Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 16th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Hazel Blears]

I am grateful to the Minister for putting that on the record in such trenchant terms and I still want to encourage him to take the extra small step of putting it on the face of the Bill as well as putting it on the record in Hansard. Perhaps we will be able to do that together with our colleagues.

I have a few questions for the Minister. First, does he agree that tackling the ideology is important? He absolutely does. Does he agree that there is a gap in the legislation, in that it does not refer specifically to this work? Does he agree that this work should specifically be included in the guidance? I would be very interested in his response on that point. We might actually see the words “combat ideology” in the guidance, which would be very helpful. Perhaps we could return to the issue on Report to see how far we have moved.

My final questions are about resources. How much of the £130 million announced by the Prime Minister will be allocated to Prevent and Channel? We cannot do this work without the resources and the funds to do it. When does the Minister expect to be able to publish the counter-extremism strategy that I know he and the Home Secretary are working on? That would provide an important backdrop to the legislative work we are doing to make this happen.

I think there is a great deal of consensus across the House. I wish we were not having this debate and that we were not faced with the terrorist threat that we are, but as we are I am pleased that the Prevent part of the counter-terrorism strategy has become more central to what we are doing. There is recognition that if we stop people being drawn down this path, it not only would be good for them but would mean that we would not have to spend millions and millions of pounds on disrupting the plots that unfortunately threaten the essence of our nation. As with many other programmes, if we invest in prevention we do not have to pick up the pieces at the end of the day.

I am an optimist and although this work is difficult, I believe that if we work together—communities, central Government, local authorities, families, practitioners and academics—and ensure that we put every bit of our energy into preventing people from being drawn down this path, we can all learn together, although it will take time, and we can ensure that we live together as communities in peace and prosperity rather than being driven apart, as we are at the moment, by the hatred of this pernicious ideology, which is causing so much heartbreak and concern to communities across the world.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

I rise to support the thrust of the argument made by the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears). We have worked on these issues in tandem so many times that if they were put on to a DVD, we would be in danger of compiling a box set between us. However, by returning to the same subject again and again and often in the same terms in our campaign to get the Government to do more in this field, we are illustrating the principle that the Government ought to be applying when they do that—namely, if one is to win an argument about or involving ideology, it is not good enough to set out one’s stall a single time as though one were a university professor and to think that that is the end of the matter. One must keep the message coming over and over again until one gets one’s own way. We are saying that what is lacking in the machinery is the ability to consolidate and wage counter-propaganda warfare—I use that term in a non-pejorative sense—against this barbaric ideology, and we are talking about doing it in a way that will have an effect at a much earlier stage of the process than most of what is proposed in the Bill as it stands.

It is quite understandable, in the light of atrocities such as 9/11 at one end of the spectrum and what happened in that restaurant in Sydney in Australia at the other, that the Government’s first concern must be countering and impeding what in IRA terms used to be called the “men of violence”. I fully accept that as long as there is a totalitarian ideology at large in the world, in most societies, even democratic ones, there will always be a few people extreme enough, unbalanced enough, criminal enough or at a loss and vulnerable enough for indoctrination to subscribe to it. Even in this day and age, we can find supporters of Aryan theories of Nazism and supporters of Marxist-Leninist totalitarianism, but the key point is that those supporters are absolutely isolated from the wider communities in which they live. We are not concerned about the ability to prevent, by persuasion or counter-indoctrination, every last person who is susceptible to becoming an extremist from becoming an extremist. We are talking about ensuring that that minority remains a minority and that their poison does not leach out into the wider community and, in particular, that the counter-measures taken by the state against what they are doing do not have the effect of radicalising the wider community.

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way; he is always very generous in these debates. Although I agree with almost everything he says, I have a small concern and perhaps he could talk me through some of it. He talks about “combating” extremism and ideology, but does he not think that the whole notion of combat and conflict was one of the things that got us into this trouble in the first place?

[Dr Lewis]

I disagree. When one is dealing with an intolerant ideology, one cannot simply say that one will, through some calm rationalisation, remove all the barbs, evil and poison. I am talking about what must be done to counter the pernicious ideology with which we are confronted.

