Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Thursday 19th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Security and Immigration (James Brokenshire)]

I beg to move,

That the draft Terrorism Act 2000 (Proscribed Organisations) (Amendment) (No. 2) Order 2014, which was laid before this House on 16 June, be approved.

Proscription is an important part of the Government’s strategy to tackle terrorist activities. The five groups named in the order all have links to the conflict in Syria. They are: the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham; Turkiye Halk Kurtulus Partisi-Cephesi; Kateeba al-Kawthar, known as KAK; Abdallah Azzam Brigades, known as AAB, including the Ziyad al-Jarrah Battalions; and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command. We propose adding them to the list of international terrorist organisations by amending schedule 2 to the Terrorist Act 2000. This is the 15th proscription order under that Act.

By way of background, the House will be aware that Syria is the No. 1 destination for jihadists from anywhere in the world. Proscription sends a strong message that terrorist activity is not tolerated wherever it happens. The reality is that the conflict in Syria has seen a proliferation of terrorist groups, with multiple aims and ideologies and little regard for international borders. For example, in the past week we have seen significantly increased violent activity in Iraq by ISIL. Today the UK is proscribing terrorist organisations that support the Assad regime, that are fighting against it, and that have ambitions beyond Syria and have taken advantage of the collapse of security and the rule of law.

Terrorism from, or connected to, Syria will pose a threat to the UK for the foreseeable future. Involvement in the conflict in Syria and its environs can provide individuals with combat experience, access to training, a network of foreign extremist contacts and a reputation that can increase substantially the threat that those individuals pose on return to the UK. The threat from returning foreign fighters was clearly demonstrated by the recent case of Mehdi Nemmouche. He is believed to have spent at least a year in Syria, during which he developed connections with ISIL before returning to Europe. He is the prime suspect in a shooting on 24 May at the Jewish museum in Brussels in which four people died.

Although the Government recognise that most travel to Syria is well intentioned and for humanitarian reasons, and while we are not trying to criminalise genuine humanitarian efforts, we advise against all travel to Syria. Anyone who travels, for whatever reason, is putting themselves and others in considerable danger. Both the regime and extremist groups have attacked humanitarian aid workers. The best way to help Syrians is not to travel, but to donate or volunteer with UK-registered charities that have ongoing relief operations.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

I am glad to see the Minister back on familiar territory, after dealing with passports yesterday. This morning, information has come out of Iraq indicating that up to 400 British citizens might be fighting there. He gave evidence to the Home Affairs Committee as part of its inquiry into counter-terrorism. Iraq was not mentioned, either in his evidence or in that of others. Can he confirm that figure? Are those people who originally started in Syria and have moved into Iraq, or are they a new batch of people?

[James Brokenshire]

The right hon. Gentleman will recollect the evidence that I gave his Select Committee about foreign fighters. It is often difficult to give estimates about the numbers of individuals; our current estimate is that more than 400 subjects of interest have travelled to Syria to become involved in the conflict there in some way. Clearly, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL, is using the areas of land it controls in Syria and now Iraq as one theatre of conflict. I cannot state the numbers or give the other information that the right hon. Gentleman seeks, but clearly there is a concern that those who travel to Syria may then travel across the Levant into Iraq. We are keeping a close eye on that.

We are committed to finding a political settlement to the conflict in Syria that will deliver a sustainable and inclusive transition process and allow the country to rebuild, communities to heal and extremism to be rejected. We will also continue to back the moderate Syrian opposition, who are a bulwark against the terrorism of the extremists and the tyranny of the Assad regime. The Government are determined to do all they can to minimise the threat from terrorism from Syria, and elsewhere, to the UK and our interests abroad.

Those who travel to engage in terrorism face prosecution on their return. We are investing resources into understanding individuals’ motivation for travel and how they are being recruited and we are using that to inform public messaging and community events, to deter individuals from travelling to Syria in the first place. Our operational partners are disrupting individuals who are intent on fighting in Syria, using the range of tools available.

