Deferred Divisions

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd December 2014 Commons Chamber

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

In responding to what has been a very good debate, it is important to underline the context and background to our discussions. As the Home Secretary emphasised in opening today’s debate, the terrorism threat to the UK is considerable and as bad as it has been at any time since 9/11. That is the assessment that we have been given. It is our duty as a Parliament to ensure that our law enforcement and intelligence agencies have the tools and powers that they need to keep us safe.

I am grateful to all right hon. and hon. Members who have contributed to the debate. Many of them have great knowledge of the subject matter and experience in their communities, which has ensured that the debate has had great breadth and has touched on many issues. It is notable that we have heard from four members of the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament, the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, a further member of the Home Affairs Committee, a former Attorney-General and other Members who have great knowledge, expertise and experience. That has contributed enormously to the debate. I believe that if we continue in that vein and with that approach, the Bill will benefit.

It is important to underline some of the themes of the debate, such as the need to ensure both privacy and security. The right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears), my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) and the right hon. Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth) made that point. The two things are not mutually exclusive, and should be mutually reinforcing—one goes with the other. Security brings us liberty, and liberty is basically what we are trying to provide and protect through the security arrangements.

The issues of proportionality and necessity have also been mentioned, and we believe that they are reflected in the measures in the Bill. We look forward to the House’s forthcoming scrutiny and examination of those measures. I note that, almost without exception, the right hon. and hon. Members who have spoken have recognised and understood the importance of the powers in the Bill and broadly supported them, even if some would like to see further focus and reflection on specific aspects of them. On a subject as vital as national security, and confronting and combating terrorism and the extremism that may lead to it, it is right that the House presents a united front to those who would seek to do us harm. The debate this afternoon and this evening has done precisely that.

The threat that ISIL presents to us is serious, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) said, but it is not the only threat we face. There are a range of other terrorist organisations, including Boko Haram, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and al-Shabaab, and we must also protect ourselves from the threat of home-grown extremists who have been radicalised here in the UK. I recognise some of the points that the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) made, but the threat is not static. It is dynamic—it constantly evolves and changes. That is why it is right that the Government continue to challenge ourselves on what more we can do through legislation, but also through other processes such as the extremism taskforce. That is reflected in the Bill.

It important to recognise the excellent job that the police, MI5 and others do in keeping us safe through the actions that they take day in, day out and week in, week out. My hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham, who has GCHQ in his constituency, made that point well. I should put on record, as other Members have, our recognition of and thanks to all those who work so hard to ensure the security of this country.

Some broader themes were also raised, such as the issue of counter-ideology and narrative. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr Mahmood) made points about ISIL, which is clearly neither Islamic nor a state. The extremists who seek to advance its poisonous narratives do not do so in the name of Islam, which is a peaceful religion practised by millions of people around the globe. It is important to underscore that clear message from this House—we recognise the threat, but ISIL’s narrative is twisted and poisonous and does not represent Islam, which is one of the great religions.

On the issue of a counter-narrative, a number of Members, including the hon. Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi), mentioned communities standing up. It is important to recognise that 100 imams have stood together and signed a letter absolutely condemning the actions of ISIL and others. That has shown a community coming together, and it has used social media to do so. It has used hashtags such as #NotInMyName and #MakingAStand to ensure that a counter-message is delivered in a way that is likely to reach those who need to be reached. Of course we want more of that, but it is important to recognise the stances and responses that the community has given to confronting and combating some of the sheer evil that has been perpetrated, and how it is making a stand in a direct and powerful way.

[Keith Vaz]

The Minister is making a sensible and thoughtful speech and his tone is absolutely right. May I put to him a point that I put to my right hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears)? Has any research been done on the tipping point and the moment a law-abiding citizen suddenly becomes a radical jihadist? We have a lot of experience in counter-terrorism and have spent a huge amount of money on the issue. Are we any closer to knowing where that profile changes?

[James Brokenshire]

This is a complex subject and we cannot point to one individual factor for a specific individual. We can examine the profiles and backgrounds of terrorists who have been convicted for their crimes, but it is hard to generalise. We can point to individual factors or circumstances that may have contributed over a number of years, and some contributions to the debate have been about the vulnerability of certain individuals. Equally, for whatever reason, some people have sought to create an identity by allying themselves to an extremist organisation in some way. There is good understanding, but answers will be different for different circumstances and individuals, and it is important to understand the layers and complexity. Equally, we must look at the safeguarding agenda. Our work through Prevent is to ensure that front-line professionals are acutely aware of identifying any issues, so that people are directed to support and measures and do not progress down the path towards radicalisation and terrorism. We will continue that important work.

Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I commend my hon. Friend because he has been resolute in promoting this aspect of dealing with terrorism for some time, and he is absolutely right that it is important to promote that counter-narrative, but I think it is also important to do something else: to take a further step back and look at the whole issue of extremism more generally. That is why we have been very clear, and the work of the Prime Minister’s extremism taskforce is very clear, that we need to introduce an extremism strategy, and the Home Office is currently leading on that. It will be a cross-Government piece of work, but the Home Office is leading on that and the strategy is being developed.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

The Home Secretary is right to say that progress has been made during the past year, but will she help me on one point? Where a British citizen has been found to be involved in terrorist-related activities in a foreign country, is it right that we will no longer seek their return to this country, and that they will have to be punished and dealt with abroad?

[Mrs May]

No. Under the temporary exclusion power in the Bill, when someone who has been involved in terrorist-related activities—that will be considered on a case-by-case basis—returns home to the UK, that will happen on what I would describe as our terms. In other words, that return will be managed so that appropriate action can be taken here in the United Kingdom.

