Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Tuesday 16th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Dr Lewis]

Indeed. It is certainly true that, for obvious reasons, many of these journeys are undertaken in conditions of great secrecy. I cannot help interjecting one of my concerns—I have to be careful not to step into judicial areas and I make no reference to any particular recent case even though there might have just been one—which is about judges who take the view that they want to set exemplary and terribly harsh sentences on people who have come back when we do not know whether they have done anything while overseas other than commit the crime of going overseas to fight in the conflict. Handing out a sentence that would be commensurate with the sort of sentence someone would get in this country if they have committed manslaughter and taken a life, must be a huge discouragement to members in these communities—mothers, for example—to co-operate with the authorities when they are trying to get their sons back and when there is no reason to believe that their sons have any evil intent to carry out terrorism on their return. That is why we sometimes feel there is a need for greater co-ordination and that the issues should not be managed within just one Department. We should try to work out an integrated strategy.

Let me return to the point about counter-propaganda. I learned this lesson many years ago in an entirely different context—in fact, in several different contexts where time and again one would see extremist minorities hijacking moderate majorities and purporting to speak in their name. Where that sort of thing was going on repeatedly, it was almost like trench warfare or a battle of attrition. In those days, such battles would be carried out in the letters columns of the newspapers. A particular organisation or cause might get report after report in the media—and nobody would be answering. The way to deal with it then was to ensure that every report was followed by another report—or, alternatively, a critical letter in the press—so that eventually the radicalisers and the counter-radicalisers would be neutralised, and the wider community would say “We are sick of all this bickering—why don’t both of you just shut up and stop?”

We are not talking about some idealised situation in which we shall be able to let down our guard because there will never again be a small number of people who are willing to try to carry out terrorist acts at the end of the process. We are talking about a wider threat: the danger that, however effective we are in catching terrorists at the end of the conveyor belt that leads to their crimes, there will always be plenty more being fed on to the beginning of the conveyor belt by people who, shall we say, have a certain strategic grasp of what they are trying to achieve.

I thank the Committee for its patience in listening to my speech. As I said earlier, the sort of counter-campaigning that needs to be done on the issue of extremist ideology is, in a sense, demonstrated by the fact that we have to keep returning to this subject until the House gets sick of hearing from us, and the Government decide that the line of least resistance is to toughen up the legislation and create an agency that will be able to supervise, co-ordinate and resource the efforts of moderates in our Muslim community to ensure that their own communities are not hijacked by the barbarians.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

I want to say a little about new clause 12, which I tabled. I believe that there is strong evidence from countries that are already investing in deradicalisation programmes that they are effective, and I think that we need to look more closely at those programmes—as well as counter-radicalisation programmes—and learn from them.

Let me make it clear at the outset that none of the programmes is a substitute for effective counter-terrorism legislation. They are, however, an important tool that we can and, I believe, should be using to better effect in tackling terrorism. They acknowledge that someone becomes radicalised for a reason, and suggest that therefore, in principle, that person can be deradicalised.

Members who were in the Chamber yesterday may have heard me read the words of Abubaker Deghayes, a Brighton man whose two sons were recently killed while fighting in Syria. He warned:

“The strategy you are using with our sons does not work. You are criminalising them just out of the fear they might become a threat to this country.

Do not push them to be radicalised, used by groups like Isis who are out for revenge and thirst for blood.”

He feels passionately about the need not simply to take urgent, effective action to curtail suspected terrorists, not simply to wash our hands of those who may have become radicalised, and not simply to generalise about who people of this kind are. He believes that we need to understand more about who they are, and why they have become radicalised.

I met Abubaker Deghayes, the father. I met his solicitor, Gareth Peirce, and I met campaigners from organisations such as Cage UK. All of them have a wealth of experience related to the impact of counter-terrorism legislation, and all of them paid tribute to the difference that deradicalisation programmes can make. I hope to host a parliamentary meeting early in the new year, before the House of Lords debates the Bill, in order to give colleagues an opportunity to hear from a range of experts, including police officers, who are engaged in such programmes in other European Union member states.

Before I say any more, it might be helpful if I defined my terms. In doing so, I shall refer to a very useful paper published by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, which has conducted a comparative evaluation of counter-radicalisation and deradicalisation approaches in the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark and Germany. It describes deradicalisation programmes as those that are

“generally directed  against individuals who have  become radical with the aim of re­integrating them into society or at least dissuading them from violence.”