For example, following his return from Syria, Mashudur Choudhury was successfully prosecuted for engaging in conduct in preparation for terrorist acts. We are working intensively with international partners to improve border security in the region. It is right that we should proscribe terrorist groups linked to the conflict in Syria that pose a bar to a political settlement there as well as an increasing threat to the UK. We have already proscribed four groups that are operating in Syria: the al-Musra front, which is part of al-Qaeda; Hezbollah’s military wing; the Kurdistan Workers Party, the PKK; and Ansar al-Islam, also known as Ansar al-Sunna.

Proscribing the groups that we are discussing today will send a strong signal to terrorists operating on both sides of the conflict in Syria and those who may be thinking of joining them. Under section 3 of the Terrorism Act 2000, the Home Secretary has the power to proscribe an organisation if she believes that it is currently concerned in terrorism. Under the 2000 Act, an organisation is concerned in terrorism if it commits or participates in acts of terrorism, prepares for terrorism, promotes or encourages terrorism—including the unlawful glorification of terrorism—or is otherwise concerned in terrorism. If the test is met, the Home Secretary may exercise her discretion to proscribe the organisation.

The Home Secretary takes into account a number of factors in considering whether to exercise that discretion. The effect of proscription is that a listed organisation is outlawed and unable to operate in the UK. It is a criminal offence for a person to belong to, support or arrange a meeting in support of a proscribed organisation or to wear clothing or carry articles in public that arouse reasonable suspicion that they are a member or supporter of a proscribed terrorist organisation.

Proscription can support other disruptive activity, including the use of immigration powers such as exclusion, prosecution for other offences, messaging and EU asset freezes. Given its wide impact, the Home Secretary exercises her power to proscribe only after thoroughly reviewing the available relevant information and evidence on the organisation. That includes open-source material, intelligence material and advice that reflects consultation across Government, including with the intelligence and law enforcement agencies. The cross-Whitehall proscription review group supports the Home Secretary in her decision-making process and her decision to proscribe is taken only after great care and consideration of the particular case. It must be approved by both Houses.

Having carefully considered all the evidence, the Home Secretary believes that ISIL; Turkiye Halk Kurtulus Partisi-Cephesi, or THKP-C; Kateeba al-Kawthar, or KAK; Abdallah Azzam Brigades, or AAB; and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, or PFLP-GC, are all currently concerned in terrorism. Although I am unable to comment on specific intelligence, I will go on to provide a summary of each group’s activities in turn.

[Keith Vaz]

The Minister always puts the case very eloquently in respect of these proscription orders, which involve very serious matters. In all the time I have been in this House, the Opposition have never opposed the Government in this regard. Will he tell the House how many people have been successfully prosecuted once those organisations have been proscribed? We have a tendency, rightly, to accept everything the Government say on these orders, but it would be nice to know that at the end of the process somebody has actually gone to jail as a result of them.

[James Brokenshire]

Much proscription has the effect of seeking to prevent people from becoming involved in terrorism and the disruptive effects of that. A range of potential sanctions are available under the Terrorism Act, as well as under proscription. I can tell the right hon. Gentleman that 55 international and 14 Northern Ireland-related terrorist organisations are currently proscribed and that, between 2001 and the end of March 2013, 32 people in Great Britain were charged with proscription offences as a primary offence and 16 were convicted. This is an important power that supports our broader activities in preventing terrorist activity and ensuring that prosecutions are maintained.

--- Later in debate ---

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for his speech and his usual courtesy.

National security is the foremost responsibility of any Government and, I am pleased to say, is always taken seriously by the House. Proscription is a vital part of our national security powers. Proscription orders enable us to tackle and disrupt terror groups that are co-operating around the world. That makes proscription a very serious matter. Proscription makes it illegal to belong to or support in any way a listed organisation. Any proscription order should therefore be taken very seriously.

For that reason, successive Governments have attempted to ensure that there is cross-party parliamentary support for proscription orders. As a matter of courtesy, the shadow Home Secretary and the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee are written to as soon as an order is laid in Parliament. However, on this occasion, the shadow Home Secretary and the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee were not the first people to be briefed.

