Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

As I have indicated, the Home Office is leading on the extremism strategy. We will be working on that, but the right hon. Lady should not expect to see anything published before the end of the year. On the wider issue, when we came into power, we made two changes to the way in which Prevent operated, and we did so for a good reason. First, we ensured that Prevent looked not only at violent extremism but at non-violent extremism. Secondly, we saw that in some communities, work being done on community integration under a Prevent heading was being rejected or arousing suspicion. People saw that the work was being done under a counter-terrorism heading and thought that it was about spying on individuals, when it was actually more about community integration. That is why we separated the integration work and gave it to the Department for Communities and Local Government, which has been undertaking that work.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

May I press the Home Secretary about the temporary exclusion orders that she wants to have the power to exact? They would, in effect, result in the exile—albeit short term and temporary—of British citizens, in many cases, to other countries. All history suggests that such action further radicalises people and makes them more dangerous enemies to this country. If we do so without any judicial process, as she advocates in the Bill, is there not a real danger that we will put ourselves in more danger rather than less?

[Mrs May]

I caution the hon. Gentleman about the terminology that he uses in relation to the power. He has used the term “exile”, but the proposal is not about saying that people cannot return. It is possible for people to return, but they will return on the basis that we have set out in the Bill. Their return will be managed and we will have some control over it.

In response to an earlier intervention, I said that the change that we were making to the threshold for TPIMs was from “reasonable suspicion” to “the balance of probabilities”. The change is actually from “reasonable belief” to “the balance of probabilities”. I apologise to the House for having given the wrong impression about that.

Aside from the diplomatic efforts that we must make and the work we must do with those in the region, I have always been clear that we would keep our terrorism laws and capabilities under review. As the House knows, the first and most important duty of Government is the protection and security of their citizens. As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister made clear to the House on 1 September, we must ensure that our law enforcement and intelligence agencies have the powers that they need to keep us safe. The Bill will strengthen our existing powers so that we can disrupt people’s ability to travel abroad to fight, as well as their ability to return to the country. It will enhance our ability to monitor and control the actions of those in the UK who pose a threat and it will help to combat the underlying ideology that feeds, supports and sanctions terrorism.

Part 1 of the Bill will provide the police and MI5 with two new powers that will significantly enhance their ability to restrict the travel of those suspected of seeking to engage in terrorism-related activity overseas. First, it will provide the police, or a designated Border Force officer under their direction, with the power to seize a passport at ports. That will allow them to disrupt the travel of individuals, and give operational agencies the time to investigate and assess whether long-term disruptive action should be taken, on a case-by-case basis. Such action could be taken through, for example, criminal prosecution; the exercise of the royal prerogative to refuse or cancel a passport; a TPIM; deprivation of citizenship; or deportation. The use of this power will be properly safeguarded through a range of measures, including the need for a senior officer’s approval; an additional check by a more senior officer independent of the investigation after 72 hours; an initial retention period of 14 days for the passport; and a court review of the ongoing need to retain a passport, where a judge can allow more time for the police to continue their investigation—up to 30 days. There will also be a statutory code of practice for officers on how to exercise the power, and we intend to publish this code for consultation shortly.

Secondly, the Bill will create a power to issue temporary exclusion orders, to which I have already referred in response to interventions. These orders can temporarily disrupt the return to the UK of a British citizen suspected of involvement in terrorist activity abroad, ensuring that when individuals do return, it is done in a manner that we control. This power will cancel an individual’s travel documents and add them to watch lists, notifying the UK if they attempt to travel. Depending on the individual case, it may also require the individual to comply with certain activities once they are back in the UK. There has been a lot of interest in the nature of this power, as we have seen already this afternoon, but I want to reassure the House that it will not render an individual stateless. All those concerned will have the right, which their citizenship guarantees, to return to the UK. But when they do, it will be on our terms—quite possibly in the company of a police officer. Once they are back in the UK, the police will interview them, in order to explore their activities abroad, and can make them subject to further requirements. We are discussing this proposal with other Governments, in order to agree how it will work best in practice. So far these discussions have been constructive, and this proposal is consistent with all our existing international legal obligations.

