Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill (Seventh sitting)

Debate between Conor McGinn and Rob Butler

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 7th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 7th July 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Conor McGinn]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. I am more used to serving alongside you in the all-party parliamentary group on racing and bloodstock, which you chair. I am speaking for the first time as a shadow Minister in Committee, and it gives me great pleasure that you are in the Chair.

We have said throughout proceedings on the Bill that, for all of us, our first and most important responsibility is to keep the British public safe. The Opposition believe that very firmly and we have approached the Bill in that spirit. We have to be forceful and robust in the fight against terrorism and do everything possible to keep our country safe from those who seek to attack our way of life and values or to do us harm. We have said that we will be a constructive Opposition on these matters, not seeking to divide or oppose for the sake of it, but using parliamentary scrutiny to do what this place does best and performing our important duty to seek to strengthen and improve legislation where it is right to do so. That is the spirit in which the amendments in my name to this clause and others are tabled.

The events at Fishmongers’ Hall and Streatham showed that there is a need for this legislation and for examination of measures such as terrorism prevention and investigation measures, which we will discuss this morning. That the perpetrators in each case had been automatically released halfway through their sentences, with no mechanism in place to protect the public, showed that there were major holes in the legislative framework that needed to be filled, first by emergency legislation earlier this year to prevent the imminent release of offenders without appropriate assessments—legislation that we supported—and now, rightly, by this wider Bill before us.

As we discuss the aspects of the Bill that fall under the remit of the Home Office, I want to say that we support the broad principles therein, but as we highlighted on Second Reading and as has been clear in some of the expert advice and evidence received by the Committee, there remain a number of issues of concern that we wish to probe and amend during the passage of the Bill, first to ensure that it does not fall short and secondly, in the spirit of co-operation, to work with the Government to improve it. It is in that spirit that I will discuss the amendments.

The Government are seeking to alter the standard of proof required to impose a TPIM such that the Secretary of State would need to believe it necessary based only on reasonable suspicion rather than the balance of probabilities. In probing further, we have tried to find a middle way, which is “reasonable and probable grounds”. We do not wish to harm the robust nature or operational utility of TPIMs. The Opposition support TPIMS and want them to be as effective as possible to keep people safe, so we welcome in principle any measures that demonstrably would help our police and security services to achieve that.

We acknowledge that the Bill puts Labour Members in a rather strange position when it comes to TPIMs, because of course it was a Labour Government who, on introducing control orders in 2005, imposed a standard of proof as proposed in this Bill, requiring only reasonable grounds for suspecting that an individual was involved in terrorism-related activity. The standard of proof was raised by the coalition Government in 2011 with the creation of the new regime, and then again by the Conservative Government in 2015. I accept and acknowledge that, and I wanted to say it in Committee. However, having heard the evidence and the Minister’s explanations, we struggle to see the logic in lowering the standard of proof now, whether it is looked at from an operational, administrative or procedural perspective. We need to be clear that policy is made based on evidence and not on amending legislation for its own sake, particularly on such an important matter. We need to see the justification, which has been lacking to date.

In November 2019, just five TPIMs were in force. The police and Security Service have been clear that to date no TPIM request has been rejected on the grounds of insufficient evidence, so one could argue that the current threshold has not proved to be an impediment, even though the security landscape has evolved in recent years, with new risk profiles and challenges coming to the fore. At the same time the Government and law enforcement agencies say that they do not wish to see, nor do they foresee, a sudden spike in the number of TPIMs in operation. They are of course valuable mechanisms, but they are also very costly.

Jonathan Hall, the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, told the Committee:

“My concern is that you are opening up a greater margin of error if the standard of proof is lowered.”

That risk ought to be addressed by the Government. We have not yet heard a compelling operational or administrative case made for lowering the standard of proof. I have not heard one from the Minister or his colleagues, or from any of the Committee’s witnesses, so why are the Government so intent on pressing ahead with this change? Again, in the words of Jonathan Hall,

“If it is right that the current standard of proof is usable and fair, and I think it is, in a word, if it ain’t broke, why fix it?” .”––[Official Report, Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Public Bill Committee, 25 June 2020; c. 6, Q6.]

Taken in isolation, that is a serious enough question, but when paired with the proposed changes in clause 38 on the prospective length of TPIMs, it becomes significantly more urgent.

There are concerns about the fundamental contradiction at the heart of part 2. Liberty wrote that jettisoning the limited safeguards that currently exist while ramping up the severity of the measures that can be imposed would be “a retrograde step.” The Minister needs to respond to those concerns. The Opposition are not alone in being slightly confused by the Government’s approach, particularly to lowering the standard of proof. Amnesty International stated:

“That lack of reasoned argument as to the need for this change mirrors the lack of appropriate evidence or justification presented…at second reading.”

The Bar Council said it was not clear why the reduction in the standard of proof was said to be necessary, and the Law Society of Scotland said:

“Little evidence or justification has been provided for making the change.”

Perhaps the Minister will provide clarification for the Committee, as so far the arguments put forth by the Government have not quite assuaged those reasonable concerns, which are grounded in evidence.

[Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that, in the evidence session, the assistant chief constable highlighted three scenarios where the Security Service believed that lowering the standard of proof would be of use? One scenario was where an individual’s risk profile was rapidly increasing and they were moving towards posing an actual threat, with an attack plan in place, but there was not enough time to get to the stage of proof; the second was where somebody was returning from abroad, and the third related to sensitive material. The assistant chief constable said that all those scenarios created a need, as MI5 would see it, to lower the standard of proof. Does the hon. Gentleman accept that?