It appears that journalists were briefed before the order was even laid in Parliament. The political editor of The Sun newspaper, Tom Newton Dunn, was tweeting about the content of the order two hours before it appeared in the Vote Office and long before the shadow Home Secretary was written to. I raised that issue in the House on Monday. I am grateful that the Minister looked into it and wrote to me on 17 June. I am happy to accept his assurance that he did not authorise the disclosure, and I hope that it will not happen again. However, that raises the question of who did authorise it.

Two weeks ago, the Home Secretary lost her most senior political adviser after an investigation into her conduct by the Cabinet Secretary. It now appears that somebody else in the Home Secretary’s Department is disclosing national security information to The Sun. I hope that the Minister will update the House on what steps have been taken to identify who was behind the disclosure, and how the Home Secretary is getting a grip on what is happening in her Department.

[Keith Vaz]

The worst part of this issue is that the organisations themselves had notice of the orders before the House. That is a serious matter when we are dealing with issues of national security.

--- Later in debate ---

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

These are very serious matters. As the Home Affairs Committee said in our report on counter-terrorism, we face our gravest threat in the past 13 years, and the Government are right to bring a number of orders before the House, proscribing organisations that they feel undermine the security of this country.

In all my years in this House, when such orders have come before the House the Opposition have never opposed what the Government have suggested. When Ministers make statements about intelligence and the important reasons behind their decisions, we believe them and take what they say at face value. That is even more the case when we have a Minister who has proved himself over the past few years to be a safe pair of hands as far as security is concerned. It must make a welcome break for him, having had to deal with the Passport Office on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, to come before the House and in the space of half an hour ban five organisations from Iraq to Lebanon and into Palestine. I wish he did not have to do that and could do other things, because when he comes before the House and makes such remarks, we worry that some of those organisations that are present in our country are involving themselves in activities that put the security of our people at risk.

The roll-call of terrorist organisations is increasing, from al-Qaeda to Hezbollah, from Tehrik-i-Taliban in Pakistan to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and Boko Haram, and now five organisations which, to be frank, neither I nor other members of the Home Affairs Committee really knew about. In our long inquiry into counter-terrorism, no Minister or witness came forward and said that those are bad organisations whose members are up to no good and that they need to be banned, and I think we must look back and ask why. If there are concerns about such organisations, it is not a confidential matter to share them with the Committee or to tell the House, and that would make Members of the House more aware of what is happening.

As I have said, we will take at face value what the Minister has said about these organisations, and accept the need to proscribe them. My concern is whether that will be enough to deal with the large number of British citizens—some of whom, I am sure, are connected to those organisations—who have managed to end up in places such as Iraq, Syria, and indeed Yemen, a fragile country close to my heart. I was born in Yemen, so whenever I get the opportunity to speak on these matters, I always mention the country of my birth. That fragile state is under constant attack from al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. If we think that banning organisations operating in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and other areas is enough, as we did with regard to Tunisia on the previous occasion when we discussed these matters in the House, I have to say that the situation in Yemen is not helped by what we do because these organisations do not seem to be operating there. That is why we need to be vigilant as to what we do in this House and keep a constant eye on what is going on.

My concern is the number of people who go from this country to Iraq and Syria as members of ISIS or the other organisations mentioned by the Minister. Today, senior Iraqi officers made an appeal on Sky television to Ministers saying, “Please come and help us to deal not just with the security situation in Iraq and those who seek to undermine the Iraqi state, but with British citizens.” Some could be our constituents—we do not know. They choose to travel from the safety of the United Kingdom to Syria or Iraq, often through Turkey, and fight and then return.

One of the issues with proscription orders, which are clinical and immediate, is what we do when people come back. I know the Prime Minister is concerned about this because he mentioned it at Question Time yesterday. I urge the Minister to look carefully at the counter-terrorism report and I urge him to respond before the deadline set by Parliament. Some of the issues we have raised are so serious that they need immediate action; they cannot wait for the usual parliamentary timetable. Select Committees make recommendations and the Government respond in 60 to 90 days. The record of the Home Office in responding to Home Affairs Committee reports is not brilliant, I am afraid. The last time I spoke to the Minister about a report in his portfolio—it probably is not in it any more—it related to firearms. I think it took the Home Office a year to respond. This issue is immediate. It is now. It is British citizens who go abroad and are not prevented from doing so. They carry on with their activities in Iraq or Syria, and then they return and seek to involve themselves in domestic terrorism. The evidence we received is that one in nine of those who return from theatres of conflict come back and involve themselves in domestic terrorism.