--- Later in debate ---

[Yvette Cooper]

My right hon. Friend is right. She has great expertise in looking at the work of the Prevent programme, particularly the community and local work that was being done. This is a concern. The Government originally cut the number of local authorities receiving funding through the Prevent programme from 90 to 23. They have subsequently reinstated some of them, but only four out of the 30 councils that were tasked with delivering Prevent submitted evaluations to the Office for Security and Counter-terrorism last year.

The Home Secretary has talked many times—we have pressed her on this—about the fact that she has passed some of the Prevent work to the Department for Communities and Local Government, but it is of considerable concern to us that there is no evidence that it is doing significant work on it. The community-led programme to counter radicalisation simply does not seem to be strong or effective enough. Much more could be done even without legislation to improve the Prevent programme, and if the Government do not do their bit, all the legislation in the world will not make the programme effective.

[Keith Vaz]

Evidence suggests that the biggest pressure on young jihadists comes not from organisations, but from peer groups. What is missing is that we have not yet got into the DNA of trying to deal with peer group pressure. Does my right hon. Friend agree that we should direct more of the funding to such community organisations?

[Yvette Cooper]

My right hon. Friend makes a very powerful point. We should be honest about the fact that we do not know the perfect answers. This is a difficult area, and different things need to be tried. However, the current programmes are not addressing two significant challenges: peer group recruitment, which is clearly taking place in many areas, and social media, through which recruitment and radicalisation are taking place. Much more should be done to address those challenges, and community-led programmes might be considerably more effective than police-led or Government-led programmes in achieving results.

--- Later in debate ---

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), whose excellent and thoughtful speech leads me to conclude that were he still the Attorney-General, the Bill would not have appeared before the House in the form it has. I hope he makes it to the Committee, because the points he raised are extremely important to ensuring that the Bill is robust before it is passed by the House.

I agree with the Home Secretary, the shadow Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), and the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield that these are dangerous times, which is why we require the greatest possible scrutiny of the Bill. I therefore begin by raising the concern of the Home Affairs Committee that we have not had the opportunity to scrutinise the Bill to the extent we would have liked. It was published only last week, and today is its Second Reading. We have not had an opportunity to hold any sessions, and no Minister has come before us. I know that the Home Secretary is extremely busy, but she managed to fit in several other engagements instead of coming before the Committee. It would have been much more appropriate had a Minister come before us before the Bill came to the House.

[Mrs May]

When we were discussing the Wanless and Whittam report, the right hon. Gentleman challenged me in the Chamber over the fact that I had not appeared before the Committee, when in fact the Committee had withdrawn the invitation. As I understand it—he might have a different understanding—I am due to appear before his Committee in two weeks.

[Keith Vaz]

The Home Secretary is right that she is due to appear before us in two weeks’ time, but the legislation will probably have passed through the House by then. If a piece of emergency legislation is coming before us, as it is now, Ministers should put themselves before the relevant Select Committee. The right hon. Lady managed to fit in a visit to the British curry awards last night, at which we were of course all delighted to see her, but the point is that the date of 16 December for this emergency legislation to come before the House was fixed many months ago, and Ministers must be prepared to be scrutinised on such legislation. That message clearly applies to all Select Committees. The Home Secretary may nod her head, but that is the position. Our Select Committee is now left to conduct a session on this Bill after its Second Reading, which we will do tomorrow.

[Chris Bryant]

Is it not a particular irony that the Government always drag their heels on legislation when it comes to a subject such as circus animals, but when it comes to legislation dealing with the liberty of the individual, the Government always want to expedite the processes through the House. Is that not a nonsense?

[Keith Vaz]

I thank my hon. Friend, although that also happened with a Government of whom we were both Members; it is a feature of the way in which Governments tend to introduce counter-terrorism legislation. Indeed, as the shadow Home Secretary said, mistakes are made, and there were mistakes under the last Government. I remember the incredibly important speeches of the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield on 42 days and 92 days, and the role played by my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick) on these issues. That is why it is so important to pause, consider, scrutinise and then report to the House. The Select Committee will not be in a position to produce a report for this House as we had hoped we might, simply because there is no time to do so as we have already reached Second Reading. By the time the Home Secretary makes her much-heralded appearance before us, the legislation will probably already have passed through the House.

Having made my complaint about that matter, I agree that these are dangerous times. The Home Secretary and the shadow Home Secretary are absolutely right that we need to act quickly but carefully, while recognising not only that ISIL and extremist groups are operating in Iraq and Syria but that those who support those groups are acting in countries all over the world.

Yesterday I met Nathalie Goulet, the chair of the French Senate Committee that is inquiring into the struggle of jihadi networks in France and Europe. I was astonished to hear that the situation in respect of French citizens travelling to Iraq and Syria is much worse in France than it is in our country. I looked up the last report our Select Committee published, and it must be a surprise for the House to learn that countries such as Belgium, Australia and even Norway are in exactly the same position as we are in respect of citizens who wish to travel abroad to fight.

That is why we cannot see the fight against terrorism as something that affects just this House. The shadow Home Secretary was right to raise the international dimension. The Select Committee was very clear in its last report published earlier this year in saying that there needed to be an international platform, with countries able to pool information and act together. We suggested that we should work through Interpol, which we saw as the most appropriate organisation, as it already exists to share information about organised crime. We felt that that was a platform that could be developed to build an international network with allies such as the French, the Dutch and others to ensure that we do things together and learn good practice.

I learned that in France, for example, they have a dedicated “Green Line”, which people can ring with information about those they suspect of being involved in terrorism, and parents can ring for advice and be guided in the right direction. As a result of the activities of the “Green Line”, the French authorities have been able to stop 200 people from travelling abroad to fight. There are other examples, and I hope that we use the good practice developed in other countries in order not to repeat mistakes and to move forward and try to find effective methods of stopping people travelling.