That is notably distinct from programmes such as Prevent, which are concerned more with counter-radicalisation, which the Institute for Strategic Dialogue defines as

“a package of social, political, legal, educational and economic programmes specifically designed to deter disaffected (and possibly already radicalized) individuals from crossing the line and becoming terrorists.”

[Hazel Blears]

I, too, have read the paper from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. Would it be fair to say that a lot of the evidence that has been gathered is about deradicalising people from far-right groups, because the work around political Islamism has not yet been developed to the point at which we would be able to get a lot of useful evidence? We need to do much more work in that area of threat facing us, because the far-right work is not necessarily completely comparable with the other threats we face at the moment.

[Caroline Lucas]

The right hon. Lady makes a perfectly fair point. Most of the evidence is coming from that direction. I agree that we need more evidence gathering specifically on the Islamist threat, but none the less I think the point I am making remains that we need greater understanding of why people are radicalised.

I was talking about counter-radicalisation and Prevent, and I wanted to flag up the fact that, as Members will know, Prevent has been criticised for failing properly to engage at the community level and instead making some communities feel singled out and stigmatised. I think that is a lost opportunity and we must redouble our efforts and engage in effective community-led counter-radicalisation programmes, learning from other countries that have done just that.

Deradicalisation is more relevant to the debate we are having now. I draw Members’ attention, if they are not already aware of them, to programmes in places such as Denmark, where a programme called Back on Track has been operating. Its targets include prison inmates who have been either convicted of terrorism or involved in hate crimes or other extremism-related crimes. The aim of the project is to support inmates through mentoring to become better at handling everyday situations, problems and conflicts. Another key element is to focus on engaging families and social networks in order to offer inmates long-term support when re-entering society. Other Members have already underlined the importance of family and kinship groups.

Back on Track has been running alongside another programme, De-radicalisation-Targeted Intervention, which uses mentoring to support individuals who are trying to leave an extremist group. It is focused particularly on being proactive by reaching out to potential beneficiaries and motivating them to participate. A key objective is helping them to find constructive social alternatives to extremist groups.

Germany has what is known as the Hayat programme, which has been developed to reflect the premise that the minds of young Europeans intent on practising jihad in Syria or Iraq are perhaps less likely to be changed by politicians’ threats or force of law than by their next of kin. One of Hayat’s family counsellors says:

“Families are the closest social community that most radicalised young Muslims have. It is the perfect living counter-narrative to radical Islam.”

Since 2012 Hayat has operated a national helpline, which families who are concerned about their sons or daughters drifting into radical Islam can contact.

[Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

While I agree that there is much we can learn from what happens in other nations, does the hon. Lady agree that significant work already goes on in our communities, both with the Prevent programme and without it, which takes the lead and which also co-operates with other nations along the lines she is outlining? On the deradicalisation programme, it strikes me that we have to deal with incredibly difficult issues, but I am confident that a lot of thinking is going into this and there is a lot of co-operation between nations, particularly on the very large number of returning jihadis, which is an even bigger problem, in numbers terms at least, in places such as France and Germany than it is in the UK today.

--- Later in debate ---

[Caroline Lucas]

I do not doubt that much work is going on, some of it very good, but I wanted to pinpoint the experience of young people who have got caught up in some of these things. They have gone to places such as Syria and they want to come back, and at the moment it does not feel that there is a path that is particularly encouraging to them to come back. We talked about this yesterday when we discussed the temporary exclusion orders and whether or not that means someone will go straight into criminal proceedings.

What I would like us to do is look at some of the models in places such as Germany and Denmark, so that when we have someone who is trying to come back and who is turning their back on what they have done, we do not automatically put them through the criminal process but instead devote a lot more time to trying to see how they can be reintegrated. Obviously one would not do that at the expense of wider security issues, but neither do I think that this is a soft approach. I think, in fact, that it could be a way of making us safer in the long run if some of these deradicalisation programmes work. There is a bit of a gap there, and it is an area that I would like us in this country and our Government to be looking at in more detail.