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Dr Lewis]

I had not quite finished, but of course I will.

[Mr Davis]

Although I understand what my hon. Friend is saying, I rather agree with the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) that we are sometimes very unwise in our choice of words. When we choose words such as “war on terror”, we give the other side the standing of soldiers when often we are dealing with criminal misfits. Should we not be more careful about our language?

[Dr Lewis]

Absolutely, and by using concepts such as “the war on terror” as part of our counter-propaganda campaign we may indeed be scoring an own goal. But in discussing techniques for what we are doing in this place, believe me, there are not a host of radicals hanging on every word we use in this debate about the machinery that we should set up. Once we have set up the machinery, we can then go into the niceties of which expressions we use and which we do not. But let us be frank; this is a battle of ideas. It is a battle between barbarism and civilisation. The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire and others can shake their heads as much as they like but were I to make, for example, a similar argument against racist and Nazi exterminatory ideology, they would not blame me for couching the argument in the terms of a battle of ideas. It is a battle of ideas; the people who subscribe to this extreme doctrine have declared war on our civilised standards of democracy and tolerance.

I always mention—it so appropriate and someone always forces me, or perhaps I should say, incentivises me to do so—what the late great Sir Karl Popper described as the paradox of tolerance in a free society. He defined it in the following terms: you should tolerate all but the intolerant because if you tolerate the intolerant, the conditions for toleration disappear and the tolerant go with them. I make absolutely no concession to the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire or indeed to my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis). My right hon. Friend was talking about something slightly different—what we do when we are engaged in a battle of ideas—so I will give my right hon. Friend that get-out. But I make no concession to the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire about using the phrase “a counter-propaganda battle.” That is exactly what it is. We used to wage it against fascism and Nazism and against communist ideology and extremism. This is the latest incarnation, albeit one that goes back to a time hundreds of years before those terrible and extreme ideologies came on the scene to terrorise mankind.

It is fully understandable that a Government’s first concern has to be with the end of the conveyor belt at which fully formed terrorists spring into action, either on what they call a “spectacular” scale by killing hundreds or even thousands of people, or what we on the Intelligence and Security Committee prefer to call the self-starter end of the spectrum. We use that rather than the “lone wolf” appellation for reasons similar to the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden. But whichever it is, by the time we reach that end of the conveyor belt nothing can be done. I venture to say that even the best counter-radicalisation and counter-extremism programme will not prevent some individuals from getting on that conveyor belt and travelling all the way to the end. The question is how we isolate them from the majority and prevent them from infecting the majority.

In the amendment, my opposite number—and friend—the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles and I are trying to get something stronger in the Bill. For example, we are trying to add to clause 21 words about developing

“capacity to combat and reject the messages of extremism”.

I am terribly sorry but the word “combat” is in there; I make no apology for it. The clause says that a

“specified authority must, in the exercise of its functions, have due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism.”

I think having “due regard” is a pretty weak obligation and, as the right hon. Lady said, much of the focus here is on the obligations of various organisations and authorities covered by the Bill towards individuals who have already been identified as being vulnerable, at risk or on the path towards radicalisation. But we need to do something else. We need to try to create an atmosphere and a climate that is totally hostile to the propagation of the basic extreme ideology so that it becomes increasingly difficult to find anyone who is on that path to radicalisation because the whole concept of the ideology is anathema to society as a whole, or will be by the time we have finished.

[Bob Stewart]

I have been listening to my hon. Friend talk on the subject of ideology. One thing that crosses my mind is that some of these gentlemen may well have no ideology whatever, beyond the fact that they think that it is a good cause and they are a jihadi and are suddenly big men in their community. They can swank around and say “I’m a jihadi and I’m going off to fight.” After all, did not one of them have “Islam For Dummies” in his bag when he left?

[Dr Lewis]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right and the insincerity of some of those who do these sort of things is an important issue. It is important because if we succeed in making adhesion to the ideology something that nobody in the community would want to touch with a bargepole, it makes it much more difficult for anyone motivated by the desire to say “Look at me: I’m this glamorous figure and I’m going on jihad”, particularly if they know that the rest of the community would respond with “What are you saying? Are you mad? Why do you think we should admire you for saying that you are signing up to this ideology?”

