Deferred Divisions

Baroness Primarolo Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Pete Wishart]

I thought that I was going to get one of my traditional and routine tickings-off from you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am glad that it was just an interruption for the 7 o’clock motion.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

It is the season of good will, Mr Wishart.

[Pete Wishart]

I am grateful for the early Christmas cheer.

To return to the Bill, what new measures does it contain? I suppose that its unique selling point is the introduction of temporary exclusion orders. They are a relatively new feature, and I do not think that there has been much discussion of them. They are designed to ban British citizens who are suspected of travelling abroad to fight for terror groups from re-entering the UK, and they involve the cancellation of travel documents and the inclusion of such individuals on watch lists and no-fly lists. The Bill allows the cancellation of passports at the border for up to 30 days. The police and border forces will be able to seize the passports and tickets of British citizens if they suspect that those individuals intend to engage in terrorism-related activities at their destination.

That all moves us quite conveniently and neatly towards the idea of statelessness, which we have looked at in relation to other matters that we have debated in the House, and which seems to be the drift and the trend. I would be grateful if the Minister would tell me where we have got with the 30 days issue. I listened carefully to the Home Secretary’s speech, in which she said clearly that the Government are in control of allowing people back in. Well, we have heard about some of the difficulties with that. What happens if there is a breakdown of bilateral relationships with other nations that are not prepared to play along with the UK’s game? Surely, an effective state of statelessness will emerge.

The Bill includes the stronger enforcement of TPIMs, including an ability for the authorities to force suspects to move to another part of the country, which amounts to internal exile. There is no great difference between that and the main feature of Labour’s control orders. The Bill also contains curious stuff about colleges and universities, and the expectation that our higher education institutions will prevent individuals from being drawn into terrorism. The measures include banning extremist speakers from campus grounds. How that is to be achieved without massive impacts on academic freedom and freedom of speech in higher education institutions is beyond me. I am looking forward to guidance about how those freedoms will be maintained and guaranteed. Our universities and colleges have already started to raise concerns. I listened carefully to the right hon. and learned Member for North East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell) who said that only yesterday there was concern about how the proposal would be represented in colleges and universities. We have to be careful about how we pursue such a measure.

Perhaps most controversially, the Bill contains measures to require internet service providers to retain data on internet protocol addresses to enable authorities to identify individual users. That brings us neatly to the ongoing concern about, and the trend towards, the Home Secretary’s much-coveted snoopers charter. We are all in the business of doing all that we can to keep the people of our nation safe and secure, but that does not always mean that we must necessarily agree with everything that the Home Secretary says from the Dispatch Box. Some of us might even have a different way of doing things and different suggestions about how to get the balance right between assuring our safety and security and making sure that there is no compromise on our civil liberties. That is why in Scotland, where we have specific responsibilities on that agenda, we take a different view about how it can be better progressed. In Scotland, we want to ensure that our police and our other public bodies have the tools they need not only to tackle and prevent terrorism but to maintain a community where civil liberties are respected and where measures that are introduced are proportionate and have full community support. We have our own separate and distinct legal system in Scotland, and we have a range of devolved responsibilities. We have responsibilities for delivering large parts of the agenda in the Bill, particularly on the Prevent side. Once again, we have seen an almost total lack of consultation between this Government and the Scottish Government, who have specific responsibilities for delivering large swathes of the Bill because of devolved competences.