Counter-terrorism and Security Bill

Debate between Julian Lewis and Hazel Blears

Tuesday 10th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[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.

Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill

Debate between Julian Lewis and Hazel Blears

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.

Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill

Debate between Julian Lewis and Hazel Blears

Tuesday 2nd December 2014 Commons Chamber

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

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for calling me to follow an excellent speech by the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears).

At the end of the Home Secretary’s forthright speech, she said that we are “in the midst of a generational struggle”. That is true, but we are also in the midst of an ideological struggle. That is the message that the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles and I have been trying to deliver to the Government. Our message is that we are well served by our security and intelligence agencies in identifying and disrupting home-grown terrorists, but we lack comparable capacity to neutralise the ideology that infects them in the first place and to support mainstream moderate Muslims in challenging the extremists’ perverted distortion of Islam.

In reviewing our current strategy and policies to prevent people from being radicalised and drawn into extremist activity, we should, as I said in an intervention, follow the precedents of the wartime efforts to expose and denounce fascism and the cold war campaigns to counter communist totalitarianism. The extremist ideology of political Islam is a similarly totalitarian creed requiring an organised effort to undermine its appeal and to strengthen the long-term resilience of the communities that are most vulnerable to it.

In order to succeed, this work must be owned by the whole of Government on a cross-departmental basis, working closely with local government in engaging with civic and faith organisations on the ground. It requires the creation of a specialist counter-propaganda agency—I use the word “propaganda” in its non-pejorative sense—to develop a counter-narrative and to support communities in their efforts to challenge the extremists. This agency should operate under the supervision of a permanent ministerial committee on which the Home Office, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Department for Communities and Local Government, the Ministry of Defence and the Department for International Development are represented.

I assure you, Mr Speaker, that I did not give the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles any warning of what I am going to say next, but I am nevertheless going to say it, at the risk of embarrassing her. I feel—as, I am sure, will many others—that it is a great loss, given her specialist knowledge and flair for this subject, that she has decided to leave the House of Commons at the next election. Should such an agency be set up in future, I can think of no better person to run it than the right hon. Lady—whether she wants the job or not.

As we have heard, the Prime Minister has said, as far back as three years ago but also more recently, that it is not enough to tackle terrorism; it is also necessary to counter what he calls the “poisonous ideology” that underlies it. The Home Secretary now says that we need to tackle non-violent as well as violent extremism, so the message is clearly getting through, but there is still some way to go. Why is there such reluctance to recognise that what we ought to be calling un-Islamic extremism, and what we certainly should not be calling Islamic State, should be confronted at a similar level, on a similar scale, and in a similar way to our approach to fascist and communist ideologies in the past? The answer, I suspect, is the fear of the pseudo-religious basis of this incarnation of traditional totalitarian, extremist doctrine.

I want to draw the House’s attention to a particularly important article by Charles Moore in The Daily Telegraph on Saturday 29 November. It is headed, “We won’t defeat extremism until we understand their ideology”, with the sub-heading, “Stopping jihadists is one thing—but stopping them from wanting to kill is more important”. The article reflects very much the views that I have been putting forward in this speech, but neither I nor the right hon. Lady had any contact with Mr Moore before he wrote it. It is always very encouraging when somebody of that calibre independently arrives at similar conclusions to those that one has oneself reached.

[Hazel Blears]

I cannot anticipate what the hon. Gentleman is going to say next, but I did speak to Charles Moore last week, so I would not want him to mislead the House inadvertently.

[Dr Lewis]

That only goes to show that the right hon. Lady and I do not co-ordinate our efforts as seamlessly as perhaps we ought, because I should have known that. Anyway, the important thing about the article is that it looks at the consequences and conclusions of our recently published Intelligence and Security Committee report on the terrible events in Woolwich. The main question in Charles Moore’s mind about the killers is: what is it that made them so bloodthirsty and so bold in the first place? Why did they want to do such a terrible thing? He comes to the conclusion:

“Islamist extremism combines something very new—the power of internet technology—with something very old—the power of belief.”