[Mr Winnick]

My right hon. Friend talked about mistakes. Going further back, would it not be wise to remember some of the measures taken against IRA terrorism? Like everyone else, I opposed such terrorism from the very beginning; it had no justification. However, some of those measures, such as internment, were counter-productive and played right into the hands of the IRA. Should we not take that sort of thing into account?

[Keith Vaz]

Those are exactly the unintended consequences to which the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield and others have referred. Of course we need powers in order to deal with those who wish to undermine the values of our society, but we need to be very careful about the way in which we use them, and we need to think about the consequences.

A number of the recommendations made by the Select Committee over a number of years have been adopted in the Bill. We support what is being done in respect of radicalism, but we are cautious about some of the programmes that are being used. I do not support the placing of the counter-terrorism narrative in the Department for Communities and Local Government. The Select Committee has not inquired into that, but I believe that the Home Office is the lead organisation and these should be Home Office programmes. The problem with dealing with more than one Department is the need to persuade different Ministers and civil servants of the necessity of changing things. I do not think that it works very well when two Cabinet Ministers are responsible for roughly the same area of policy. This should be done with and through the Home Secretary, so that she can deliver locally what she tells the House that she wishes to deliver in a more strategic way.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

Some of us feel that a seamless counter-narrative needs to be presented, and that therefore it would be more appropriate to set up one of the MISC or GEN Committees, as I believe they are called. Several Departments—I can think of four or five—could then have overall control of a counter-narrative that has yet to be properly generated.

[Keith Vaz]

The hon. Gentleman has worked very hard on this issue for some years. I believe that the status quo does not work, and I have every sympathy with his proposal, which would enable the different programmes to be delivered together.

I mentioned earlier that the Home Secretary had addressed the Bangladeshi community yesterday. She was extremely well received by the 2,000 people who were present; she made a strong effort to relate directly to that important community. Obviously her message yesterday was different from her message today, because a different kind of event was involved, but the point is that we need to get into the DNA of communities.

The Home Secretary’s constituency contains a south Asian community—indeed, like my own constituency, it contains various communities—but we have in this Chamber Members such as my hon. Friends the Members for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr Mahmood) and for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi), both of whom are very much a part of their communities. Anyone who walks down the Lozells road with my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr will see that the entire community relates to him. We are lucky to have not just him and my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South East, but other Members with different origins, on both sides of the House. They will tell us what the voice of the community says, which is that being told what to do never works, whether by police officers or—if I say so myself—by men in grey or black suits. What is necessary is peer group pressure and community engagement, and those must come from communities themselves.

How many times do we discover from the BBC news that parents have no idea that their children have gone to Syria to fight? One parent from Brighton said that he did not know where his son had gone until he was phoned and told that the son had died. That is why peer group pressure is so vital. How do we miss this point every time? We cannot tell communities what to do; we need to engage with them, and they need to move that process forward.

[Pete Wishart]

The right hon. Gentleman is, of course, absolutely right about the need for us to engage with communities, but is it not our responsibility to try to understand some of what motivates people to go and do these appalling, dreadful things—the illegal wars, the conflicts in the middle east, and the injustices that they observe in Palestine? Is there a way in which we could try to understand, and perhaps take on, some of the issues that motivate people to become involved in extremist activity?

[Keith Vaz]

The hon. Gentleman is right. We need to understand much more, and we can only do so at local level: in the mosque, through community activities, in schools—as the Home Secretary said—in colleges, and in prisons. People who have not been radicalised go into those institutions and come out radicalised, and then there is a failure to monitor them. The solutions are all there—in reports written by Committees over a number of years, in contributions made in all the time Members have been in this House, and in speeches of Home Secretaries, as strong as the one we heard today, when she said what she wanted to put right as far as terrorism and radicalisation are concerned—but they are not acted upon, and they have to be acted upon, otherwise we will be back here in a year’s time doing the same thing again, and we do not want that.

[Chris Bryant]

Does that not highlight why, in considering giving new measures to the Home Secretary, it is incumbent on us to assess whether that would radicalise people further or provide greater security to us? My anxiety about temporary exclusion orders is that exile has not had a good history in Britain. When Richard II exiled Henry Bolingbroke, he simply went abroad, gathered a whole load of allies and came back to this country and removed the King. My anxiety is that these new orders will do exactly the same thing.

[Keith Vaz]

My hon. Friend is a greater historian than I am, but our constituents would say, if they were to find out there is someone causing mischief in Kenya, as Adebolajo was, that he should be kept in Kenya if the Kenyan authorities want to prosecute him, and that we should not try to bring him back. If there are people in these countries who are up to mischief and who wish to undermine the values of our country, I can understand perfectly why the Government are suggesting an exclusion order.

The issue here is not that we should not accept that; it is to do with the practicalities that the shadow Home Secretary and the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield have mentioned. Sometimes we need to be very careful that there is proper judicial scrutiny of the decisions we take. I think that sometimes our constituents would prefer such people not to come back. If they are brought back, they have to be monitored so they do not end up putting on a burqa, leaving a mosque and leaving the country, as Mohammed Ahmed Mohamed did. He wanted to stay in Somalia but was brought back to this country and now is nobody knows where.

Of course I support this legislation. When a British Home Secretary comes before the House and says, “These measures are necessary in order to combat the severe threat we face,” the House will obviously support what the Home Secretary is doing. However, there is a need to scrutinise the practicalities, and the Home Office must work closely with the Select Committee and the House to ensure that we have a solution and decisions that will be in the best interests of our country, and will not create the kind of unintended consequences that we all wish to avoid.