[Mark Field]

Does the hon. Lady not recognise that we are some 20 weeks away from a general election and so, unfortunately, the rhetoric about throwing away the keys will inevitably come from party leaders? However, in their heart of hearts they all recognise the importance of looking at this issue in a much more holistic way. I agree with her that it is in the interests of our intelligence services, apart from anything else, that we make common cause to find out about some of these returnees, as they can perhaps co-operate. I suspect that work of that order is going on, as well as the range of programmes to which she refers. In many ways, it is understandable that tabloid rhetoric has its part to play, but our authorities are bringing to bear a much more sophisticated, nuanced approach to this very real problem.

[Caroline Lucas]

Again, I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but I would not be as relaxed about the tabloid rhetoric as he is. I certainly do not think we should be stoking it in this Chamber because that sends out a message that is heard out there and makes young people believe it is too dangerous to come back. I am aware of people from my constituency and the wider area where I live who are out in places such as Syria and do want to come back, but are terrified of doing so. It is not in the interests of wider security that we just send out the same messages; we have to have different messages and learn from countries that seem to be doing a better job on some of this work than we are.

[Pete Wishart]

The hon. Lady was on to a powerful theme when she was describing some of the other initiatives we witness across Europe. I am familiar with some of the programmes in Germany and Denmark that she mentioned. Would she say that the major difference in character is that Prevent seems to be a more prescriptive solution whereas the initiatives in Europe are much more organic and involve the community more? The language of “combat”, “taking on” and “fighting” seems to be the prevalent language in Prevent. If the Minister and the Secretary of State were to look a little more carefully at the European models, they might find a more useful model of working within our communities.

[Caroline Lucas]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. He rightly says that in this country it feels very much more as though deradicalisation is done to people, rather than being something people get involved in, and therefore own and are more likely to be part of.

[James Brokenshire]

In the light of the previous intervention, I should make it absolutely clear that Prevent is a locally based approach. The right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears), in her initial contribution, highlighted clearly the excellent local work done in a number of different areas, including by civil society groups. I assure the hon. Lady that the Government continue to look at other programmes from various parts of Europe—indeed, I was in Scandinavia last year visiting various Governments for that very purpose.

[Caroline Lucas]

I thank the Minister for that. If it is all happily happening as he suggests, I hope that he will be able to agree to new clause 12. I suspect it is not happening, which is why young people in my community tell me that they feel that the Prevent approach is stigmatising. That is not a criticism of the local people in my constituency who are doing their very best to deal with what they themselves feel is not a terribly helpful approach. It is a criticism that echoes what the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) just said about the feeling that the approach targets people in a very stigmatising way, as though they are the problem, rather than asking the wider questions we have a responsibility to ask about how and why people become radicalised. If we ask those questions, we might find ourselves rather more responsible for some of the answers, in the broadest sense, than if we simply assume that this is somehow outside our control and our responsibility.

[Lady Hermon]

rose—

[Hazel Blears]

rose—

[Caroline Lucas]

I give way to the hon. Lady.

[Lady Hermon]

I am most grateful to the hon. Lady, who had a difficult choice to make. I am curious about why she did not look a little closer to home at the best practice that has worked in Northern Ireland. We have former republican terrorists who have committed the most appalling terrorist crimes and former loyalist terrorists who have committed equally appalling crimes, including just murdering Catholics because they were Catholics, who have turned their back on violence and turned young people away from the path of violence in Northern Ireland. She has cited what has happened in Denmark and Germany, but I say to her that good lessons could be learned from experience in Northern Ireland.

[Caroline Lucas]

I thank the hon. Lady for a well made contribution. She was perfectly right to make such a point, and it does not undermine the position that I am advancing. Indeed, I would love to learn more about the experience she describes. I suspect that the success of the scheme was not achieved by making people feel excluded or terrified about coming forward. I worry about the context in which we are having this discussion, which is the proposed legislation that the Government are setting out right now.

[Hazel Blears]

I echo the points made by the hon. Lady, but I just wonder what projects she has visited. Some of the work I have seen has been about not stigmatising individuals but putting on drama in schools to enable these issues to be brought to the surface and then challenged in quite provocative ways. There is training for teachers and some community-based projects. She is making the point that I made to the Minister, which is that I want to see more of that kind of work, because it is about enabling us to build community resilience rather than targeting individuals. There is some excellent practice in this country, as well as in Ireland.