He says that the report establishes that

“Lee Rigby’s murderers were ‘self-starting’”,

but that

“they were not lunatics or even ‘lone wolves’. They took large doses of the drug called ideology…It was supplied by pushers who might live in their neighbourhood, but might equally well live in Yemen or Aleppo.”

Charles Moore refers to the calls that have been made to start a counter-narrative, but he notes that MI5, for all its good work, does not have—some would say that it should not have this; it is not necessarily its responsibility to have it—an ideological unit. He says:

“It is rather as if we were trying to combat Communism without knowing the theories of Marxist-Leninism.”

He concludes:

“Time after time, it is non-violent subversion that has prepared the ground for serious trouble”,

and he warns against the danger of running around

“trying to catch the bad fruit, instead of taking an axe to the tree.”

This is a problem that we face at a scale that is not yet insupportable, but which could get very much worse.

Somebody once said that the problem with the world is that the ignorant are cocksure and the wise are full of doubt. The problem we have is that some people with a racist, radical, totalitarian, extremist, murderous ideology have found a way, in the name of their interpretation of their God and their Prophet, to do what extremists have always wanted to do, which is to enjoy untrammelled power over everyone else.

One cannot mobilise a society or a community to counter that successfully if one confines oneself simply to dealing with individuals whom one has already recognised as at risk of radicalisation, because they will already be on the conveyor belt to an extremist outcome and, very probably, to a violent extremist outcome. What one has to do is not to be shy about the virtues of democratic politics, institutions and ideas, or about denouncing the follies and iniquities of systems based on an ideology that stands in total opposition to everything that moderate and liberal-minded people believe.

Justice and Security Bill [Lords]

Debate between Julian Lewis and Hazel Blears

Monday 4th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Hazel Blears]

I am sure the hon. Gentleman would make an amazingly creative lawyer, if he is not already one. By any interpretation that was a list of the items that could be included. I am probably in good company if I am in agreement with the Advocate-General. There is fairly overwhelming evidence that the list that the hon. Gentleman tried not to give would not be suitable for some cases where a huge amount of the information impinges on national security.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

Does the right hon. Lady accept that if sensitive material is redacted under PII, that may be the very sensitive material—the secret source, the secret technique or whatever—which is the thing that proves the Government’s case? Therefore it is not good enough to say that PII could be used with redactions, because the redactions themselves may be the key component of the evidence that the Government need to present.

[Hazel Blears]

As ever, my colleague on the Intelligence and Security Committee makes the point in straightforward, direct and proper terms. My understanding is that the Opposition accept that in a small number of cases it will be necessary to have closed material proceedings and that PII does not meet the case in every set of circumstances.

Access to Postgraduate Study (Oxford University)

Debate between Julian Lewis and Hazel Blears

Wednesday 23rd January 2013 Commons Chamber

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

Does the right hon. Lady know whether the problem therefore lies with this particular Oxford college or whether it extends over all Oxford colleges?

[Hazel Blears]

The case that my constituent has brought to my attention relates to his application to St Hugh’s college, but this afternoon I talked generally to the pro-vice-chancellor for education, who talked to me about the whole of the Oxford system, so as far as I am aware the problem applies across the piece.

The pro-vice-chancellor also explained to me that poorer students who could not raise the funds could go off to work for a couple of years—she gave me an example—and save up the money for their courses. So, those with £21,000 up front can come straight away and get on their postgraduate courses—and possibly have access to better jobs and the wage premium that is available—but those who do not have £21,000 have to go away to work and save up. That seems to be unfair and discriminatory on the grounds of income.

The pro-vice-chancellor also told me that Oxford had raised £30 million in order to be able to support graduate students. I am absolutely delighted about that, but again, so far none of that money has been directed towards students from poorer backgrounds, which is absolutely essential. She obviously wants a national system of postgraduate student loans, but I have said clearly that, in the absence of a national system, it is not good enough for universities simply to wait for that to happen. If the university has £30 million, it is vital that some of it should be targeted towards people in circumstances such as those faced by my constituent Mr Shannon. I am therefore pleased that the pro-vice-chancellor has said that the university will look at what it can do with the significant sums that it has been able to raise.