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[Hazel Blears (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. and learned Member for North East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell). The learned discussion between him and the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) is slightly reminiscent of the legal discussions that we have in the Intelligence and Security Committee, where we are blessed with three Scottish Queen’s Counsel members.

As a former counter-terrorism Minister, I am well aware of the difficulties of legislating in this area. Most of us wish that this legislation was not necessary. No politician in a democracy takes lightly action that will inevitably impact on the rights of individuals unless there is a compelling case to do so to protect our citizens as a whole.

The framework against which we set this legislation should be the test that we apply to our agencies and all the work that we do. I am talking about the fact that any action must be lawful, necessary and proportionate, and that should be our guide in our scrutiny of this Bill today. That is the language of universal human rights, and we should judge any proposals against that test, which is well established in our law.

Inevitably, this area will be contested territory; it always has been. I remember trying to take control orders through this House. It was one of our last all-night sittings. We sat throughout the night and had some amazing discussions at 4 am, some of which were intelligible and others of which were not, so I know how difficult it can be. It is contested territory, and that is as it should be in a strong democracy. I have no doubt that the debate over the next few weeks will be intense, passionate and occasionally noisy. It is up to us here in this House and in the other place to determine whether the proposals before us are necessary and proportionate to the threat that faces our country.

Lots of Members this evening have set out the nature of that threat. I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) that if we look at the analysis, we can see that we have a problem in this country. We have at least 500 young men and women who have gone out to Syria, 250 of whom have probably come back. By comparison, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Tunisia and Saudi Arabia have thousands of people who have gone out to be part of the conflict in Syria, so we should put the matter in perspective.

If 250 people have come back, perhaps one in nine or 10 of them will be radicalised to the extent that they may want to do us harm in this country. If that is the case, we are talking about 25 or 30 individuals who have come back trained, radicalised and experienced in conflict. That may sound like a small number, but in actual fact it is a significant and serious threat. The resources required to have 24-hour surveillance on 25 to 30 people in this country are absolutely immense, and I am concerned about the resources that are being made available, even with the extra £130 million that the Prime Minister announced the other day.

Professor Peter Neumann from the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation has done some interesting work on segmenting the kind of people who go out to fight in Syria and the people who come back. He has grouped them into three categories.

First, we have the disturbed people who undoubtedly have mental health problems and who are particularly susceptible to the kind of narrative that is promulgated and that draws them into extremist activity.

The second category is dangerous. It includes those who are simply evil people and want to do us harm. They have records on social media of enticing other people to go out and take knives to people, chop their heads off or blow people up—they are dangerous people within our society. Interestingly, he describes the third category as the disillusioned. That includes all the people who have gone out to fight in Syria, perhaps in sympathy because they have seen on their televisions the terrible things that have happened to refugees and innocent families, but when they have got out there they have discovered that ISIS is a different proposition from what they thought. They never contemplated the viciousness, brutality, crucifixions and beheadings, and they often find themselves fighting and killing other Muslims because of the factional and sectarian nature of the forces in Syria. It is an interesting analysis.

I do not for one moment subscribe to the idea that there should be some kind of amnesty and that people should be allowed simply to come back into this country without facing any sanctions whatsoever. I absolutely believe that when people have committed criminal offences they should be prosecuted, convicted and put away for a long time.

[Keith Vaz]

My right hon. Friend has done a huge amount of work on community engagement, when in government and since then, as part of the taskforce. Drawing on all the work that she has done, what does she think is the tipping point? When does someone go from being a law-abiding citizen to deciding that they want to go? What pushes people over the edge? Are we any nearer to finding the cause?

[Hazel Blears]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for raising that issue. We have more experience now of the different paths that people take towards extremism, but it is still very complex. It is different for different people, but one key issue is emotional vulnerability. The analysis suggests that there are key points in people’s lives when they feel lonely or isolated and are more vulnerable to a message.

The first year at university is often a difficult phase for people. They do not have a friendship group and can easily be drawn into activity that is glorified, that represents an adventure and that is full of passion and idealism. Some of us will no doubt have experienced similar circumstances in our own politics, and I was certainly fired up to go and do something about the injustice and inequality I found around the world. Luckily, I was not being groomed by extremists—at least, I do not think I was.

One of the other causes for the 7/7 bombers was the possibility of being drawn into forced marriage. Those young men wanted to fall in love and to do so on their own terms and in their own way, and they found the prospect of forced marriage very difficult. Many emotional issues and transition points are key in young people’s education, as well as the messages that are put out.

I am grateful to places such as the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation at King’s college, as well as other academic institutions, for the work they are doing on this issue. As the shadow Home Secretary said, we must follow the evidence where it takes us and not simply our own prejudices and views.

I welcome the provisions in the Bill as a whole. Many are common sense. I have no doubt that the judicial involvement in the issues to do with temporary exclusion orders will be contested. The measures on aviation and rail security are simply common-sense approaches to matters that we need to take seriously.

I want to focus on the issues to do with the Prevent strategy set out in part 5. I have a number of questions for the Government. Obviously, I welcome the fact that Prevent will be put on a statutory footing, as that is important in getting the appropriate resources in place and ensuring a consistent approach. A crucial part of this will be the evaluation of its effectiveness. When the Government did their review of Prevent three and a half years ago, they said that there were not sufficient measures of effectiveness, that there were no metrics, and that they were not able to measure the impact. What progress have the Government made in measuring the impact of the Prevent strategy, because I have seen no metrics, no valuation and no evidence on that score? If we are going to spend significant amounts of public money, as we have done and as I hope we will continue to, we must ensure that it is making a difference. Evaluation is therefore important.

