Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill

Julie Marson Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 21st July 2020 Commons Chamber

If anyone—perhaps understandably—rolls their eyes to heaven at the thought of caring about the human rights of someone who has committed a serious terrorist offence, I simply refer them to what I said earlier. It is in all our interests to try to get children and young people who commit serious terrorist offences rehabilitated and deradicalised. Even those who do not care about such people’s human rights should remember that deradicalizing young people will protect our constituents.

[Julie Marson (Hertford and Stortford) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry), and it was a pleasure to serve alongside her on the Bill Committee for this important piece of legislation. I guess it is something of a truism that the first duty of a Government is to protect their citizens, but that is precisely what this Bill seeks to do. As luck would have it, the seventh sitting of the Bill Committee took place on 7/7. I felt that morning, on that inauspicious, infamous date, that it was critical to put the debate we were having on the Bill in some kind of context, so I told the story of my friend Louise. I would like to tell her story again in this debate and in this Chamber.

On that day 15 years ago, Louise was on a train from Liverpool Street to Aldgate. The night before she had been in Trafalgar Square, celebrating the fact that London had just won its bid to host the 2012 Olympics. It was a very busy commuter train, so she was standing when the train was rocked by an explosion in the next carriage. Louise’s carriage filled with smoke and the lights went out. The train screeched to an appalling halt. She says she could feel her heart beating so hard that she could virtually hear it and thought it was going to jump out of her body, but she fought to keep calm amid the screams, panic and chaos around her.

Some people managed to control their panic and began trying to help each other. They called up and down the train for doctors, nurses and anyone who could help. Some people had fallen and some had hit their heads—it was just chaos. Some people were trying to get out of the windows between the carriages or trying to prise the doors apart, but none of that would work. Someone cried out that there was a body on the track. They waited in the dark. Some emergency lights were flickering on and off, but it was mainly dark for over an hour until Louise remembers seeing the very top of a policeman’s helmet outside the train in the tunnel. That was a very reassuring sight. She felt from that moment that everything was going to be all right and that she, at least, was going to get out.

Eventually, those who were able to move out of the way made way for the injured to be carried out or to walk past them. They were bloodied, black and bewildered. Many of them were bandaged with commuters’ possessions, such as belts, scarves and ties. After what seemed like forever, Louise was able to get off the train, but she had to walk past the bombed carriage. She said it looked like it had been ripped apart like a can of Coke. She passed two bodies on the track, covered up roughly by a fluorescent transport worker’s jacket. She saw a man who was badly injured being tended to by paramedics. He was barely clothed; the bomb had ripped the clothes from him. He was propped up against the tunnel wall and his entire body was blackened by the bomb blast.

Louise said it was very surreal to come from that black hellish atmosphere into the light and quite overwhelming. There were helicopters above. There were blue lights and sirens. There was a triage unit on the pavement where people were being treated. It is quite surreal, in a way, that she was just told to give her details to the police and then she just walked off on her own into London to try to find her husband and a cup of tea. She had no idea that she was covered, and her faced was absolutely covered, in soot. The fear, the panic and the shock came later. The overriding feeling she was left with was, why did she get into that particular carriage? Why did she not get into the next one? Why did she survive when so many did not? She was determined not to change her way of life, so she was soon back on the Tube and back at work. I think that that personifies an attitude that says, “This is not going to change our life. We will carry on the way we were before. Terrorism will not stop us.”

As we deliberated the Bill on that day 15 years afterwards, Louise was at Aldgate station placing flowers as she does every year. Many of her fellow passengers have never been back on a Tube. Some are still suffering from anxiety and depression. Some suffered life-changing injuries and some will never see the light of day again. This House and many Members have their own personal experiences of the savagery of terrorism, and I know we all want to do all we can to prevent future attacks. How can we do that? Today, in a very direct way, we can do a lot. We can do just what the Bill seeks to do: strengthen sentencing, limit early release, give the security services the best tools available to manage, and disrupt suspected and convicted perpetrators.

We are hearing, and I am sure we will hear a lot more, about the rights, youth, vulnerability and potential for rehabilitation of terrorist suspects and offenders. Those valid issues, and the issues addressed in many of the new clauses and amendments, are amply dealt with in the Bill. There is no doubt in my mind that the best way that we can honour the victims, like Louise and many others, is to pass the Bill, intact, today.

--- Later in debate ---

According to the evidence heard by the Bill Committee, the current standard of proof does not seem to have been in any way an impediment to the security services. We have had no clear evidence that the current standard of proof is preventing the security services from seeking or obtaining a TPIM when they consider it necessary and appropriate to do so. My position is that until we have that sort of cogent business case, the Government have not made the case for reducing the standard of proof. I do not think we will get it today, but I suspect that it will be looked for in the other place, and it would be interesting to hear from the Minister later whether he will propose any sort of business case when the Bill goes to the other place.

[Julie Marson]

I am interested, as someone from a business background, to hear the hon. and learned Lady refer to business cases. We always have facts and figures that we can look back on historically. Is not the challenge for Government always to anticipate risk that has not happened? We are forever looking behind us, and the consequences are so great when those risks are missed, but this is actually the perfect opportunity for a Government to look forward and anticipate those risks. The risks might involve someone who has been active in Syria, for example, where we do not have that proof, where someone can perhaps take an opportunity for two years to bide their time, knowing that at the end of that period, they might be subject to a higher burden of proof, or just go off the radar.

[Joanna Cherry]

I hear what the hon. Lady says, but that is what the current TPIM regime is designed to do—to anticipate risk and to keep a close eye on people who have not committed an offence yet in a way that could mean that they are prosecuted, but who may be a risk to our safety. She gives, for example, the problem of people returning from Syria. That is clearly a significant problem, but it has existed for a number of years, and the Committee did not hear any evidence that the security services are unable to deal with the problem of people returning from Syria because of the current standard of proof. I use the words “business case” loosely; an “operational case” might be a better phrase. We need an operational case based on examples to justify why this change is needed.

All of us here care about having a TPIM regime in place that does the job. There is no suggestion that the current one is not doing the job and no clear operational case for it to be changed. We would be failing in our duty as Opposition parliamentarians if we did not test this in the way that we are, and I will leave it at that for now.