I do not want for one moment to put off people from poorer backgrounds from applying to our best universities. I am a trustee of the Social Mobility Foundation, which does excellent work on encouraging young people to aim high—indeed, to aim for the very best. I want our young people to be at the best institutions. I know that work has been done over the last few years to try to widen access to undergraduate degrees, but postgraduate qualifications are becoming increasingly expected if people are to access to some of our professions. That is why I am so exercised about this situation.

That brings me to the wider impact on social mobility. Alan Milburn, who has been appointed as the independent reviewer of social mobility, produced a report in October last year, in which he said:

“Increasingly, some jobs require a postgraduate qualification, and it is one of the routes into numerous professions such as journalism, accountancy and academia. The lifetime earnings of an individual who has completed a master’s degree are 9% higher than someone who has a bachelor’s degree.”

That provides clear evidence of the wage premium. He continued:

“The current system is not working. While foreign students are flocking to join our graduate courses, our own students are not joining them in sufficient numbers. In particular, those without independent means struggle to pay their course fees and to cover their living expenses while studying. That is bad both for national income and for social mobility, as those who are unable to pay are excluded…Lack of access to postgraduate study is in danger of becoming a social mobility time bomb.”

He recommends that we need better data. I think everyone is agreed on that; we do not have sufficient data on the background and socio-economic position of postgraduate students. He also recommends very clearly that

“the Government should consider introducing a loan system for funding postgraduate students. To start this process, the Government should commission an independent report, building on the principles of the Browne Review, to come up with proposals”

for such a loan system.

Alan Milburn is not the only one to raise these issues, as we recently had an independent inquiry by the Higher Education Commission. It looked closely at the issue and took evidence from many witnesses. It says:

“We need to improve access…Postgraduate education is ‘the new frontier of widening participation’—with prospective students currently barred from study if they cannot afford fees or access sufficient credit. There are a number of fields and professions where postgraduate qualifications are becoming a de facto requirement for employment.”

It also backed the idea of student loans, and asked for a taskforce to report by December this year. This debate is becoming much more widespread than ever before. There are a number of people getting first degrees, but in order to distinguish themselves, it is almost a requirement nowadays to have a postgraduate qualification.

I have some specific questions for the Minister. First, I ask him to take a view, and I have no idea whether he will on this subject, and say whether he agrees that the financial guarantee relating to living costs—not to tuition costs, because those have to be paid—and in particular the bar imposed by the university on taking earnings from part-time work into account is unfair and discriminates against those without access to significant funds. If he does agree, what action can he take to try to challenge this requirement and secure its removal?

Secondly, will he make some inquiries to the Charity Commission? I have written to it to ask whether such a requirement is in breach of the public benefit requirements contained in the Charities Act 2011. More generally, will he explain why there is no student loan scheme in place for postgraduate study, and does he accept that postgraduate qualifications are now sought by employers in many professions, that they provide a gateway to better-paid jobs and are therefore a crucial element in promoting social mobility? As I say, the Higher Education Commission has recommended this taskforce, so I hope the Minister is able to tell me that he accepts the recommendation, that he will get on with the taskforce and will come up with a scheme to enable people to have access.

Damien Shannon walked into my constituency surgery just 10 days ago. Until that moment, I had no idea that Oxford university, and possibly others, was operating a system of selection of postgraduate students based not on academic merit alone, but on wealth and having immediate access to cash funds for rent, food, dining in college, clothes and for socialising. By its own admission, almost half the students who have the academic ability to pursue their studies are unable to take up their places because they simply do not have the money required. In my view, that is simply wrong. Not only does it crush the hopes and ambitions of these students who cannot afford to study at some of our best universities, it deprives our country and our economy of some of the brightest and best minds we could have. It is unfair and short-sighted.

There is much talk about widening participation, of fair access, of encouraging social mobility and of using the talents of everyone, but I am afraid that as long as rules like this apply, postgraduate education will continue to be the preserve of those who have money behind them. Those who do not will be unable to contribute to the knowledge and prosperity of our country. We need a proper system of financial support and loans for postgraduate education; otherwise, those with talent and ability will remain excluded from our system and will not be able to achieve their potential and to succeed.