The duty that will be placed on schools, prisons, probation providers and local authorities is very welcome. The explanatory notes stated that the guidance would be published in tandem with the legislation, but I think that the bicycle has got a little bit ahead of the guidance. I hope that the guidance will be published as soon as possible, because it will be a key part of the debate. We need to see how effective it will be, how it will operate in practice and what its parameters will be. I urge the Minister to make that a top priority.

My concerns about that agenda—I know that the hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) shares them—relate to counter-ideology. Where is the work, in the way chapter 5 is set out, on counter-ideology? Where is the work on tackling the narrative and ensuring that both online and offline there are positive messages that expose the poverty of this mediaeval ideology, which is about sharia law and establishing a caliphate, which is absolutely inimical to the right of women and girls, which does not believe in education, which is backward-looking, reactionary and does not provide a forward-looking view of what it means to be a Muslim in a modern, free and liberal democracy? It is all very well putting that duty on those organisations, but where is the work on counter-ideology? I want to hear from the Minister on that.

Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Wednesday 26th November 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. 3) Order 2014, which was laid before this House on 24 November, be approved.

By way of context for tonight’s debate, the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre has raised the threat level for international terrorism from substantial to severe, as it assesses a terrorist attack on the United Kingdom to be highly likely. The House will be aware that the Home Secretary stated earlier this week that we believe that more than 500 British nationals have travelled to Syria and Iraq, and that thousands from other European and western countries have joined them.

The threat from ISIL is clear—it is one of the most serious security challenges we face today—but it is not the only threat we face. The House will note that the groups listed in the order operate in Libya and Egypt, as well as in Syria. Currently, instability and violence in Libya has provided an environment for groups such as Ansar al-Sharia-Benghazi to operate. Syria and Iraq have become a crucible of terror and violence in which groups such as Jaysh al-Khalifatu Islamiya, al-Nusrah Front and ISIL operate. Egypt has seen a significant increase in criminal activity and terrorist attacks on police and security forces by groups such as Ajnad Misr and Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis.

We can never entirely eliminate the threat from terrorism, but we are determined to do all we can to minimise the threat from terrorism to the UK and our interests abroad. Additionally, it is important that we demonstrate our support for other members of the international community in their efforts to tackle terrorism wherever it occurs. Proscription is an important part of the Government’s strategy to tackle terrorist activities.

The three groups that we propose to add to the list of terrorist organisations, by amending schedule 2 to the Terrorism Act 2000, are Ansar al-Sharia-Benghazi, also known as the Partisans of Islamic Law; Ajnad Misr, also known as the Soldiers of Egypt; and Jaysh al-Khalifatu Islamiya, also known as the Army of the Islamic Caliphate.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

How many months or years have those particular organisations been on the radar of the Government or the security services? We do not want to know the details of any private operations, but whether the organisations are new or have been around for a while.

[James Brokenshire]

It might help the right hon. Gentleman to know that I will go on to provide a brief summation of the three groups, which I think will answer his question.

Before I do so, I should explain that the effect of proscription is that a listed organisation is outlawed and is 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 which arouse reasonable suspicion that an individual is a member or supporter of a proscribed organisation.

Given the wide-ranging impact of the power to proscribe, the Home Secretary exercises it only after thoroughly reviewing the available relevant information and evidence about an organisation. Having carefully considered all the evidence, she believes that the three groups listed in the order are all currently concerned in terrorism. Although I am unable to comment on specific intelligence, I can provide a brief summary of each group’s activities.

Ansar al-Sharia-Benghazi is a Sunni Islamist militia group that takes an anti-western stance and advocates the implementation of strict sharia law. It has been involved in terrorist attacks against civilian targets, frequent assassinations and attempted assassinations of security officials and political actors in eastern Libya. On 11 September 2012, its members took part in the attack against the US special mission and annexe in Benghazi, killing the US ambassador and three other Americans. AAS-B continues to pose a threat to Libya and western interests, and is alleged to have links to the proscribed organisations Ansar al-Sharia-Tunisia and al-Qaeda. The US designated AAS-B as a terrorist organisation in January 2014, and the UN listed it in November.

Ajnad Misr is a jihadi group based in Egypt. It is believed to be a splinter group of Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, which was proscribed by the House on 4 April. Ajnad Misr has stated that it seeks to protect Egyptian Muslims and avenge alleged abuse against them by Egyptian security services. It is believed to have been active since 20 November 2013, when it attacked an Egyptian checkpoint. The group announced its establishment on 23 January this year and has claimed responsibility for a number of attacks on Egyptian security forces since 2013, including the attack in April at Cairo university, which resulted in the death of a policeman and injured three others, and the bomb attack near the Foreign Ministry in Cairo in September, which killed three police officers in September.

Jaysh al-Khalifatu Islamiya is an Islamist jihadist group that is active in Syria. JKI consists predominantly of Chechen fighters and is an opposition group. It has assisted the al-Nusra front and ISIL in conducting attacks. In February 2014, Abdul Waheed Majeed, a British individual who was linked to the group, carried out a suicide attack on a prison in Aleppo, resulting in prisoner escapes.

In conclusion, we believe that it is right that we add AAS-B, Ajnad Misr and JKI to the list of proscribed organisations in schedule 2 to the Terrorism Act 2000.

[Keith Vaz]

I thank the Minister for that very clear account of the three organisations. He has provided the House with a great deal of information. Will he tell the House how many associates of the three organisations are operating in the United Kingdom?

