truth is they got themselves into difficulty two years ago by listening to those siren voices, and I hope Members on the Treasury Bench will not make the same mistake today. Indeed, I hope they would have learned an important lesson from this whole episode. It was the European Council that required the Government, after notification of the opt-out, to conduct and publish a business and implementation case assessing the costs and benefits of Prüm. In other words, the EU forced the UK Government to face up to the benefits of European co-operation and in bringing this motion to the House tonight they are effectively conceding the EU was right all along.

That assessment was informed by a pilot undertaken by the Government which the Home Secretary referred to. It found an overwhelming case to opt back in. It involved DNA samples from 2,513 unsolved British murders, rapes and burglaries which were automatically checked against European police databases in France, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands. Searching the profiles against the databases of those four member states revealed 71 scene-to-person matches and 47 scene-to-scene matches, five relating to rape, two to sexual assault and 23 to burglary.

NHS Risk Register

Debate between Andy Burnham and Keith Vaz

Wednesday 22nd February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

They should be judged on their merits, but let me say that it was the Labour party that introduced the Freedom of Information Act, so we will take no lectures from the hon. Gentleman. As I will explain in a moment, we did publish risk registers under freedom of information rules, so let us keep the high horse out of today’s debate, if he does not mind. We were used to hearing pious lectures from Liberal Democrat Front Benchers on openness, transparency and how the supremacy of freedom of information trumped everything else, and we heard from Conservative Front Benchers that sunlight was the best disinfectant, but that all seems a long time ago. We now have the sorry spectacle of Government Members on both Front Benches defying a clear ruling by the Information Commissioner and taking it to a tribunal hearing early next month. This action raises serious questions on what precisely is the Government’s policy on these matters, as there is a real danger that it will look confused and contradictory. A search of the Treasury website brings up a clear statement of policy on the Government’s principles for risk management. It states:

“Government will be open and transparent about its understanding of the nature of risks to the public and about the process it is following in handling them. Government will make available its assessments of risks that affect the public, how it has reached its decisions, and how it will handle the risk. It will also do so where the development of new policies poses a potential risk to the public.”

That is the statement of the Government’s policy as it stands today. Why on earth are they not following it?

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

I declare my interest. I remind my right hon. Friend that yesterday statistics were published showing that 1.3 million diabetics had not had their annual checks. It is important that we have this information on the risks posed to diabetics by the new commissioning arrangements. Does he not think that that is an argument for full transparency?

[Andy Burnham]

My right hon. Friend eloquently makes the point I made at the beginning of the debate: people with long-term conditions, such as diabetes, who depend utterly on the NHS have a right to know whether there is any risk to the continuity or integration of the care they receive. I understand that representatives of patient groups, who perhaps have not been heard enough in this debate, made that point directly to the Prime Minister on Monday. It is absolutely essential that their voice is heard. They say that the Bill represents a danger to the integrated care that they receive and depend upon. It seems pretty clear to me that the Government are not following their own policy—[Interruption.]