I urge the Minister to have the courage to tackle this unfairness head on, and to demonstrate his personal commitment to fairness and social mobility. I have high expectations of him, as I have of many young people in my constituency. I know that those young people have skills and talent. Damien is an extremely talented young man, but at present he is not able to pursue the course that he wants to pursue and make the contribution that I know he is capable of making. I hope that the Minister will have some encouraging and optimistic words not just for Damien, but for the hundreds, indeed thousands, of students who are in a similar position throughout the country.

House of Lords Reform Bill

Debate between Julian Lewis and Hazel Blears

Monday 9th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Hazel Blears]

I can tell the hon. Gentleman that when I said that I was in two minds about the Bill, I meant that while one part of me says that it is a distraction, the other part says that it is one of the most cynical deceptions to be inflicted on the people of this country, for deeply partisan reasons.

The people who are promoting this Bill, supposedly in the name of democracy, are using the language of high moral purpose, but, as the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) said, the Bill is really motivated by partisan low politics designed for party advantage. I have therefore decided to vote against the programme motion, in order to give the Bill as much scrutiny as possible. I am sick and tired of the people promoting this Bill painting those of us who have genuine objections to it as reactionary—diehards, dinosaurs, opposed to reform. I say to them that nothing could be further from the truth. I am utterly opposed to privilege. The last time we voted on these issues I voted to abolish the House of Lords. If I had that option now, I would vote for it again. I believe we could have a unicameral system with much more pre-legislative scrutiny and experts involved. The primacy of this elected House of Commons to our constituents is the top priority for me.

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

The Liberal Democrats currently hold the balance of power in this Chamber, and it has been suggested that if the programme motion is not passed tomorrow and if the Bill does not pass, Liberal Democrat Members will vote against the boundary changes. [Interruption.] I am glad to hear them saying that that is the case. Does the right hon. Lady agree that that illustrates what they would do if they were to hold the balance of power in the upper House? They would hold Parliament to ransom over every issue that suited them.

[Hazel Blears]

As ever, the hon. Gentleman makes a point that goes to the heart of this debate. I have included comments in my speech about squalid partisan back-room deals.

I have the utmost respect for my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson), and he made an excellent speech today. If he were still present in the Chamber, however, I would ask him this question: he is a proponent of democracy, but what is democratic about a 15-year term? The Chartists have a very proud history in my constituency of Salford, with 250,000 people demonstrating for universal suffrage. They wanted annual Parliaments. They have never achieved that, but 15-year terms are the antithesis of anything that could be called democratic.

What is democratic about regional party lists, too? There has been a lot of talk today about patronage, which is how people find their way into the House of Lords at present. Patronage under regional party lists would be many times worse than that. We should consider the situation in other countries. Some 90% of the Members of Parliament in Spain live within 50 miles of Madrid because they know their position is dependent on the patronage of a central party. Our Parliament is already too London-centric, but that would be exacerbated.

Intelligence and Security Committee

Debate between Julian Lewis and Hazel Blears

Monday 21st November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Hazel Blears]

The hon. Gentleman is extremely knowledgeable in this field because of his experience before entering Parliament, but does he share my concerns about the work of the Home Office’s research, information and communications unit, which the Committee has decided to consider much more closely? It is essential work but at the moment we have little information about what it is doing and its effectiveness.

[Dr Lewis]

I am delighted that the right hon. Lady makes that point. It is too early to have concerns about the work of the unit because we have not been able to examine it yet. The work that such a unit is designed to do is, as she said, of the utmost importance, and if it carries it out successfully the public at large might not know how successful it has been in supporting themes and counter-narrative ideologies in the media and internet to the benefit of people in our society who might otherwise become disaffected. However, unless one can examine the organisation’s work—within what is commonly called the ring of secrecy—one cannot be sure whether sufficient work is being done or about its quality.