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[Chris Bryant]

There are now literally millions of refugees in Lebanon and children are being born there who are effectively stateless. That is not a recipe for a peaceful middle east, is it?

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is right to say that the huge stresses and strains in the region will have long-term consequences. That is why we need to do our bit with our humanitarian response and recognise the long-term security consequences both in the region and here in Britain.

Let me turn to the Bill’s measures and how they respond to the challenge we face. More needs to be done to prevent young people from being radicalised or drawn into extremism in the first place. The Home Secretary has said that she wants to strengthen the Prevent programme, which we welcome, and we hope that putting it on a statutory footing will help do that. She will know, however, that getting the Prevent programme right is not simply about legislation. The programme has been narrowed over the past few years, which has led to criticism from the Intelligence and Security Committee, which noted in its report last week

“the relatively low priority (and funding) given to Prevent in the CONTEST programme as a whole”.

The Committee concluded:

“The scale of the problem”—

by which it meant the number of people travelling—

“indicates that the Government’s counter-radicalisation programmes are not working.”

We know that Prevent support for local community programmes has dropped from £17 million to less than £3 million over the past few years. Although the Home Secretary talked about the promotion of a counter-narrative, the evidence suggests that far less work is being done now than a few years ago to promote counter-narratives within communities.

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[Yvette Cooper]

More judicial oversight is needed in this area and we will certainly table amendments. It is also important to clarify what the powers are intended to achieve. It appears that they are not intended to achieve exclusion at all and have a very different intention.

[Chris Bryant]

My right hon. Friend is right to raise such queries. May I add two others that she might want to put to the Home Secretary? The first is what constitutes serving notice on somebody. Presumably this happens in another country. How is that notice to be served? How will somebody be deemed to be suitable to have that notice served on them? Secondly, at what point does the exclusion start? Is it before they get on an aeroplane or a boat to come to this country, or is it at they moment they arrive in this country? Once they are in this country, what happens to them? Are they effectively deported?

[Yvette Cooper]

Again, my hon. Friend raises important questions. The independent reviewer said that the policy was an announcement in search of a policy. It started with an announcement by the Prime Minister at a press conference. To be fair to the Home Office, it probably worked hard to try to turn it into some kind of sensible measure that might achieve something as part of the Government’s counter-terror policy but that could still have the label “temporary exclusion order” attached to it in order to keep the Prime Minister happy. The House needs to understand exactly what the Home Secretary’s intention now is. This is not a hugely responsible way to make counter-terror policy or for us all to be able to understand whether it gets the balance right between the powers and measures that are needed and the safeguards that are needed as well.

The Home Secretary has described this as a policy to manage return. The intention behind that is sensible, requiring people to co-operate with the police and security agencies and to attend Channel interviews if they have been involved with ISIL or have been in the region. That is important, but there are some practical questions about how the policy will work—first about co-operation with other countries, secondly about bureaucracy in the process, and thirdly about the safeguards and the judicial oversight.

What happens if a country does not want to co-operate? Have countries such as Turkey said that they will co-operate? Will they immediately deport people? Will they detain people at the airport? How will those orders be served and what will the response be?

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[Mr Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to be able to participate in the debate. At the outset, I should say that I welcome my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary introducing the Bill. I entirely agree with her that the House needs continuously to address the challenge and threat that terrorism poses to us. Some people think that the threat is exaggerated, but from my time as Attorney-General—I had to see some of the background briefings, and sometimes to consider cases relating to individuals who had gone abroad, particularly to Syria and Iraq—I have no doubt that she is absolutely accurate in her description of the real threat they pose to us.

With that in mind, I do not intend to take up much of the House’s time on my broad welcome of the legislation. Although the House will want to look in detail at the proposals on TPIMs and data retention, which is undoubtedly important, and the measures on preventing people from being drawn into terrorism, there is no doubt in my mind that they make good sense.