[James Brokenshire]

I am afraid that I cannot comment on matters that may relate to intelligence. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will understand that we always seek to present as much information as we can about groups that we are seeking to proscribe. The Home Secretary weighs various pieces of intelligence and open-source material in determining whether a group is engaged in terrorism. All I can say to him is that we have considered the tests clearly and believe that they are met in terms of whether the groups threaten our interests overseas or our national security.

With that summation, I hope that the House will agree that the order should be approved. If it is, it will come into force on Friday 28 November.

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

I thank the Minister for his statement. There is a long tradition of cross-party co-operation on issues of national security and the Opposition will, of course, support the Government motion this evening.

Under section 3 of the Terrorism Act 2000, a group can be proscribed if the Home Secretary is persuaded that it:

“(a) commits or participates in acts of terrorism,

(b) prepares for terrorism,

(c) promotes or encourages terrorism, or

(d) is otherwise concerned in terrorism.”

It is a largely judicial role in that the Home Secretary has to assess whether the evidence before her meets the test. The Opposition do not have access to that evidence, of course, but on the basis of the statement that has been made by the Minister and the Home Secretary’s letter to my right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary, we will support the Government tonight.

I thank the Government for the letter to my right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary. May I say how pleased we were to receive that letter before the newspapers were briefed? I am sure that the Minister will recall that the last time we discussed a proscription order, he had to apologise to the House for the contents of the order being given to The Sun newspaper before they were given to the House. Is he able to report back on the investigation that he said would happen to find out how that had occurred?

Moving back to the order before us, we accept that proscription is an important tool to use against terrorism. It enables us to tackle and disrupt terror groups in co-operating around the world. Of course, that makes proscription a serious matter. Proscription makes it illegal to belong to or support in any way a listed organisation. It is a draconian measure, so we should use it only when we know that it is appropriate. The evidence that we heard tonight suggests that the measure is appropriate because all three groups have been involved in terrorism of the highest seriousness, including some directed at our citizens and allies.

The groups that we are discussing are active from Chechnya to Libya and include groups that operate in Syria, Egypt and Libya. They demonstrate the enormous challenge that is posed by the fallout from the Arab spring across the middle east and north Africa. I will start with Syria, where we know a number of organisations that pose security concerns are operating. We support the proscription of JKI, which is an Islamist jihadist group that consists predominantly of Chechen fighters who appear to be part of a web of interrelated organisations. The most prominent of those is the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, but there is also the al-Nusra front—both of those have been proscribed recently—and Jaysh al-Muhajireen wal Ansar.

To emphasise the challenge of separating out these groups, JKI was until recently known as the Majahideen of the Caucasus and the Levant or MCL. JKI has been linked to a number of attacks, including—as the Minister pointed out—a suicide attack in Aleppo by a British national, Abdul Waheed Majeed. In Egypt, we have the Soldiers of Egypt, another jihadi group and again a splinter group of a known terror group, in this case Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, one of the most high-profile terror groups in Egypt. Again, this is a group that was proscribed in the UK this year. This group is also linked to ISIL and shows dramatically the size of ISIL’s sphere of influence that we are trying to combat. Although Soldiers of Egypt is believed to be just a year old, it has already been linked with a series of attacks targeting Cairo airport, border operations, police stations and Cairo university.

Finally, in Libya another Sunni group, Ansar al-Sharia-Benghazi or AAS-B—also known as Partisans of Islamic Law—seeks to use violence to achieve the aim of strict implementation of sharia law in post-Gaddafi Libya. The group is led by Mohammed Ali al-Zahawi, and Ahmed Abu Khattalah is another senior leader. As the Minister explained, since the fall of Gaddafi the AAS-B has been linked with numerous terror attacks against civilian targets, and frequent assassinations and attempted assassinations of security officials and political actors in eastern Libya. Many of these have resulted in the loss of innocent lives, including the attack on the US embassy in Benghazi in September 2012, which led to the death of the US ambassador and three of his colleagues.

While we support the Government’s motion tonight, I want to raise two other issues with the Minister that arise out of yesterday’s Intelligence and Security Committee report on the murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby. The first is about social media. This is an issue I have raised in debates on previous proscription orders. Yesterday, we learnt that messages had been shared on the internet by Michael Adebowale which, because of their content, were picked up and the accounts were closed by the internet companies. But no follow-up action was taken and no referrals made. That raises serious questions about social media companies and the Home Office’s counter terrorism internet referral unit, which clearly is not receiving all the referrals it should be. Will the Minister review the working of this unit in the light of yesterday’s report and see what more can be done? We know that all the groups we are discussing tonight have had a significant online presence, including on Facebook and Twitter. Those companies may operate across the world, but they generate significant revenue in the UK and we need to make it clear that we expect them to do more than they are doing at the moment.

[Keith Vaz]

My hon. Friend is a serial attender of these proscription order debates and she will know that we have raised on several occasions the position of Hizb ut-Tahrir. In 2009, the now Prime Minister said that he wanted that organisation banned. It has still not been banned. Does she share my concern that no progress has been made on that?

[Diana Johnson]

I am grateful to the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, and he is right that I am—like him—a serial attender of these debates. The issue of Hizb ut-Tahrir has been raised at every proscription order debate in which I have been involved and we have asked the Minister what progress has been made on the promise by the then Leader of the Opposition that he would ban it when he became Prime Minister. It is now several years since the Prime Minister made that promise. It would be interesting to hear from the Minister if any progress has been made on that point.