On page 44, paragraph 156 of our report, the Committee stated:

“The difficulty of measuring the success of PREVENT work is most notable in the work of the Research, Information and Communications Unit…which was established in 2007 with the primary aim of ensuring consistency, across government, on Counter-Terrorism and counter-extremism messages and developing a coherent narrative to challenge extremist ideology. RICU is jointly funded by the Home Office and the Foreign Office. It currently has 22 full-time staff and its budget in 2010/11 was £4.25m (of which £0.3m was spent on research and £2.7m was spent on communication campaigns).”

That does not sound like an effort on the scale needed if we are seriously to counter the radicalising message of the enemies of our way of life.

Democratic societies are inherently resistant to Governments propagandising against organisations involving their own citizens, in an attempt to get a message across to their own people; but sometimes we have to understand that there are forms of warfare besides open warfare—for example, the propaganda and counter-propaganda warfare that went on during the long confrontation with Soviet communism. During that period, in 1948, a Labour Government set up the Foreign Office’s information research department, which remained in existence until 1977 under Governments of both complexions, until unfortunately another Labour Government decided to do away with it. That organisation operated on a considerable scale, and its particular strength was that it made available to opinion-formers the detailed facts that enabled strong cases for what was good about British society to be made on a non-partisan, non-party political basis. I believe—I think that the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears) shares my belief—that an effort on a similar scale might be necessary in the future.

On the Committee’s operations, I can reassure the Home Secretary: she said that we need to consider the resource implications of the Committee expanding its work to consider operational matters; but I am not sure that there are many resource implications, because as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington said, we are asking not to change what we do but simply to formalise what we already do. We are not asking to look over the shoulder of the intelligence and security services at what they are doing while they are doing it—in an operational sense—although they sometimes choose to give us glimpses of that, which obviously we treat with appropriate discretion. Instead, we wish to be assured that when something becomes contentious, the ISC can review the matter and decide whether proper procedures were followed, whether mistakes were made or whether we can help the security and intelligence services by giving them a clean bill of health.

I shall take an example at random. It is known that over the years the approach of Governments towards Libya changed completely. Under the Labour Government, there was a policy—I am sure that its proponents would argue that it was a legitimate line to pursue—of trying to bring Libya back into the fold. For example, when Libya declared its intention to abandon its chemical weapons stocks—we now know that it still had some, although we do not know whether that was because it had not finished getting rid of them or because it was concealing them and cheating on its promises—it was regarded as quite a coup, quite a triumph for the security and intelligence services

It now appears, however, that along the way the degree of co-operation between some of our agencies and some Libyan agencies might have crossed the line. If it did, for example in the rendition of two people, as has been reported, we will need a means of finding out why that line was crossed, which agencies crossed it, who, if anybody, was responsible—was it the Government, was it the agencies?—and whether there are lessons to be learned that we can help to articulate. If the Committee is not given the power to review such operations, many people will rightly ask, “What’s the use of having a Committee of parliamentarians, whose job is supposedly to supervise the security and intelligence services, if when something highly controversial appears to have happened, it cannot, does not or will not look into it?”

I want to refer to one or two of the slightly more traditional threats. It was interesting to hear that the agencies still think that we should not, in our rightful concern about international terrorism, forget that the country remains an intelligence target for countries such as Russia and China. One of the things that worry me the more I focus on it is the possibility that some countries could steal our technology, use it to undercut our competitiveness and then buy their way into our infrastructure in this country. This would be of great strategic value to them in future. I will say no more about that for the moment, but I hope that others might feel it appropriate to do so later in the debate.

Finally, I warmly welcome the proposal in the justice Green Paper to prevent the control order principle being breached. Irrespective of what piece of intelligence was disclosed in court, we must never forget that if we undermine the trust between ourselves and our principal intelligence allies on that issue, we undermine it on every issue. However, it also behoves us to remind our intelligence partners that when they engage in methods and techniques such as Guantanamo Bay and water-boarding, they open up not only themselves but their allies to challenges in court that make such problems much more salient, in respect of the evidence that a judge might feel had to be disclosed. It is a question of exercising two-way restraint: we do not wish to breach the confidence of our allies, but our allies must not breach the standards to which our intelligence services rightly apply themselves.

