UK Citizens Returning From Fighting Daesh

John Hayes Excerpts

Tuesday 19th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Security (Mr John Hayes)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) on securing an interesting and informative debate on a topic that has been unfairly overlooked during our discussions about the conflict in Syria and Iraq. As you might expect, Mr Speaker, I have a prepared speech, and I shall refer to it sporadically, but I want to tailor my remarks to the issues that have been raised in the debate. I sense the shivers that are going down the spines of Home Office officials as I utter those words.

My hon. Friend made an emphatic case for why we should broadcast clearly and powerfully that travelling abroad in uncertain circumstances such as those that he has described is extremely dangerous. There are three reasons for that. First, the cause that people go to support is often not what it is purported to be in the propaganda that has encouraged them to do so. Secondly, as my hon. Friend suggested, those people may well not return. They may be placed in extremely jeopardous situations, even if they are going abroad to offer help. They may not know that they are going to fight—to engage in conflict—but they will nevertheless be placing themselves in extreme danger, almost regardless of their original purpose. Thirdly, on their return they may well face prosecution and will certainly face arrest. Extra-territorial jurisdiction applies in many of the places to which they might travel—particularly, as in this case, Syria. It is entirely possible that they have committed crimes abroad that are subject to that jurisdiction, and can be tried in a court here in the United Kingdom. That is another fact that is not made known to them when they are recruited. So my hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that, first and foremost, we should send out the extremely clear message that if people travel to a dangerous place, they will put themselves in all kinds of jeopardy.

[Mr Jim Cunningham]

There is a history of people volunteering to go abroad in this way—for example, during the Spanish civil war and other wars since then. Do the Home Office and the Cabinet Office view such people technically as mercenaries?

[Mr Hayes]

As I have implied, these matters have to be gauged on a case-by-case basis, because people travel abroad for humanitarian reasons and all kinds of other reasons. In the first tranche of people travelling to Syria, many went with good intentions and to do good work. They went to help. The pattern of travel to Syria has changed over time, but I would certainly not want to make any general assumptions about why an individual went or what they did when they got there. However, it is almost universally true to say that they place themselves at considerable risk. If people want to offer humanitarian help, it is much better to do that in a more organised way than in a dilettante fashion. People can contribute in all sorts of ways to the humanitarian effort in which the Government are playing a powerful part without putting themselves at risk. There are things that they can do to help.

Part of the reason behind the advice that was offered by my hon. Friend in his impressive speech, and which I have amplified, is that some of the organisations that people might join—ostensibly for the good and noble purposes that he described—might themselves be proscribed. Some of the organisations fighting Daesh are themselves proscribed and might be engaged in activities that we neither endorse nor support. The picture is often more complicated than is portrayed when people are recruited.

Many of those people are recruited through the internet. It will not have missed your consideration, Mr Speaker—little does—that people communicate in all kinds of modern technological ways these days. Much of the propaganda that is now emanating from Daesh uses the most modern methods of communication. We often think of Daesh as brutally archaic, which is understandable given its means and its methods. Indeed, it is often suggested that it is an organisation from times past. However, its technological methodology is extremely up to date. It takes advantage of every kind of social media and it uses the internet regularly in a well-organised and sophisticated way. That is precisely why its message is seductive to its adherents and apologists here in the United Kingdom.

[Keith Vaz]

The Minister is absolutely right to suggest that we are dealing with a very sophisticated enemy. May I take him back to the point made by the hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) about border checks? We still do not have 100% border checks, because our passports are not viewed by immigration officers on departure. They are looked at, together with our boarding cards, by the travel agents, but we are not checked on departure. The hon. Gentleman is calling for better checks at the border, with our passports being looked at by immigration officers and swiped before departure. That does not happen at the moment.

[Mr Hayes]

The Chair of the Home Affairs Committee takes a keen interest in all such matters. What I will say to my hon. Friend the Member for Newark is that it seems that if people have notified the local police that they may go, which is what he said, and then no more has been done for the reasons that the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) suggested, that does not seem satisfactory. It certainly seems reasonable that if people have notified the police that they are going to travel—although it is of course for the police to make a case-by-case judgment on an operational basis—we need at least to be confident that the police have the right guidance on what is appropriate. I am certainly happy to take that suggestion back to the Home Office and to see what more can be done, if anything, to ensure that the advice to different police forces around the country is consistent. As I say, these are, in the end, operational matters, and this has to be gauged on a case-by-case basis, but my hon. Friend the Member for Newark makes an important point none the less.

[Lady Hermon (North Down) (Ind)]

I am grateful to the Minister, who is being generous in taking interventions. Following his comment about briefing police forces around the country, I urge him to ensure that the Police Service of Northern Ireland is included. People can leave the UK on British passports, go out to help in Syria, become radicalised and then come back, perfectly lawfully, to Dublin or Shannon airports. The border between the Republic of Ireland and South Armagh is entirely porous, so British passport holders can re-enter the UK through Northern Ireland without any border checks.

[Mr Hayes]

The hon. Lady makes a reasonable case. There is a robust system in place for missing persons to be identified, for example, by the Turkish police on the Syrian border. We spend a great deal of time considering the issue of people returning from Syria, because some of them will subsequently be subjects of interest to our intelligence services and to law enforcement. However, the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Newark was making was that if someone has said to the police, “I’m going,” do different forces apply the same policy consistently? It is a reasonable point, which is why I have committed to considering it in more detail and to looking at the guidance.

[Jim Shannon]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Hayes]

I am anxious to make progress, but I will briefly give way to the hon. Gentleman.