However, I hope to take a little of the House’s time this evening to talk about chapter 2, on temporary exclusion from the United Kingdom; I have flagged up my concerns on how the House should best proceed on that in a question to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. It is a fundamental principle of the common law in this country that an individual, unconvicted—the presumption of innocence applies—should be free to reside in his own land. The principle of exile, as a judicial or even an administrative tool, has not been tolerated in this country since the late 17th century. It is certainly no part of our criminal justice panoply, and certainly not part of administrative provisions or powers given to the state.

[Chris Bryant]

Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way?

[Mr Grieve]

I shall make a bit of progress.

Therefore, when we consider the question of temporary exclusion from the United Kingdom, we must bear it in mind that what is proposed, even if exclusion is on a temporary basis, is a draconian and unusual power being taken by the state. The point has been made that the proposal could be in breach of our international legal obligations by rendering a person stateless.

That is a separate consideration, and I know the Home Secretary has had it in mind in introducing the legislation, but I come back to the more fundamental point about the common law right. The point is often well made that as Parliament is sovereign, it can exclude the common law whenever it likes, but the fact is that the more fundamental the common law principle, the more careful we should be before excluding it. I simply say to my right hon. Friend that this is one of those common law rights that I regard as being of a fundamental character.

If I move on from that to consider what is proposed, I am pleased to note that it seems to me that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has given careful consideration to the issue. The temporary exclusion orders, which she has put forward, appear to be of a character such that she accepts she must issue a permit within a reasonable time after a person makes the application. The process therefore is—in my view, correctly —one of managed return: a return that provides reassurance that the state, which has to protect citizens here, knows of the returnee coming back to this country and, furthermore, provides opportunities, if necessary for the state to impose conditions on that individual after they have come back.

I have to say to my right hon. Friend that what has intrigued me in reading the Bill is the relationship between that and the TPIMs the Bill seeks to enhance in a number of perfectly legitimate and sensible ways. As she will know, the TPIM is also a serious interference in the liberty of the subject, and is therefore provided with a number of safeguards and protections in how it operates. The principal one is that although the Home Secretary instigates the application for a TPIM, the process has to be initiated through the High Court. There are some circumstances, however, in which that can be bypassed in the event of an emergency, and permission sought retrospectively.

The obligations after return to the United Kingdom, in clause 8, appear—the Minister may be able to help us when he comes to sum up—to be in large measure identical to those one might expect a TPIM to include, although there may be some differences, in which case it would be useful to have some clarification. Of course, the principal difference, as far as I can make out, is that this process does not have to be instigated by an application to the High Court; it is simply done on the basis of the Home Secretary concluding that she has reasonable grounds for requiring this process to take place.

I have to say to my right hon. Friend that I will be interested, in the course of the debate during the passage of the Bill, to understand why we should introduce two separate regimes of this kind. We know that, in respect of TPIMs, she has been broadly satisfied with the way they have been operating, even though she wishes to expand some of their scope. That is, I think, supported on both sides of the House. After all, if an individual is located in Iraq or Syria, or has crossed the border into Turkey and has indicated a desire to return when my right hon. Friend has removed his or her passport, the one thing one probably has as a result of this legislation is a short period of leisure—the reasonable period where the application is being made—for, if necessary, the process of a TPIM, or a TPIM which applies to a returnee, to be instigated through the High Court. I am a little mystified as to why we should simply resort to a judicial review process, which, although I accept it may comply with our international legal obligations and also the principles of due process, is nevertheless by its nature likely to be more ponderous and cumbersome, and would not allow the High Court to be seized of this matter at an earlier opportunity.

I say to my right hon. Friend that this is a matter on which we need to spend a bit of time during the passage of the Bill, to see whether in fact the two ways of approaching this are justified. Beyond that, I want to emphasise that the principle of the managed return seems to me eminently sensible, and my right hon. Friend has my support on it. The House will of course also want to look at some of the other issues that may apply to the details in respect of this scheme.

