Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism

Dan Byles Excerpts

Thursday 22nd November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

As my right hon. Friend the Work and Pensions Secretary says, the waiting time is getting shorter. I will not put an exact date on it, because when I have done that in the past I have inevitably disappointed people. The right hon. Gentleman will clearly have less time to wait than he did when he heard a Minister say that last year.

The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North mentioned Boko Haram, which operates in Nigeria. For very sensible reasons, the Government do not comment on whether any group is under consideration for proscription, but we are deeply concerned about violence, whether terrorist or otherwise, in Nigeria. We remain committed to working closely with the Nigerian authorities to tackle the security situation in Nigeria. When the Prime Minister met President Jonathan in February this year, he re-affirmed our shared agenda. We have experience on counter-terrorism policy and various frameworks for dealing with it, and we work closely with our Nigerian colleagues to support them in any way we can in combating the security challenges that they face.

The hon. Lady mentioned Hizb ut-Tahrir. As she knows, that organisation is not proscribed in the United Kingdom. As I said, proscription can be considered only when the Home Secretary believes that an organisation is involved in terrorism, as defined in the Terrorism Act 2000. As the right hon. Member for Leicester East suggested though, it remain an organisation about which the Government have significant concerns, and we continue to monitor its activities very closely.

The final issue that the Chairman of the Select Committee raised was organisations that change their name but not necessarily their activities. Section 3(6) of the Act allows the Home Secretary, by order, to specify an alternative name for a proscribed organisation, and we keep the list of organisations under review, including consideration of whether they are operating under any alternative aliases.

[Dan Byles (North Warwickshire) (Con)]

Is there a streamlined process for claiming that a group with a new name is still the old group? Instead of having to start again and prove that the group under the new name is a risk, is there is a quick and simple process for saying “This is the old group under a new name”?

[Mr Harper]

Yes. If we proscribe a group on the basis of all the information we have about it, and it then tries to change its identity, there is provision in the Act to allow us to specify an alternative name without having to go through the process of reconsidering all the legal tests that the Home Secretary has to carry out.

I hope that with those answers I have dealt with the questions that were raised, and that the House will support the motion.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That the draft Terrorism Act 2000 (Proscribed Organisations) (Amendment) (No. 2) Order 2012, which was laid before this House on 19 November, be approved.

Abu Qatada

Dan Byles Excerpts

Tuesday 17th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I have indeed already initiated work to see whether there are changes we can make to our legal structures in the UK that would enable us to deport people who are threats to our national security rather more quickly and with greater rigour than we can today.

[Dan Byles (North Warwickshire) (Con)]

I, too, congratulate my right hon. Friend on her statement and on her resolve on this issue. It is hard to think of another case that so clearly sums up everything that is wrong with the twisted priorities and logic of the European Court of Human Rights. Does my right hon. Friend agree that without radical reform, the European Court represents a clear barrier to British courts’ ability to protect British citizens from those who threaten our security?

[Mrs May]

It has been the clear view of this Government for some time that we need to bring about reform of the European Court in a number of areas. That work has been undertaken in recent months. As I said, the Brighton conference, under the chairmanship of my right hon. and learned Friend the Justice Secretary, will consider the action that can be taken to reform the European Court. As a Government, and in the Home Office, we will consider the systems we have in place to see whether we can learn anything from other countries to provide us with a swifter means of deporting those who are a threat to our national security.

Drugs (Roadside Testing) Bill

Dan Byles Excerpts

Friday 10th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Nuttall]

I am sure that there is a method of doing so, but I could not do it now. However, my hon. Friend will be pleased to know that I will briefly touch on the European Union later. In all seriousness, however, 1 nanogram is one billionth of a gram, which may account for why it has taken the Home Office so long to produce a realistic specification for such a device, given the extremely small—indeed, unbelievably small—levels that it is expected to detect.

With all that in mind, it is perhaps worth considering some of the tragic cases of people losing their lives as a result of drivers taking the wheel while under the influence of drugs. It is perhaps all too easy to get bogged down in the technicalities and the dry scientific details of the drugs that we have been considering, and to forget the human tragedies that lie behind the problem. The road safety charity Brake has briefly and helpfully summarised some of those cases on its website. For example, it cites the case of a 20-year-old young woman, Katharine Davis, who was killed by a banned driver, Lee Fitzgerald. The case was reported in The Northern Echo, which stated that Fitzgerald was not only almost two times over the legal drink-driving limit, but had taken a cocktail of drugs, including cocaine and ecstasy. He then got behind the wheel of a friend’s car and gave a lift to Katharine and a work colleague. As he was being followed by the police, he crashed the car and Katharine lost her life. Fitzgerald was jailed for five years.

In another case, a young girl, Lucy Bellamy, aged only nine, was hit and killed while on a pelican crossing by one Andrew Wilkinson, who at the time was just 20. Wilkinson admitted to police that he had been smoking cannabis through a makeshift pipe. He apparently had not even tried to brake, even though he was approaching a pelican crossing. He was jailed for four and a half years. Further such cases arise all the time.

[Dan Byles (North Warwickshire) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is generous in giving way. I apologise for not having been here for the start of the debate and I do not know a great deal about this area, but is there any scope in such circumstances for using legislation on driving dangerously? There is no specific law on the use of illegal substances, but could the offence of driving dangerously or of causing death by dangerous driving be used instead against someone who had taken an illegal substance that prevented them from driving safely?

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. It is perhaps one that those with greater knowledge of the workings of the criminal law—particularly as it relates to road traffic offences—would be more able to deal with.

There are two more recent cases that I would like briefly to raise, because I do not want people to think that everyone convicted of driving while under the influence of drugs is sent to jail. There was a case reported in the Dudley News of a Dudley man who was handed a suspended jail term for driving while unfit to do so through drugs. He was given a six-week jail sentence, suspended for 18 months, and banned from driving for 18 months. To run consecutively, the defendant was also jailed for six months, suspended for 18 months, for possession of a class A drug, heroin. He was ordered to pay £600 compensation and court costs at Dudley magistrates court.