Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill

Baroness Manningham-Buller Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 9th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Manningham-Buller (CB)]

My Lords, as the Minister said in her introduction, it is sad in a way that we are here again dealing with counterterrorism legislation. In the 10 years that I have been in your Lordships’ House, I have lost count of how many times we have come back to this subject. Indeed, in my maiden speech 10 years ago, I spoke against detention without charge for 90 days for terrorist suspects, then a government proposal. I very much look forward to hearing the maiden speeches of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, and the noble Lord, Lord Tyrie, on this subject. The need for this legislation is well argued and, during the course of the Bill’s passage through this House, we will certainly want to pick up on a number of the details of it.

In the wake of last year’s attacks there was serious scrutiny of my former organisation and, indeed, of the police and their performance in responding to those attacks. A number of lessons were learned and changes were made. Scrutiny of my former service was overseen by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson. This legislation attempts to fill various gaps arising from some of that scrutiny. It covers a pretty wide range of things, from detection, sentencing, management of offenders, borders, territorial scope, DNA retention and others. What is different is that, for the first time that I can recall, there is specific information about the rise of extreme right-wing terrorism, which I am sure we will come back to in the course of our discussions, and of course—I have some familiarity with this from my past, which I thought was over—Russian activity and criminality in this country. I spent a year of my life interviewing a defector from the GRU 30 years ago; I did not expect that that information would still be current.

The issues that will give rise to scrutiny in this House are very familiar to us. The noble Lord, Lord Marks, mentioned some of them. I do not always acknowledge a balance between security and liberty. I think that there is no liberty without security—I would say that, of course—and the right to life in the first section of the European convention argues that we should look very carefully at the suggestions being made to try to improve that. We will think about what the threats are—as I said, they are not just terrorism, but the affairs of state—what is necessary and what is proportionate, and where our state should draw the line. These are important issues.

I could go on. During the course of our discussions, I will certainly pick up on the points from the noble Lord, Lord Marks, on our relationship with our European friends on these subjects, which was of critical importance throughout my former career and which I am sure people are working hard to ensure is not damaged.

At this early stage, I will touch on what the Home Office calls the contemporary pattern of radicalisation. We know that the terrorist threat from Islamist terrorism is severe. We also know that the pace of radicalisation is quite different from what it was a decade ago. It is very rapid indeed. It can be between breakfast and lunch. When I was in charge of a number of operations with my noble friend Lord Blair of Boughton, the colleague on my right, we often had plenty of time to consult the Crown Prosecution Service, to decide who was chargeable, to develop operations over weeks and indeed months. That is now rare, as I understand it, and that makes the life of those trying to detect these attacks in advance much more difficult. So the pace has changed and the scale has changed.

I have said in this House before that I can scarcely imagine the figures: 3,000 people of security interest is way beyond the capacity of any security service or police force to monitor on a regular basis, and there are at least 500 active investigations into terrorist plots. It is also worth remembering—some of the questions already raised are key—that a great deal is stopped that we do not hear about. Unless we are paying attention to when cases come up in the courts, we do not know how many are stopped, but it is substantially more than occur. One question has to be: will the provisions of the Bill increase the opportunities of preventing more of them? I think that is what we will be focusing on later in the debates.