We did not hear about it from the Minister today, but it is important that he gets on to world wide web providers—Google and the other internet companies—to ensure that the examples of the activities of all these organisations, which are on YouTube and other parts of the web, are taken off the internet. There is no point in parliamentarians proscribing them if others do not respond with the seriousness that the situation deserves. The Government have been extremely good at working with the internet companies. We know this for ourselves—one of the seminars we held during our inquiry into counter-terrorism was in co-operation with Google. I think Google gets it, but it needs the co-operation of the Home Office.

We are not going to make internet companies change everything they do. This is not China. We are a parliamentary democracy and therefore we will have to persuade, but I think the door is open. I hope that winging its way to internet providers today will be the list of proscribed organisations, with a plea to the internet companies: “Please help us to make sure that the activities of these organisations, which are on YouTube, are removed as soon as possible.”

More needs to be done to prevent supporters of ISIS and all these other organisations from travelling abroad. We now have the power to remove passports. The Government have enshrined in legislation the power to remove passports wherever people are in the world. Following the Select Committee’s visit to Nairobi, where we looked at the aftermath of the terrible tragedy at Westgate, we urged Ministers, if they are going to remove people’s passports, to do so when people are abroad, rather than when they are here. That leaves them stateless—no country will take them—and therefore still in our country.

We need to be much tougher at dealing with these people. If people are abroad and are involved in terrorist activities and in undermining the values of democratic countries, Ministers should remove their passports, so that they do not come back. If they do come back, we should put them straight into the detoxification programmes that the Select Committee has suggested, including the successful Channel programme, so that we can have immediate engagement. Putting little tags on people is helpful if we want to know where they are—that is, when they do not escape from them, jump into taxis and disappear, as two of them have, sadly on the Minister’s watch. I do not blame him personally—I do not expect him to have daily contact with people with tags—but he has ministerial responsibility. However, we need to ensure that we engage with these people to find out why they are involved in such activities.

I hope that, in agreeing to the order, which the House readily will, we do so in good faith. When I was a Government Back Bencher, Ministers used to came before us and say, “These are the facts. We know the intelligence; these are bad people. We ask Members of the House: please ban these organisations,” and we always said yes, so there is a lot of good faith. I want the Minister to ensure that that good faith is not abused and that he comes back with information about what is going on.

Finally, let me say this to the Minister—this is not personal; this is business and it comes from chairing the Select Committee for the last seven years. In all the 27 years that I have been a Member of this House, we have never had a part-time immigration Minister, because the immigration portfolio and the security portfolio have always been full-time jobs. I put on record my praise for the Minister. I mean this: I think he is a first-class security Minister. He is a very safe pair of hands. He is the kind of person who comes to the Dispatch Box and the House believes what he says. I regard him as exceptionally good. I have not said that about many Home Office Ministers in the past, but I mean it about him.

However, the immigration portfolio is a job on its own. I know the reasons why it was put together with security, but when the reshuffle comes, which I am told it will imminently, I hope there will be plenty of volunteers—[Interruption]—such as the hon. Members for Hexham (Guy Opperman) and for Meon Valley (George Hollingbery). There are able people out there who can assist in this regard. Immigration and security are two big jobs. The Minister must be spending every moment of his day doing his job—I cannot think of the number of hours he puts into it—but he knows that if there is one mistake in a job of that kind, the world will fall around him. I hope we will look at that carefully and ensure that those changes are made.

For the purposes of this order, however, we support what the Minister is doing. We trust him and we on the Select Committee will do all we can to keep monitoring the situation. We hope he will treat us with equal respect in giving us the information we deserve.