Quilliam Foundation

Debate between Julian Lewis and Hazel Blears

Tuesday 15th March 2011 Westminster Hall

[Hazel Blears]

This did not become a significant issue until we were facing the current financial circumstances which pertain across Government. I certainly was not aware of a major drive, which was unsuccessful, to press Quilliam to find funds in other sectors. Clearly, the situation now is that economies need to be made. Quilliam has been put into that pot, but I want to explore with the Minister what other organisations are funded and what cuts have been made—I shall come shortly to the Research Information and Communications Unit. We need a better, broader picture of the total resources available, and what decisions have been made about funding priorities. In a few weeks, we are expecting the Prevent review, which will give us more insight into what the balance of organisations ought to be. We absolutely need a balance.

This is not a partisan issue by any measure—it transcends party politics. It relates to the security and safety of our country, and nothing can be more important than that. My right hon. and hon. Friends and I are pursuing the matter to try to get a reasonable settlement.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East said, I was the Minister with responsibility for counter-terrorism at the time of the 7 July 2005 bombings. Even now, I can feel the sense of devastation and shock that there was across the nation when that happened. People were asking who committed the bombings, why they would want to do that to innocent men and women and their families, and what led them to be prepared to take their own life to fulfil what they presumably believed to be their mission and destiny. I do not think that any of us really understood—we still do not—the many and varied factors that lead people down such a path, that lead them even to contemplate taking such steps.

We are better informed than we were then. Several organisations that have been active in this field have helped the Government and policy makers to come to a better analysis of the factors that lead people to extremism, but we do not have all the answers. I entirely accept that, although some of the measures in the Prevent programme were successful, some were less successful, but what we were doing in that area was innovative and, in many ways, experimental.

I have spoken to people in the United States, France, Germany and countries across western Europe who say that this country has been at the forefront of trying to drill down to determine what the factors of extremism are, and how to build resilience among young people so that they can resist such messages. My sense is that those other countries are just beginning to take the first steps. Indeed, that was reaffirmed for my right hon. Friend and me when we went to the United States just last week. Many of the Congressmen and women and Senators acknowledged that they are very much at the beginning of thinking about a counter-radicalisation strategy, whereas this country is well ahead. This country’s position has been aided enormously by the different groups that we have funded to help us. They have had programmes and have been able to develop an evidence base about the best way to counter extremism, and the Quilliam Foundation has been at the heart of that process for the past three years at least.

As everyone knows, Quilliam was formed by Ed Husain and Maajid Nawaz, both of whom had been in the grip of extremists. They had been right at the heart of Hizb ut-Tahrir and knew what it felt like to travel down that path. Therefore, their voices and the voices of others at Quilliam who have been able to set out the emotional process that happens to people on that journey have been enormously powerful and valuable in working out strategies to counter extremism. They were certainly instrumental, when I was the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, in my decision to set up the Young Muslims Advisory Group and the Muslim Women’s Advisory Group.

It was the first time in this country that we had people at national level who were able to advise Ministers about what it felt like to be a young person in the community with strong feelings about foreign policy and contentious issues, and with the many pressures that face them at that time of their life. What could the Government do to try to help them to grow up with a sense of this country’s values but also, of course, their important personal identity and heritage? The Muslim Women’s Advisory Group was a fabulous opportunity to find out about women’s lives, and how women could influence the young men in their families to withstand the extremist narrative. We can celebrate the huge amount that we achieved, but, obviously, we have much more to do.

Going around the country after 7/7 with my right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East was probably one of the most testing experiences I personally have ever undergone. The sense of anger, bewilderment and shock in communities was palpable, but the message that came across to me time and again was that the overwhelming majority of people in the Muslim community totally rejected the violence that had taken place, and believed that killing innocent people was never justifiable. Unfortunately, the extremism that leads people to contemplate and sometimes adopt violence is with us now—there is no getting away from that—and is likely to be with us for many years to come. Life has changed, and we ought to recognise that the circumstances are very different. That is why it is so important that we have the capacity to tackle that ideology and the way in which people seek to groom others to take the path of violence.