[Caroline Lucas]

I completely agree with the right hon. Lady. I have seen and been part of some of those extraordinary community engagement processes. The drama in particular has a huge role to play. I come back now to the wider context. I am simply reporting to her what young people have said to me, which is that when they hear the Prevent programme being talked about and the kind of language and rhetoric that get used when we are talking in the abstract it feels to them as if this is something that is stigmatising and off-putting. They feel as if they are the problem. The programme does not seem to be the most conducive thing to engage them, even though when they get to it, they might find that it is something as constructive and as community based as she describes.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

There is a vast difference between stigmatising individuals who are at risk, which is not proposed, and stigmatising a barbaric ideology, because the idea is to save individuals from being sucked into the ideology.

[Caroline Lucas]

I think that I thank the hon. Gentleman for that. There are problems with the way he describes things in a black and white way. Of course I would be the first to say that we are seeing barbaric acts, which are part of a barbaric ideology. But to continue to use that language is not helpful when we are talking about young people. There are young people who have got mixed up in this in an ignorant way. I am not trying to excuse what they have done; I am just trying to understand it. If we think in terms of barbaric ideologies, that suggests someone who has spent an awful lot of time becoming involved in this, understanding it, knowing it and thinking of themselves as ideologues rather than as people who may have mental health problems, who may be excluded, who have faced massive racism in their lives and who have ended up in a very unfortunate position for a huge number of reasons that are not necessarily helpfully described when we talk about a barbaric ideology.

[Dr Lewis]

The hon. Lady is very kind. This will be my last intervention, so she has an open goal after that. I simply say that nobody hesitates to describe Nazi ideology and communist ideology in terms of their barbaric nature. If we are to succeed in saving people from being drawn into this form of barbarism, we have to get it into the same category, because, fundamentally, it comes from the same drawer of ideologies.

[Caroline Lucas]

I have no problem with talking about barbaric ideology or about actions that are barbaric, but if we frame the whole debate in those terms, we do not get any closer to being able to understand why some young people are getting more and more attracted to going out to take part in wars in Syria. We certainly do not get any closer to understanding how we can get them back safely and deradicalise them. All of us share that as the overriding priority. What we want to do is to keep our country safe by trying to ensure that people who get involved in this kind of activity are prevented from doing it in the first place and by deradicalising them if and when it happens. I am simply arguing about the best way to reach out to those people. I am not sure that what the hon. Gentleman is describing is the best way to do so.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

The situation in Northern Ireland has already been mentioned, where the emphasis has been on a process of inclusion, rather than one of labelling and exclusion. Indeed, there is a veritable infrastructure for inclusion through EU moneys and other mechanisms that were used precisely to work at community level to ensure that people had a real stake in new beginnings and new processes. Attempts to exclude through broadcasting bans, vetting of community funding and all the rest of it did not work. We have to take people at the level they are at so that they can move forward while thinking that they retain the integrity of their outlook.

[Caroline Lucas]

I definitely thank the hon. Gentleman for that contribution, which is immensely helpful and really sets us back on track to where I think we are best placed to move forward on the issue.

I will begin to draw my comments to a close, because I have spoken for longer than I had originally anticipated. In conclusion, analysis of successful deradicalisation programmes suggests that the most effective identify how individuals become radicalised, rather than simply labelling them. They examine whether and how the process can be reversed, and how Government-led initiatives can help ensure that committed terrorists avoid illegal activity after they are released from custody. We know what some of the ingredients are; we have talked about the importance of family members, education, vocational training and religious dialogue, for example.

Religious engagement is one of the more contentious elements of deradicalisation programmes. It may be effective in reforming radical Islamists, but primarily because it provides an environment that is conducive to behavioural reform, not necessarily because it encourages ideological reform. Some of the reports from the Council on Foreign Relations seem to suggest that focusing on rehabilitation, rather than ideological change, is particularly sensible if it is acknowledged that committed ideologues might not give up their beliefs but might just change their behaviour, which I think is what we want them to do.

These programmes are not about being soft on terrorism. On the contrary, as I said at the beginning, they are an add-on to, rather than a substitute for, good counter-terrorism laws. I hope that Members will join me in calling for a review of deradicalisation and counter-radicalisation best practice in order that we might equip ourselves as effectively as possible for the substantial challenges we face from jihadi and other terrorist groups.

[Pete Wishart]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Weir—the more Scottish National party Members we see in such positions, the better—and to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas). She made several pertinent points, particularly on the need to look at experiences from across Europe, and I shall listen carefully to the Minister’s response. It struck me that there is an attempt to look at some of the measures that other countries are adopting to try to tackle this serious issue, but there are also different things being done across the United Kingdom. I wish to focus my remarks on what we are trying to achieve in Scotland.