May I take this opportunity to wish the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee a happy birthday? I understand that it is my right hon. Friend’s birthday today. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”]

Finally, I would like to turn to the issue of prosecutions of members, supporters and facilitators of proscribed organisations. The Intelligence and Security Committee report published yesterday highlighted the low number of prosecutions and the difficulties the police face in obtaining prosecutions in this area. What do the Government intend to do to address this problem? In particular, does the Minister think that the way of defining terror for the purpose of proscription is sufficient to allow a terror group to be clearly identified? All three of the groups we have discussed today have had a series of associate groups; in most cases, groups that have been proscribed this year or in previous years. Those groups are often difficult to separate out. Will the Minister comment on the degree to which the way in which we define groups gives sufficient clarity to enable us to link an individual with a specific proscribed group? What more does he think we can do to ensure more prosecutions, where appropriate, in these types of cases where organisations have been proscribed?

--- Later in debate ---

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I can think of no better way to celebrate my birthday than to discuss the proscription of three organisations in Libya, Syria and Egypt. I am therefore delighted that the Minister has brought this order before the House this evening. I promise not to detain the House for too long.

We of course accept it, as we have always done, when Ministers come to Parliament and say from the Dispatch Box that they have important and sensitive information concerning groups that are operating in this country and abroad, and want to use powers to proscribe them. The Minister for Security and Immigration put his case very eloquently as he always does. He is the classic safe pair of hands: when he stands at the Dispatch Box and tells us that he has information he believes is sufficient to allow the Home Secretary to sign off an order proscribing an organisation, I, for one, fully support what he and the Government are doing—as do those on the Opposition Front Bench. I want to raise a number of points, which I hope he will have the opportunity to address.

The first point relates, of course, to Hizb ut-Tahrir, a group we have discussed every time a proscription order has been brought before the House. The Prime Minister made a very important statement on the group when he was Leader of the Opposition. I was in the House at the time and heard what he had to say. He was very firm that this was a terrorist organisation and that it ought to be banned. Five years later, Hizb ut-Tahrir still has not been banned. I think it has been involved in the same kinds of activities as a number of groups mentioned by the Minister in the House today and on previous occasions. It would therefore be good when he replies to hear an update on progress on whether that organisation, which the Prime Minister has rightly turned his face against, is any closer to being proscribed.

In previous debates I have always asked whether the Governments of the countries concerned have been consulted about the three groups the Minister has mentioned today, or whether they have any particular information. I appreciate that it is difficult to do this in the case of Syria, Libya and Egypt at the present time. I am not sure what our relations with Egypt are at the moment, but certainly in respect of the other two countries it may be difficult to get a particular view. However, if the Minister has one, it would be helpful to the House to hear it. If he has consulted those Governments, it would be helpful to hear what they had to say. My concern is that the attack in Benghazi, which he mentioned a few moments ago, occurred in 2012. The American embassy was ransacked, burned to the ground and the ambassador was killed. Will he tell the House whether the organisation responsible has already been proscribed in the United States of America, and whether it has been proscribed in any other European country? Once we pass the order, it would be helpful to know whether, as a result of what we have done—

[James Brokenshire]

The right hon. Gentleman asked whether any other state had taken action against Ansar al-Sharia-Benghazi. It was designated as a terrorist organisation by the United States in January and by the UN this month.

[Keith Vaz]

That is extremely helpful. I am grateful for the Minister’s clarification. When he winds up, will he remind us of the process regarding other EU countries? Once we have taken a decision, does he tell EU colleagues of it, will it automatically be extended to other countries or does it have to go through other Parliaments? I assume that the United States and the UN have also proscribed the other two organisations, in Syria and Egypt, and that we will be urging our European colleagues to do the same.

The final point I want to make concerns de-proscription. I am not suggesting for one moment that, having agreed to proscribe these organisations, we would want to de-proscribe any of them, but I have raised several times, as has the Home Affairs Committee, our concern about the de-proscription process. I have mentioned before the concerns of my constituents regarding the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, which no longer exists but is a proscribed organisation. Some of my Tamil constituents feel they are put at a disadvantage because the ban on the LTTE remains, even though it no longer exists. Has there been any progress on de-proscription, other than the only method we think exists to get an organisation de-proscribed, which is to take the Government to court? The People’s Mujahedeen Organisation of Iran did that a few years ago, and the last Labour Government were obliged to de-proscribe it.

Aside from asking for those clarifications, I fully support what the Minister has said. He is doing absolutely the right thing, and I am glad he has come here with so much information to share with the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[James Brokenshire]

I thank those who have contributed to this debate for supporting the Government’s proscription of the three organisations listed in the order. We take our responsibilities seriously when considering each group and coming to the House to seek an order in this way. I am grateful for the comments that have been made and add my best wishes to the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), whom I hope will celebrate his birthday after the debate has concluded. I am sure we all wish him well on this special occasion.

A number of questions were asked. The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) asked whether we could review the definition of terrorism. As part of the review of counter-terrorism powers that we carried out at the start of this Government in 2010, we looked at that but concluded that it would be disproportionate to broaden the definition. Ultimately, pursuing a prosecution comes down to evidence and is not necessarily based on redefining terrorism. The issue has been examined. We are considering the issue of extremism more generally and what further action might be taken against organisations that might not cross the threshold for proscription. We will return with further proposals on extremism, and the Home Secretary has highlighted her intention to lead on such a strategy, drawing across government, that could include taking action against groups—and on extremism in our society more generally—that fall below the threshold of terrorism.

The hon. Lady highlighted the work of the counter terrorism internet referral unit, which I believe has been extremely effective since commencing its work back in 2010. Since that time, some 65,000 pieces of unlawful terrorist-related content have been removed as a consequence of its actions. There is more to be done, however, and the role and responsibilities of social media companies are key here, as the Prime Minister said in his response to the Woolwich report yesterday. We absolutely encourage the public and civil society organisations to refer terrorist and extremist content at scale to social media companies and internet service providers—in some ways amplifying the work of the CTIRU. It has good relations with a number of these companies, some of which have been responsive in dealing with a number of its requests. It comes down to actions taken, knowledge possessed and responsibilities better to share information with the agencies charged with protecting our national security. We want appropriate action taken to interdict, to intercede and to ensure that terrorist attacks do not occur.