I want to mention a report which I think is relevant to this debate. “Fear and HOPE”, which was published last week by the Searchlight Educational Trust, is about the new politics of identity. Many people who are susceptible to extremist narratives are struggling with their sense of identity: who am I, where do I fit in, where do I belong, what is my value set?

The report, which was based on 5,000 interviews of people across the country who were asked more than 90 questions, provides some fascinating results and evidence. What gives me optimism and hope is that there is widespread rejection of political violence. It is interesting that the vast majority of people who were questioned considered white anti-Muslim extremists to be as bad as Islamist extremists. That tells me that a core part of our communities and population are basically saying, “A plague on both your houses. We want no part of extremism, whether far-right extremism, Islamist extremism or anti-Semitism—we reject all that.”

It gives me great hope for the future that if we can build, sustain and make that heart of our community strong, it will empower and give confidence to young people to say, “I reject the extremist narrative. I reject such ideologies and share the broad values of this country.” That prize is so precious and valuable that the investment of £150,000 to enable Quilliam to move to other sources of funding over the next few months is a small price to pay, considering the scale of the challenge that we face. I absolutely agree with the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington that we need a broad range of organisations to help with the agenda at every part of the spectrum. It is without doubt that Quilliam has been prepared to be at one end of that spectrum, to speak out, not to be intimidated, and to state the case for pluralism, inclusion and British values of democracy, tolerance, free speech, and particularly the rights of women. It has been extremely effective in doing that.

Obviously, we must support other organisations, and I will come to that, but it is only three years since Quilliam was established, and to have gained its reputation in the world within that period marks it out as a special organisation that has helped us to build that evidence base. Its report on radicalisation on campuses was extremely good and contained a series of recommendations. We know that there is a problem on some of our university campuses, and the report’s practical recommendations could help us significantly. It produced a report on the use of the internet to promote Jihad. We are now seeing preachers such as al-Maliki on the internet urging people to take matters into their own hands without having a group around them, and to carry out individual acts of terrorism. That report on the use of the internet was a good piece of work. The role of television in influencing young minds is crucial.

Quilliam has produced excellent reports, and done project work—for example, its work in Pakistan, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East mentioned, which was funded by the Foreign Office, with road shows prepared in challenging and sometimes intimidating circumstances to make the case fearlessly. It has a tremendous record. It is seeking other sources of funding. It recognises that the current situation cannot continue ad infinitum, but it must be given the chance to do that work.

I have some questions for the Minister, and if he cannot answer them during the debate, I would appreciate it if he got back to me later. The Research Information and Communications Unit was established in the Office of Security and Counter-terrorism in the Home Office three or four years ago. My recollection is that that was a fairly well resourced unit. It received contributions from the Department for Communities and Local Government, the Home Office, and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and it brought together a series of people with the skills to develop a counter-narrative, to publish documents, and to do research and much of the work that Quilliam has been doing.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

I remember a conversation I had with a senior Minister about the setting-up of RICU. My understanding is that there was an analogy between it and the operation set up at the onset of the cold war to try to counter communist subversion and propaganda. Either such organisations do the work themselves, or they do the research and support other non-governmental organisations that will go on to the front line and fight the ideological battle. I do not think I have seen anything to suggest that RICU is fighting that battle under its own banner on the front line. If it is not doing that itself, why is it not perpetually committed to the support of other organisations such as Quilliam which are prepared to go into the front line?

[Hazel Blears]

The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point, to which I hope the Minister will respond. The comparison between the funding of RICU and the funding that we are asking for in this debate would be illuminating. It is clear that there is a straightforward and simple al-Qaeda narrative, which is that the west is at war with Islam with a feeling of victimhood and grievance. That must be countered, and it is my understanding that that was a core part of RICU’s responsibilities. I would be grateful if the Minister let us know what its resources are, what the product is, what it has been working on and, indeed, whether it can fund other organisations.