[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

I will be quite brief. I want to pick up on the Minister’s comment that this list of five organisations has been brought before the House today because they are involved in or related to what is happening in Syria. In an earlier intervention I queried why one of the organisations, namely the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, which has been in existence for 45 years and has been involved in terrorist activities and terrorist training—maybe not every year, but throughout that period—has only now suddenly appeared on the list.

I support the proscription of those on the list, but there appears to have been a wake-up call. Perhaps we were not as strong about these issues in the past, as though it was somehow okay if the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command was engaged in terrorist activities against Israelis and it is only when countries or organisations are directly involved in terrorism against us or are a possible threat to us that we start listing them. We have to get away from that mindset. It is quite clear that there is a global connection. Many of these organisations—certainly the al-Qaeda-linked ones—have a global footprint and a global aspiration.

We also need to be aware that there is an ideological basis to this issue. My right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, referred to the internet. We know that some people are radicalised not through mosques or madrassahs, but through the internet. In that context, we need to drain the swamp as well as hit the crocodiles over the head—I think that phrase has been used by others, but I happen to agree with that. Therefore, we should be involved not just in proscribing organisations, but in trying to stop the recruitment of individuals as members of those organisations.

We know—because there have been cases that have led to people being on trial, detained, prosecuted and convicted, with some extradited—that there is a conveyor belt in this country. A young person who feels strongly about threats to the Muslim ummah might, perhaps misguidedly, be taken under the wing of someone who trains them, recruits them and mentors them, so that they become someone who is prepared to go to Syria or Iraq or to engage in terrorist planning and activity in Europe.

[Keith Vaz]

My hon. Friend speaks with huge authority, not just as a former Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, but as a representative of multicultural Ilford. This is not just about passing an order; it is about making the case, which means engaging with young people at all times among their peer group. We cannot make people change; we have to engage with them to change. He knows that, does he not?

[Mike Gapes]

That is absolutely right. One of the things we also have to do is make it absolutely clear that this country is proud of the British Muslims who live here and contribute to our society. There has been an horrific murder in the last few days. I will not comment on it because I cannot go any further, but there is an important message that we need to send out to young people in our British Muslim community: you are welcome here, you are equal citizens, men and women, and we will not tolerate attacks and abuse.

When Ministers have discussions, it is important that they do not just have discussions with the internet companies. Perhaps they should also have discussions with some of our national newspapers about the tenor and the tone of the language used. If we want to increase the possibility of people being recruited to go off to Syria, we antagonise them, make them feel angry, make them feel like victims and create a narrative that people are easily able to misguidedly put across to them so that they feel they are somehow not part of this society. We have a challenge, not just in this country but elsewhere in Europe. We have to deal with the ideology as well as the practice of this type of extreme, terrorist organisation.

I shall make two other brief points. There is obviously a spill-over from Syria into Iraq. The manifest failure of the Maliki Government to be inclusive, and the exclusion of Sunni Arabs and also Kurds from the institutional power structures under Maliki, who is not just Prime Minister, but Minister of the Interior and Defence Minister, are contributing factors to the growth of the support for the ISIL organisation. I believe that we in the international community—certainly the United Kingdom and, I hope, the United States—will recognise the urgency of the need to give assistance to the Kurdish Regional Government in Iraq and also to the Iraqi authorities, to try and stabilise the situation and then reverse the defeats that they have suffered in the past few days. However, just giving sophisticated weaponry to a Government who are clearly incapable of providing training and leadership of their armed forces—such that Black Hawk helicopters get captured, and much of the $200 billion of American equipment that has apparently gone into Iraq may now be in the hands of that very well-financed terrorist organisation—is a matter of serious concern.

We can do our bit with these orders and we can do our bit, perhaps, to cut off the chain of people going from our country, but we all know that if, in the long term, there is an al-Qaeda state in the middle of Iraq and into Syria, it will be a threat not just in that region, but to Lebanon and Jordan, and a potential threat to other Arab countries and to Yemen and the Gulf. It is in our own interest to make sure that that does not happen and that that aim is defeated. I am therefore pleased to support the orders, but we must go much further.