On the seizure of passports, the point needs to be made that a passport is not actually a right to come into the United Kingdom. I say that because we have discussed it in the terms of the matter I have just been talking about. Ultimately, the issue of a passport is a prerogative power. It is, in some ways, vouching for the person concerned. There are many reasons why my right hon. Friend may rightly remove somebody’s passport, either before they leave the United Kingdom or when they are abroad. However, I raise the following issue. We are progressively giving more and more summary powers to seize passports. There is nothing wrong in that, if, for example, it is preventing people from leaving the country when there are good grounds for considering whether they are going to commit, or are likely to commit, an act of terrorism, but it increasingly raises the likelihood of travel documents and passports being seized when it might turn out subsequently on examination that there was no justification.

The memorandum, properly prepared and passed off—I am sure—by the Law Officers before being issued, makes the point that taking passports interferes with article 8 rights. It must therefore raise the possibility of individuals who can show that their passports were wrongly taken making a claim for compensation. As far as I am aware, no issues of compensation have hitherto arisen from passport seizure. I appreciate that it might be different were it done maliciously, but I am talking not about malice but about errors made at the time the passport was removed.

During the passage of the Bill, I hope that my right hon. Friend and other colleagues on the Front Bench will think about the likely consequences, which might often be financial, of increasing powers of passport removal. I do not think that where there are reasonable grounds to suspect involvement in terrorism an individual has a right to compensation, but unfortunately there might be instances of people being targeted when they have no involvement in terrorism.

Ultimately—I have said this previously in the House, but it is worth saying again—we are engaged in a values battle. We will not stop terrorism or prevent young people from going to participate in terrorism by whatever methods of law we pass in this House, however draconian they might be; we will stop this phenomenon when we can persuade people that the virtues of our society, which are many, despite some of its drawbacks, are very considerable and that its values should be respected. For that reason, when we enact such legislation, we must have it in mind that we do not, as an unintended consequence, create the very resentments that are likely to fuel terrorism in the future.

Listening to the shadow Home Secretary, I was reminded that I have said that previously—over 90-day and 42-day pre-charge detention, both of which, I might add, were far more draconian attempts at interfering with the liberty of the subject than anything my right hon. Friend is doing in this measure, which I know she has brought forward with a prudent eye to the issues I have raised. On that basis, I welcome the Bill, but I hope that the matters I have touched on will be given serious thought.

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[Keith Vaz]

The Home Secretary is right that she is due to appear before us in two weeks’ time, but the legislation will probably have passed through the House by then. If a piece of emergency legislation is coming before us, as it is now, Ministers should put themselves before the relevant Select Committee. The right hon. Lady managed to fit in a visit to the British curry awards last night, at which we were of course all delighted to see her, but the point is that the date of 16 December for this emergency legislation to come before the House was fixed many months ago, and Ministers must be prepared to be scrutinised on such legislation. That message clearly applies to all Select Committees. The Home Secretary may nod her head, but that is the position. Our Select Committee is now left to conduct a session on this Bill after its Second Reading, which we will do tomorrow.

[Chris Bryant]

Is it not a particular irony that the Government always drag their heels on legislation when it comes to a subject such as circus animals, but when it comes to legislation dealing with the liberty of the individual, the Government always want to expedite the processes through the House. Is that not a nonsense?

[Keith Vaz]

I thank my hon. Friend, although that also happened with a Government of whom we were both Members; it is a feature of the way in which Governments tend to introduce counter-terrorism legislation. Indeed, as the shadow Home Secretary said, mistakes are made, and there were mistakes under the last Government. I remember the incredibly important speeches of the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield on 42 days and 92 days, and the role played by my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick) on these issues. That is why it is so important to pause, consider, scrutinise and then report to the House. The Select Committee will not be in a position to produce a report for this House as we had hoped we might, simply because there is no time to do so as we have already reached Second Reading. By the time the Home Secretary makes her much-heralded appearance before us, the legislation will probably already have passed through the House.

