Counter-terrorism and Security Bill

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 10th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Heath]

That is not the way Third Reading and Report work; what we put into the Bill then is the Bill—it is not a question of principle at that stage. The principle was that the Home Secretary accepted our arguments, she has brought this back and I am grateful to her. I am also grateful to her for the changes to the privacy and civil liberties board.

The one area where we still have a mess, despite the welcome improvements, is on the draft guidance on places of higher education. Of course I welcome the explicit references now in the Bill to “freedom of speech” and “academic freedom”, but introducing those as something to which both the universities and the Home Secretary need to have particular regard means that we have an incomplete hierarchy of priorities between that and the guidance in the draft guidance. That makes it difficult for vice-chancellors and others to assess exactly where their duties lie.

The saving grace lies in amendment 14, which means that the guidance will come before this House for consideration. The reason I specifically asked the Home Secretary what changes she would make to the draft guidance as a consequence of subsection (3) of the new clause in amendment 16 is that there is a clear implication, if that means anything at all, that there will be changes made on that basis. It cannot simply be done in response to the consultation process; there needs to be something that emerges from that process. I look forward to seeing the draft guidance revisited, reissued and then coming before this House for final decision. However, I make a plea to the Home Secretary not to have something that is too bureaucratic or to have hurdles that are impossible for large universities to jump. I have to say that I would be quite incapable of telling a university at which I was speaking what I was going to say two weeks in advance—I do not know what I am going to say when I stand up to make a speech.

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

Or even afterwards.

[Mr Heath]

Indeed. I really do hope that we have something that is workable, that addresses specifically, and on a risk basis, the issues that the Home Secretary seeks to address, and that does not introduce a duty that is inaccessible.

--- Later in debate ---

[Hazel Blears]

I agree, and I do not think that the two are mutually exclusive. We need to tackle individuals and we need action plans for individuals, but individuals live in families and in communities. We therefore need a much more holistic engagement programme.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

Unfortunately, the right hon. Lady is stepping down as a Member of this House very soon and I only hope that her voice will not be stilled on such topics in other arenas. Does she agree that although there has been a welcome change in that Ministers from the Prime Minister downwards are now talking about the underlying perverted ideology at the root of radicalisation, we need to back up that new rhetoric with arrangements to counter that perverted ideology?

[Hazel Blears]

The hon. Gentleman has a proud record of having pursued these issues with such determination and tenacity that he has, perhaps, had no small influence on the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister in talking about the long-term generational struggle and the need to deal with ideology.

I want to return to the point made by the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood) about resilience, as that is the second issue that I am concerned about. I have read the guidance very carefully and the first mention of building community resilience is in paragraph 175 of 178, on page 39. It is about the police and it states:

“The success of Prevent work relies on communities supporting efforts to prevent people being drawn into terrorism and challenging the extremist ideas that are also part of terrorist ideology. The police have a critical role in helping communities do this. To comply with the duty, we would expect the police, working with others, to build community resilience”.

There is no objection to community resilience in principle in the guidance, yet it takes us 175 paragraphs before we talk about the need to do that. The Home Secretary is looking at me quizzically, but this is the guidance as we see it now and when it is revised, as I hope it will be, I hope that there will be a stronger emphasis on families, parents and communities. I have made those points consistently and I asked the Home Secretary to reflect carefully on that.

--- Later in debate ---

People who commit such offences are criminals and should be dealt with. Anybody who saw the two criminals who killed Fusilier Rigby would have seen that they were frothing at the mouth. It is clear that they were mental. Many educational psychologists and others who have studied people who become radicalised and commit criminal offences say that those people are often educationally deprived, economically deprived and have mental health issues. It is those issues that we should address. Concentrating on Prevent will not stop all the problems. Whatever is happening internationally and what those people are doing will continue.

[Dr Lewis]

I appreciate the passion with which the hon. Lady is making her point and I agree with a lot of what she says about the fact that the people who commit those terrible crimes are unbalanced and unstable. That was true of the criminals who killed Lee Rigby, but it is precisely because they were unbalanced and unstable that they were susceptible to a particular extreme interpretation of a religious ideology. Therefore the two things interact. It is not quite as simple as she says.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

I do not agree with that. One of the murderers of Fusilier Rigby quoted, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” That comes from the Old Testament, not from the Koran. We cannot start saying that this is somehow linked with religious ideology. These are just confused, mentally disturbed people.

[Dr Lewis]

rose—

[Yasmin Qureshi]

I am sorry, but I have only a little time, and I have something to say that is different from what everybody else has said, so I would like to be able to take the opportunity to say it.

People do not seem to appreciate that a lot of these people are mentally unbalanced and have other issues. The Prevent programme has shown that spying on young people, taking them in and questioning them incessantly simply traumatises them—I have spoken to some of them. It does not help them in any way, shape or form, and it makes them even more frightened to say anything. Programmes like Prevent, in channelling people’s thoughts or what they say, are effectively stopping them discussing things. If I come across somebody who has a certain view and take the law enforcement agencies or the local authorities to them, they will clam up and we will not hear anything that they have to say. These things are completely counter-productive. The former director general of MI5, the noble Baroness Eliza Manningham-Buller, is not somebody who does not know what she is talking about. She and a number of people like her have said that Prevent does not work and we do not need it. If people do not want to listen to me, why cannot they listen to people like her and intelligence officers who have been involved in these kinds of things and say that ideology is not the reason behind them?

Finally, I want to talk about an aspect of the Bill that I hope the Home Secretary will reassure me about—part 4, on ships and aviation. I hope that these provisions will not end up stopping people from a particular country being able to travel to this country. Some of my constituents have expressed the fear that if certain parts of part 4 are applied, the way that the law is currently worded could allow people to say that because people from one particular country are coming here with some issues and challenges—