A related point common to all these totalitarianisms is this: it is interesting to note how often everybody else gets wrapped up with the historic inevitability of whatever extreme cause it is or the God-given duty to follow it, but funnily enough, it is the people at the top who always seem to end up having supreme power over everyone else. Is it not convenient if someone is an megalomaniac to have to hand an ideology that justifies doing whatever the person wants to do in a society in which civilisation has broken down? As the famous philosopher Thomas Hobbes said, life would be “nasty, brutish and short” in such circumstances.

In reality, these extreme ideologies allow psychopaths and megalomaniacs to get to the top and exercise untrammelled power—but not, of course, for themselves. No, they are doing it because God has laid down that society should be run this way. I feel that, over many hundreds of years, our civilisation has torn down this edifice of extremism, and most of us feel that we will be damned—I use the word almost literally—if we do not stand up to prevent it from being re-erected in the heart of our own society or other societies.

[Mr Mike Hancock]

I hope that the hon. Gentleman does not fall into the trap that his hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) was leading him into—of believing that these young men and women who have gone to Syria were parading themselves around the community saying that they were on their way there. I do not think that any available information suggests that that is the case. In fact, it is the very opposite of the case.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Lewis]

Indeed. It is certainly true that, for obvious reasons, many of these journeys are undertaken in conditions of great secrecy. I cannot help interjecting one of my concerns—I have to be careful not to step into judicial areas and I make no reference to any particular recent case even though there might have just been one—which is about judges who take the view that they want to set exemplary and terribly harsh sentences on people who have come back when we do not know whether they have done anything while overseas other than commit the crime of going overseas to fight in the conflict. Handing out a sentence that would be commensurate with the sort of sentence someone would get in this country if they have committed manslaughter and taken a life, must be a huge discouragement to members in these communities—mothers, for example—to co-operate with the authorities when they are trying to get their sons back and when there is no reason to believe that their sons have any evil intent to carry out terrorism on their return. That is why we sometimes feel there is a need for greater co-ordination and that the issues should not be managed within just one Department. We should try to work out an integrated strategy.

Let me return to the point about counter-propaganda. I learned this lesson many years ago in an entirely different context—in fact, in several different contexts where time and again one would see extremist minorities hijacking moderate majorities and purporting to speak in their name. Where that sort of thing was going on repeatedly, it was almost like trench warfare or a battle of attrition. In those days, such battles would be carried out in the letters columns of the newspapers. A particular organisation or cause might get report after report in the media—and nobody would be answering. The way to deal with it then was to ensure that every report was followed by another report—or, alternatively, a critical letter in the press—so that eventually the radicalisers and the counter-radicalisers would be neutralised, and the wider community would say “We are sick of all this bickering—why don’t both of you just shut up and stop?”

We are not talking about some idealised situation in which we shall be able to let down our guard because there will never again be a small number of people who are willing to try to carry out terrorist acts at the end of the process. We are talking about a wider threat: the danger that, however effective we are in catching terrorists at the end of the conveyor belt that leads to their crimes, there will always be plenty more being fed on to the beginning of the conveyor belt by people who, shall we say, have a certain strategic grasp of what they are trying to achieve.

I thank the Committee for its patience in listening to my speech. As I said earlier, the sort of counter-campaigning that needs to be done on the issue of extremist ideology is, in a sense, demonstrated by the fact that we have to keep returning to this subject until the House gets sick of hearing from us, and the Government decide that the line of least resistance is to toughen up the legislation and create an agency that will be able to supervise, co-ordinate and resource the efforts of moderates in our Muslim community to ensure that their own communities are not hijacked by the barbarians.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

I want to say a little about new clause 12, which I tabled. I believe that there is strong evidence from countries that are already investing in deradicalisation programmes that they are effective, and I think that we need to look more closely at those programmes—as well as counter-radicalisation programmes—and learn from them.

Let me make it clear at the outset that none of the programmes is a substitute for effective counter-terrorism legislation. They are, however, an important tool that we can and, I believe, should be using to better effect in tackling terrorism. They acknowledge that someone becomes radicalised for a reason, and suggest that therefore, in principle, that person can be deradicalised.