Having made my complaint about that matter, I agree that these are dangerous times. The Home Secretary and the shadow Home Secretary are absolutely right that we need to act quickly but carefully, while recognising not only that ISIL and extremist groups are operating in Iraq and Syria but that those who support those groups are acting in countries all over the world.

Yesterday I met Nathalie Goulet, the chair of the French Senate Committee that is inquiring into the struggle of jihadi networks in France and Europe. I was astonished to hear that the situation in respect of French citizens travelling to Iraq and Syria is much worse in France than it is in our country. I looked up the last report our Select Committee published, and it must be a surprise for the House to learn that countries such as Belgium, Australia and even Norway are in exactly the same position as we are in respect of citizens who wish to travel abroad to fight.

That is why we cannot see the fight against terrorism as something that affects just this House. The shadow Home Secretary was right to raise the international dimension. The Select Committee was very clear in its last report published earlier this year in saying that there needed to be an international platform, with countries able to pool information and act together. We suggested that we should work through Interpol, which we saw as the most appropriate organisation, as it already exists to share information about organised crime. We felt that that was a platform that could be developed to build an international network with allies such as the French, the Dutch and others to ensure that we do things together and learn good practice.

I learned that in France, for example, they have a dedicated “Green Line”, which people can ring with information about those they suspect of being involved in terrorism, and parents can ring for advice and be guided in the right direction. As a result of the activities of the “Green Line”, the French authorities have been able to stop 200 people from travelling abroad to fight. There are other examples, and I hope that we use the good practice developed in other countries in order not to repeat mistakes and to move forward and try to find effective methods of stopping people travelling.

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[Keith Vaz]

The hon. Gentleman is right. We need to understand much more, and we can only do so at local level: in the mosque, through community activities, in schools—as the Home Secretary said—in colleges, and in prisons. People who have not been radicalised go into those institutions and come out radicalised, and then there is a failure to monitor them. The solutions are all there—in reports written by Committees over a number of years, in contributions made in all the time Members have been in this House, and in speeches of Home Secretaries, as strong as the one we heard today, when she said what she wanted to put right as far as terrorism and radicalisation are concerned—but they are not acted upon, and they have to be acted upon, otherwise we will be back here in a year’s time doing the same thing again, and we do not want that.

[Chris Bryant]

Does that not highlight why, in considering giving new measures to the Home Secretary, it is incumbent on us to assess whether that would radicalise people further or provide greater security to us? My anxiety about temporary exclusion orders is that exile has not had a good history in Britain. When Richard II exiled Henry Bolingbroke, he simply went abroad, gathered a whole load of allies and came back to this country and removed the King. My anxiety is that these new orders will do exactly the same thing.

[Keith Vaz]

My hon. Friend is a greater historian than I am, but our constituents would say, if they were to find out there is someone causing mischief in Kenya, as Adebolajo was, that he should be kept in Kenya if the Kenyan authorities want to prosecute him, and that we should not try to bring him back. If there are people in these countries who are up to mischief and who wish to undermine the values of our country, I can understand perfectly why the Government are suggesting an exclusion order.

The issue here is not that we should not accept that; it is to do with the practicalities that the shadow Home Secretary and the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield have mentioned. Sometimes we need to be very careful that there is proper judicial scrutiny of the decisions we take. I think that sometimes our constituents would prefer such people not to come back. If they are brought back, they have to be monitored so they do not end up putting on a burqa, leaving a mosque and leaving the country, as Mohammed Ahmed Mohamed did. He wanted to stay in Somalia but was brought back to this country and now is nobody knows where.

Of course I support this legislation. When a British Home Secretary comes before the House and says, “These measures are necessary in order to combat the severe threat we face,” the House will obviously support what the Home Secretary is doing. However, there is a need to scrutinise the practicalities, and the Home Office must work closely with the Select Committee and the House to ensure that we have a solution and decisions that will be in the best interests of our country, and will not create the kind of unintended consequences that we all wish to avoid.