[Conor McGinn]

I accept what the hon. Gentleman says and the evidence given by the assistant chief constable. However, the assistant chief constable acknowledged that all of those circumstances currently exist, and that there has been no case where an application for a TPIM has not been granted. I think he was saying that shifting from the balance of probabilities to reasonable suspicion would inevitably make it easier, but he had not experienced, nor did he envisage, any circumstances where that practically had happened or would happen.

As I said at the outset, we come to this wanting to assist and support the Government, but we need to hear a little more justification for this measure in terms of its effectiveness and the reason for it. We will not seek to divide the Committee on the amendment. I tabled it to raise our concerns and those of groups in society, to give the Minister the opportunity to address some of those concerns, and to explain why we not only in principle but now clearly in practice support much of what the Government are trying to do.

Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill (Third sitting)

Debate between Conor McGinn and Rob Butler

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 3rd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 30th June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Rob Butler]

Q We have heard a lot about what needs to happen in prison, but this is fundamentally a sentencing Bill. Can you expand on what additional information you think needs to be presented to the sentencing judge in cases such as these, to ensure that the right period in custody is established from the outset?

Professor Acheson: This speaks to my earlier point about making sure that experts—forensic psychologists and psychiatrists—are specially chosen and trained to produce a baseline threat assessment, after conviction but before sentencing, to allow a judge to make a more informed decision on sentencing length, duration and so on, and to establish the basis against which that person’s progress can be managed and measured through custody.

Again, I think it is exceptionally important—the Government did not accept this, but I will reiterate it, and recent events have thrown it into the light—that we should have one dedicated multi-agency specialist unit that manages terrorist offenders from their conviction until they are deemed no to longer be suitable for supervision in the community. It is the most sensible way to manage this. We have far too many hand-offs in the system at the moment.

We have this morning’s report into Joseph McCann, a manipulative psychopath who managed to disguise his dangerousness because of failures in the probation system— because of under-trained staff who were over-stressed and insufficiently curious. All those things will apply to terrorist offenders as well. Having a dedicated unit that understands in great detail the individual’s biography, their background and the antecedents, and that could help to establish a programme of treatment or intervention that is individualised to that person, seems to me to make sense in managing the risk.

[Conor McGinn (St Helens North) (Lab)]

Q Professor Acheson, I really enjoyed your Spectator article, and I agreed with a lot of it. I think it is worth the Committee hearing that its opening gambit was that opponents of the Bill were

“the usual well-heeled, left-wheeled liberal rights activists”.

Neither the Chairman nor I could ever be accused of being one of those, and I do not oppose the Bill and the measures in it per se. However, as you have identified, it is important that the Bill receives scrutiny.

I was struck by something that you said about the Government’s approach to the Bill, which was that it was “populist”. Do you think that is at the expense of longer-term strategic thinking that could be contained in the Bill, particularly around things such as the Prevent strategy? The Bill removes the statutory deadline for reviewing that strategy. I suppose what am I asking is this: are the measures in the Bill serious and strategic and will they make a difference, or are they in keeping with a populist approach to these issues, as you have alluded to?

Professor Acheson: I was being quite flippant in that article, as you have to be if you write for The Spectator. The serious point is that there is no risk-free way to deal with this very dangerous, challenging topic; every way has risk. My small expert team and I sat and looked at separation units, and we argued for weeks about which was better: separation or dispersal of highly subversive, proselytising Islamist extremists. The focus was Islamism. In the end, we came to the view that separation centres would work as the least worst way of managing this phenomenon. The reason I mention this is that we are in a period of continuous evolution, and the law will need to be able to react to that.

They are not distinct, but we have an al-Qaeda generation of terrorists, from 2005 onwards, who are serving time—sometimes extremely long sentences—for organised plots, and we have an IS generation of much more oppositional terrorists, including lots of lone actors who have come along behind. Even looking at Islamist extremism as a group is very difficult. The answer to your question is that we have a good baseline for extending the amount of time that terrorists will serve in prison. We had an intolerable situation before, when it was quite clear that the system of supervision and the sentencing framework were broken; they let people such as Sudesh Amman out of custody. But we have to look at the quality as well as the quantity of what happens. The only way to do that is relentlessly to research what works.

Sometimes I am told by people, “There’s no evidence for what you’re saying.” I sometimes react to that by thinking, “That’s a kind of code for inertia, organisationally, or for timidity.” Sometimes we have to make the evidence. The point is that we have to take some risks. I am not sure whether separation centres will work or will continue to work. Mark Fairhurst eloquently made the point that there is a great deal of reluctance in the Prison Service to use them. There is some organisational resistance to the concept, and it is not simply about not being able to find the right people. A bureaucratic structure was built around selection for separation centres, which has made it all but impossible, frankly, for anybody to get in them.

Regarding separation centres and how the legislation needs to evolve, we need to make sure, as Mark has said, that there is sufficient capability for the extreme right-wing offenders who represent the biggest threat to be removed and completely incapacitated, breaking the psychological link between the “preacher” and his adherent. We will need to be continually alert and continually changing and challenging legislation in order to arrive at the best way of managing the evolving risk.