Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill

John Hayes Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 11th September 2018 Commons Chamber

In Committee, the Minister spoke about internal reviews of Prevent. Fine, but let us have a full statutory review as well, and make the improvements that are needed to our efforts to tackle counter-terrorism.

[Mr John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

I hear what the hon. Gentleman says about Prevent, and welcome his warm support for its principles. I am glad that he has been to see its programmes, as I did when I was Minister for Security. He makes a useful point about the oversight of Prevent and about measuring the implementation of the Prevent duty. He will remember that we introduced that duty when I was the Minister. The duty affects a wide range of organisations, but the evidence suggests that its effectiveness varies across them. It would seem to be useful to take a look at that, but I would not call that a wholesale review; rather it is measuring its effect.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I know the work that he did in this area. I have seen the Prevent duty in operation, both on visits as a shadow Minister and in my constituency, as it happens. I appreciate his point about whether a statutory review is justified. Clearly, we are talking about an aspect that could be taken into account in a statutory review, but wider issues to which I have already referred could also be taken into account. A statutory review would give us the opportunity to re-evaluate the programme fully, to look at those communities that have lost confidence in it and why, and to improve our ability to tackle counter-terrorism.

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[Dr Johnson]

I am afraid that—[Interruption.]

[Mr Hayes]

It may be—I do not say this with any acrimony—that the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) is letting her pro-European prejudices get the better of her understanding of security. The truth is that, as she will know, we draw on a variety of sources of information. It is true that we use the Schengen database, but only as part of the network of information that we gather across all kinds of borders and from all kinds of sources to help to inform our intelligence and security services. The likelihood of that changing as a result of our departure from the EU is being exaggerated by those who have a different agenda.

[Joanna Cherry]

Name a country that has the same access.