Counter-terrorism and Security Bill

Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford Excerpts

Tuesday 10th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I can give my hon. Friend that assurance. There is no intention to make any impact on the sort of benign organisation to which he refers.

[Nicola Blackwood (Oxford West and Abingdon) (Con)]

The Home Secretary is generous in giving way on this point. I am sure she can understand the concerns raised locally with me, a university MP, and I welcome the renewed emphasis on freedom of speech and on the stronger scrutiny for Parliament in amendment 16. Can she assure me that the guidance will be sufficiently clear for universities to have no uncertainty about their responsibilities under the new legislation?

[Mrs May]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving me an opportunity to make it absolutely clear that we intend the guidance to be clear. We have produced the guidance for consultation; as I said, we are considering the responses to it; and we are looking at areas where we need to clarify the guidance. It is important for universities, notwithstanding academic freedom and the need to secure freedom of speech, also to recognise the duty of care they have to students. That is why I believe it absolutely right for universities to be within this legislation and within the Prevent duty that is being put into statute. We will, of course, make the guidance clear, so that universities can operate appropriately.

--- Later in debate ---

[Hazel Blears (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)]

First, I should like to place on the record my thanks to the Minister for Security and Immigration, the hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire), who is not in his place this evening, for his conduct of the debate on this Bill; he has been open, inclusive and generous. Very often, he has listened and genuinely responded to the points that all Members have made. I also wish to thank him for coming to a roundtable discussion that I organised two weeks ago. He made an excellent contribution among a group of academics, practitioners and people from think-tanks about how we can do some practical work around tackling extremism and radicalisation. I will let him have a report of that discussion this week, and I look forward to continuing the dialogue with Government about what we can do in practical terms to make this situation better than it is at the moment.

I wish to comment briefly on amendments 14 and 16, which relate to part 5 of the Bill and the Prevent programme. Like every other Member, I welcome amendment 14, which provides for parliamentary scrutiny of the guidance. I am delighted that the Government have now accepted that. It will be through the affirmative resolution procedure, and it will enable proper detailed scrutiny and debate of the matters that are in the guidance.

I have now had the opportunity to read the guidance. On Second Reading and in Committee, I kept saying to the Minister, “When will we see the guidance?” He implored me to be patient, saying that the issues I was raising would be addressed in that guidance. Well, I have been as patient as I can be, but I remain concerned about two issues that the guidance seeks to address. The first matter I raised in debate was that much of the Bill is couched in terms of dealing with individuals who are in danger of being radicalised and drawn into terrorism. There was very little, if anything, about the need to work on a broader basis with communities to build the resilience of communities to the extremist message and to galvanise communities into being actively engaged on this agenda. I am afraid that the guidance, as I have read it, is still completely focused on individuals.

This afternoon, I read the guidance in great detail, even to the point where I did a word search on it. It is 39 pages long and has 178 paragraphs and—I hesitate to say this to the House—the words “parent” and “family” do not appear once in that guidance. I would that thought that families and parents are absolutely on the front line of trying to prevent our young people from being drawn into extremism. I know that the Home Secretary will know that mothers, sisters and women in those communities can play a life-changing role in safeguarding the future of our young people, and yet nowhere in the guidance is there any mention of families and parents.

[Nicola Blackwood]

The right hon. Lady is making a very important argument about increasing community resilience. Does she agree that one of the most important ways that we can do that is by improving critical engagement with online content, which is one of the most pervasive forms of radicalisation?

[Hazel Blears]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Lady that online radicalisation has become increasingly important as technology has developed. Many young people are drawn into the most horrific websites and see the most horrendous content, which inevitably affects how they view these issues. I personally believe that the service providers have a great responsibility on this agenda and would like them to be much more active. Google, for example, has done some excellent work on gangs and I would like to see it replicate that work for the counter-terrorism agenda. We need a more inclusive conversation with the service providers on all these issues.