We are absolutely committed to ensuring that law enforcement agencies and other bodies have all the tools they need to tackle terrorism effectively. We take that particularly seriously in Scotland. We believe that we have robust but different measures in place to tackle these issues. We have massive concerns about what is proposed in the Bill, particularly in part 5. We are concerned that it might cut across some of the initiatives in our Prevent strategy.

It is natural that in Scotland we look at things differently from the rest of the United Kingdom. We face a different range of issues, we have smaller ethnic minority communities, and we have not had the same sort of tensions within our communities, so obviously we look at things differently. I like to think that we therefore look at things a little more holistically, and certainly more holistically than a Conservative-led Government would, or even—if I may be so brave as to say it—than a new Labour Government would.

Our Scottish Prevent strategy shares the same objectives as Prevent across the rest of the United Kingdom, but it differs in some pretty serious and significant ways, particularly in how it is delivered. I think that it does all it can to reflect our Scottish context. Our approach uses Prevent though a safeguarding lens, with an emphasis on keeping people safe, on community cohesion, on participative democracy and on making sure that it is consistent with the needs of, and risks to, all our communities. The Scottish Government’s Prevent strategy for tackling violent extremism works with and through key sectors, including higher and further education, the NHS, the Scottish Prison Service and local authorities. Prevent delivery also benefits from Police Scotland’s model of community engagement and the strength of the relationship between our Muslim communities and the police service.

We sometimes ignore the cultural context, but it is important. One of the most impressive features of Scotland’s Asian community is its willingness and eagerness to adopt what is seen as Scottish identity. We have what is called the bhangra and bagpipe culture. Particularly in Glasgow, where we have a large Muslim community, it is striking how eager the community is to take on board some of the central, defining features of Scottish culture and to get involved. We saw that during the referendum campaign, as Mr Weir in particular knows. One of the fastest growing groups in the movement was Scottish Asians for independence, because there was a natural affinity with what we were trying to achieve as a nation, and there was something about what we were trying to do in order to transform society that proved attractive to many people who had come from countries such as India and Pakistan, which had in their own way secured their independence from the United Kingdom at some time in history.

This feature in Scotland differs significantly from the rest of the United Kingdom. Efforts have been made by the Scottish Government, Ministers and colleagues to try to ensure that the cultural context is taken into account when we approach issues such as radicalisation. I am sure the Minister has seen on his trips to Scotland how the Muslim community, particularly from south Asia, has been integrated in our society and our community. We should all be impressed by that, and perhaps the Minister can learn from our experience.

My hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Pavilion made a powerful point about how we start to approach these matters and look at some of the community dimensions. We cannot be prescriptive. We cannot talk down to communities or expect them to respond to our stimuli, our suggestions and our objectives. I shall not dwell on what my hon. Friend said, but we have to work with communities. This process has to be organic, a conversation within communities and groups, to ensure that we come to the right conclusions.

The one thing that I want to add to what my hon. Friend said is that we must also look at the external environment. We have to try to understand what motivates people to get involved in what the hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) rightly describes as barbaric activity. There is one thing that this Government have never done, and it surprises me how little work has been done on it. I encourage the Minister to look more closely at it: there is very little profiling of people who have gone out to the middle east to get involved in such activity. We do not have a sense of the pull factors, the reasons why people go there and get involved, because we do not ask them. We are too busy locking people up and all the other things that go with that.

We spend very little time trying to understand what it is that drags people to engage in such awful behaviour and activity, and I suspect that our reluctance to do that has much to do with the results that we are likely to find. When we see people being interviewed about their involvement in such activity, they are not people who would concern the Government on a day-to-day basis—people who have just emigrated from Pakistan or the middle east. They tend to be second or third generation who have been here for a long time. The ideology has not been brought here; it is an ideology that has emerged and grown within our communities.

When we listen to people being interviewed by broadcasters trying to understand what informs the way they behave, they all seem to be pretty respectable, cultured, almost middle class, standard citizens of the United Kingdom. They do not seem to conform to the traditional vision, if I may say that, of jihadists, and the caricatures that develop around that. We fail to get that right, to understand and to do the necessary work to profile—