Members who were in the Chamber yesterday may have heard me read the words of Abubaker Deghayes, a Brighton man whose two sons were recently killed while fighting in Syria. He warned:

“The strategy you are using with our sons does not work. You are criminalising them just out of the fear they might become a threat to this country.

Do not push them to be radicalised, used by groups like Isis who are out for revenge and thirst for blood.”

He feels passionately about the need not simply to take urgent, effective action to curtail suspected terrorists, not simply to wash our hands of those who may have become radicalised, and not simply to generalise about who people of this kind are. He believes that we need to understand more about who they are, and why they have become radicalised.

I met Abubaker Deghayes, the father. I met his solicitor, Gareth Peirce, and I met campaigners from organisations such as Cage UK. All of them have a wealth of experience related to the impact of counter-terrorism legislation, and all of them paid tribute to the difference that deradicalisation programmes can make. I hope to host a parliamentary meeting early in the new year, before the House of Lords debates the Bill, in order to give colleagues an opportunity to hear from a range of experts, including police officers, who are engaged in such programmes in other European Union member states.

Before I say any more, it might be helpful if I defined my terms. In doing so, I shall refer to a very useful paper published by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, which has conducted a comparative evaluation of counter-radicalisation and deradicalisation approaches in the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark and Germany. It describes deradicalisation programmes as those that are

“generally directed  against individuals who have  become radical with the aim of re­integrating them into society or at least dissuading them from violence.”

That is notably distinct from programmes such as Prevent, which are concerned more with counter-radicalisation, which the Institute for Strategic Dialogue defines as

“a package of social, political, legal, educational and economic programmes specifically designed to deter disaffected (and possibly already radicalized) individuals from crossing the line and becoming terrorists.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Caroline Lucas]

I completely agree with the right hon. Lady. I have seen and been part of some of those extraordinary community engagement processes. The drama in particular has a huge role to play. I come back now to the wider context. I am simply reporting to her what young people have said to me, which is that when they hear the Prevent programme being talked about and the kind of language and rhetoric that get used when we are talking in the abstract it feels to them as if this is something that is stigmatising and off-putting. They feel as if they are the problem. The programme does not seem to be the most conducive thing to engage them, even though when they get to it, they might find that it is something as constructive and as community based as she describes.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

There is a vast difference between stigmatising individuals who are at risk, which is not proposed, and stigmatising a barbaric ideology, because the idea is to save individuals from being sucked into the ideology.

[Caroline Lucas]

I think that I thank the hon. Gentleman for that. There are problems with the way he describes things in a black and white way. Of course I would be the first to say that we are seeing barbaric acts, which are part of a barbaric ideology. But to continue to use that language is not helpful when we are talking about young people. There are young people who have got mixed up in this in an ignorant way. I am not trying to excuse what they have done; I am just trying to understand it. If we think in terms of barbaric ideologies, that suggests someone who has spent an awful lot of time becoming involved in this, understanding it, knowing it and thinking of themselves as ideologues rather than as people who may have mental health problems, who may be excluded, who have faced massive racism in their lives and who have ended up in a very unfortunate position for a huge number of reasons that are not necessarily helpfully described when we talk about a barbaric ideology.

[Dr Lewis]

The hon. Lady is very kind. This will be my last intervention, so she has an open goal after that. I simply say that nobody hesitates to describe Nazi ideology and communist ideology in terms of their barbaric nature. If we are to succeed in saving people from being drawn into this form of barbarism, we have to get it into the same category, because, fundamentally, it comes from the same drawer of ideologies.

[Caroline Lucas]

I have no problem with talking about barbaric ideology or about actions that are barbaric, but if we frame the whole debate in those terms, we do not get any closer to being able to understand why some young people are getting more and more attracted to going out to take part in wars in Syria. We certainly do not get any closer to understanding how we can get them back safely and deradicalise them. All of us share that as the overriding priority. What we want to do is to keep our country safe by trying to ensure that people who get involved in this kind of activity are prevented from doing it in the first place and by deradicalising them if and when it happens. I am simply arguing about the best way to reach out to those people. I am not sure that what the hon. Gentleman is describing is the best way to do so.