[Jim Shannon]

This House took a majority decision to support bombing attacks in Syria and Iraq. Those who watched those debates would assume that the bombing would be in support of the 70,000 allied forces and supporters who were trying to fight Daesh on the ground. That was the whole purpose of the House’s decision. Anyone watching that debate who wanted to support the factions fighting Daesh would feel, when they spoke to the police, that this House was already fighting a war, and that they were doing nothing wrong. Does the Minister understand that that is the issue put forward by the hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick)? There are two different groups: those who are fighting Daesh, and those who support Daesh.

[Mr Hayes]

I am saying to the hon. Gentleman that someone might think that they are going out for what might be the perfectly noble cause of fighting our common enemy, but there is always a great deal of uncertainty about what happens when they get there. Such people are by their nature often quite ignorant of what they will encounter and may become linked to, tied to, or involved in all kinds of organisations and groups, some of which are proscribed in this country and engage in all kinds of other activities as well as the battle against Daesh. This is a complicated issue and should not be presented as anything else, although I understand the hon. Gentleman’s sympathy.

[Rehman Chishti]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Hayes]

I will give way one more time, and then I really must make progress.

[Rehman Chishti]

The Minister will agree that both categories of individuals—those who go to fight Daesh and those who support Daesh—are of concern. Around 800 individuals are fighting with Daesh. Do the Government or the Minister have an estimate of the number of individuals out there fighting against Daesh? Both groups should be on our intelligence services’ radar.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hayes]

We know roughly the number of people who have travelled to Syria, some of whom initially went for humanitarian reasons. Many have returned, but some have been killed. As both my hon. Friend the Member for Newark and the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) said, all those who go also face the risk of being captured and used as hostages. The strong advice is, “Don’t go, because you don’t know what you are going to encounter. And you certainly don’t know what the consequences may be.” That is precisely the point my hon. Friend the Member for Newark made in his opening remarks, and it is an important signal to send out from this place.

I would not want to suggest that the Government are inactive in this respect, so let me deal with what we are doing. The work we are doing on providing humanitarian aid is well documented. We have pledged more than £2.3 billion in vital life-saving assistance to Syria, and this is our largest ever response to a single humanitarian crisis. We remain one of the largest donors to the Syrian crisis response internationally. Of course it is important also to emphasise that those engaged in terrorism blight lives, provide bogus legitimacy to the worst extremes of human behaviour and tear communities apart. This activity cannot ever be justified, and it will never be justified by this Government, wherever it takes place or whoever commits it. I also understand the desire to confront our enemies, but the struggle for what is right is not, and cannot be, left to individuals; it can be devised and delivered only through the proper exercise of Government authority.

The second point I wish to make is that we are, of course, part of a military response to the threat posed by Daesh; the UK is making a strong military contribution. RAF Typhoon, Tornado and Reaper aircraft have flown more than 2,000 combat missions, and about 1,000 UK personnel are supporting their operation in the wider region. Our aircraft also provide effective close air support to Iraqi and Kurdish forces taking the fight to Daesh on the ground, with recent successes coming in Ramadi and Sinjar. It is through the global coalition, to which we are making such a significant contribution, that we will defeat Daesh. Although it is understandable that individuals should want to add to that, their effort is better expended in supporting what we are trying to do as a nation to get this right, both militarily and in humanitarian terms.

This is also about challenging the propaganda that I have mentioned, as has the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee. Challenging that, in communities up and down our nation, is a job for all of us. If people want to fight Daesh, they can do that on the streets of our capital city, London, and in cities and towns across this kingdom. All of us have a job to do in countering that poisonous narrative, which is delivered partly, but not only, through the internet. That is why the Government have invested so much in the Prevent programme and in our Channel programme, which deals specifically with people at risk of radicalisation.

We introduced a Prevent duty for a range of public bodies, including schools, prisons, local authorities and health services. This communal task of challenging the narrative is ongoing. It is highly dynamic, for the very reason that the threat we face is dynamic, and that requires us to redouble our efforts. I say to individuals who want to take on Daesh that there is a job to do in all those ways. For example, we take 1,800 pieces of terrorist propaganda down from the internet not every year or every month, but every week. That task is vital, as is supporting those community organisations and others that are putting forward the counter-narrative. These are important pieces of work, because the effect on individuals, particularly young people, who are corrupted by that poisonous narrative could not be more devastating.

Of course young people are targeted, because they are particularly vulnerable. They are susceptible to the kind of propaganda that I have described. It is important to know that last year alone, we referred 2,000 young people to our Channel programme, because they were vulnerable to that kind of radicalisation. In some cases, no further work was needed, but in others, intervention by social services was required. More than 200 such young people received support through that Channel programme.

At the end of last year, I saw at first hand, in Portsmouth, Hackney and elsewhere, the work that was done by our Prevent co-ordinators. I have met many of those who are on the frontline of this battle, and that is the frontline on which I want people to fight. I am talking about working in this country, taking on those who wish to corrupt our young people. This is no less than a safeguarding issue. The methods used by those who want to radicalise young people are not dissimilar to those of other kinds of exploitation. There is often a grooming process, which may take place face to face or online. It is often about picking on those young people who are particularly disadvantaged in some way. It is certainly about turning them from the cause of virtue to the cause of wickedness.

There should be no doubt that my hon. Friend the Member for Newark has done a service to this House by drawing our attention to the matters that we have debated briefly tonight. I end with this thought, which I hope he will broadcast to the people of Newark and elsewhere. If anyone should be in any doubt, let it be dispelled tonight: this Government and this Minister can outmatch our enemies in respect of our certainty, our determination and our commitment to winning this battle for the very heart and soul of all we are as a people.

Question put and agreed to.