Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015 (Risk of Being Drawn into Terrorism) (Amendment and Guidance) Regulations 2015

Baroness Tonge Excerpts

Monday 23rd March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve (CB)]

My Lords, would the Minister be willing to consider that the Prevent duty might be well entrenched by preventive measures such as requiring a recording of visiting speakers’ presentations? It is such a normal feature of university life that one is requested to agree to a recording for the intranet, a podcast or whatever. It would mean that there would be a record and that matters could proceed with a lighter touch.

[Baroness Tonge (Ind LD)]

My Lords, I have not spoken previously on this matter, but I just want to draw the Minister’s attention to the fact that Southampton University is organising a conference on legal issues surrounding Israel and Palestine, the two states, in the middle of April and is under intense pressure from the Israel lobby to drop it on the grounds that it will be anti-Semitic. Will he comment on this—or could he, in the interests of freedom of speech and particularly freedom of expression in universities, help Southampton University in this matter?

[Lord Morgan (Lab)]

I join others in thanking the Minister, who has been extraordinarily tolerant and helpful in our discussions. I have one brief query that I would like to raise. We have heard about who might be considered to monitor and examine the role of speakers and organisations in the universities. What will they actually do? It has been widely said that the Prevent strategy has not been very successful, because it has given Islamic groups and the Muslim community a sense of victimisation and the feeling that they in particular are being targeted, which is not at all what one wants. How does one avoid this on university campuses? Will all these monitoring activities focus on a very small number of societies and groups, or will all societies be involved in this? How are we to avoid the charge that individual bodies are being victimised? It seems to me that such extraordinarily general themes as non-violent radicalism are capable of being applied to almost any kind of student activity or student debate that one could conceive of, so how does one strike a balance between non-victimisation and proper inquiry?