[Keith Vaz]

I note that the Minister for Culture and the Digital Economy, who has responsibility for the creative industries, is in his place on the Front Bench. He is rightly held in high regard by those in the creative industries, including by some of the companies that have been mentioned. The issue is this: are we moving from a voluntary arrangement with internet companies and companies such as Facebook to a more compulsory approach? The voluntary arrangement has not worked, so does the Minister think we should be doing more by way of compulsion to make sure that such companies act in this way?

[James Brokenshire]

I do not necessarily want to expand this proscription debate into a broader debate about terrorism. However, there is legislation in place, and when we debate the security measures in the Bill published today, we will find that it deals with the resolution of internet protocol addresses issue, and with the question of the Regulatory and Investigatory Powers Act 2000. David Anderson, the independent reviewer of counter-terrorism legislation, is carrying out an ongoing examination, in the round, of a number of these matters.

There is more that the industry can do in the short term, such as looking at its terms and conditions of service and ensuring that they are properly upheld. Yes, there are legal issues that will continue to challenge, and more needs to be done in that sphere, as the Home Secretary said. Equally, there is work on which the industry itself can continue to focus.

Both the right hon. Gentleman and the hon. Lady raised the issue of Hizb ut-Tahrir. It is not a proscribed organisation—as the House will know, proscription can be considered only when the Home Secretary believes an organisation to be concerned in terrorism, as defined by the Terrorism Act 2000—but it is one about which we have significant concerns, and we will continue to monitor its activities very closely.

That brings me back to the broader issue of extremism, and why it is right that we continue to challenge ourselves in respect of what more can be done about it more generally. We must continue to take on board the points that have been made about social media. The extremism taskforce, which involves Ministers throughout the Government, is working to ensure that we seek to confront extremism in all its forms.

As for enforceability, I have already referred to the need for evidence and investigation, as did the hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty). Between 2001 and 2014, 33 people were charged with proscription-related offences. The Terrorism Act covers a broad range of offences, and different offences may well be adopted on the basis of the evidence that is presented. However, I can tell the hon. Gentleman that the police and the Crown Prosecution Service continue to examine these issues carefully.

Both the hon. Gentleman and the right hon. Member for Leicester East raised the issue of name changes, which we keep under close review. When aliases are used for the same organisation, we can impose name change orders, and have done so on a number of occasions. The procedure involves a negative rather than affirmative resolution, which means that we can potentially act more quickly. If there is evidence that the name used by an organisation is a sham or a front, and the original organisation is extant and still operating, the police and the CPS will continue to be able to pursue the matter.

The change that we make tonight will have an impact on other EU member states and on international bodies. We do consult member states that have a direct interest in the relevant groups. We will inform them if parliamentary agreement is secured in this House and in the other place, and we will consider whether to pursue EU listings of the groups concerned. Obviously, those are separate processes. I take the point made by the right hon. Gentleman: we must consider the evidence properly, rather than automatically taking on board what other states may say. We will consult when that is appropriate, but I think it right for us to make our decisions in the House of Commons.

Our advice, and the clear advice of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, is that British nationals should leave Libya by whatever commercial means are available. Our ability to provide direct support is limited because of the closure of the British embassy in Tripoli, but I know that my colleagues in the Foreign Office are very conscious of the issues raised by the hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth, and that they keep them under close review.

I hope that the House will be minded to support the order.

Question put and agreed to.

EU Justice and Home Affairs Measures

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Wednesday 19th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is right. It would have been so simple to cover those measures in the initial debate on a straightforward motion tabled by the Government. I think that it is unprecedented that the Opposition table what should be a Government motion and ask the Government to vote with us on the very measures that they supported in the first place.

The 24 measures include football banning orders, which we welcome, to stop hooligans travelling to matches in Europe. We need to participate in Eurojust to gather evidence on cross-border crime. We need Europol to support and co-ordinate cross-border investigations. We need co-operation to prevent drug trafficking, and we need the European Police College to share best practice.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

I am most grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way and hope that she will excuse me for interrupting her. She is clearly on a roll, because I cannot remember a time on which the Home Secretary has written to my right hon. Friend to say that she will support one of her measures. When the Select Committee on Home Affairs considered the matter, we suggested that the vote should have happened much earlier and that the House should have voted to give the Government a mandate to negotiate, rather than it being left to the last moment. Does my right hon. Friend agree that we should really have discussed these matters a long time before?

[Yvette Cooper]

My right hon. Friend is right. The truth is that the Home Secretary’s handling of the whole thing has been chaotic from start to finish. We have had no proper opportunity to debate the subject and have a vote at the right time and we have had confusion about when we were going to have the votes at the wrong time. We had parliamentary confusion, votes in chaos, Tory MPs scuttling back from their dinners, champagne banquets abandoned and a humiliated Prime Minister returning to the House of Commons with his tails between his legs.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs May]

I apologise to the hon. Gentleman but I cannot remember whether he was in the Chamber for the debate a week ago on Monday. However, I made exactly these sorts of argument in that debate. Other right hon. and hon. Members would have been able to express their concerns about or support for the European arrest warrant had that debate not been curtailed by his Front-Bench team.

[Keith Vaz]

Could the Home Secretary clarify one point? Has she notified the European Union that we are opting in already, is she waiting for this vote, or did she do so after last week’s vote?

[Mrs May]

We have not yet notified the European Union. [Interruption.] Someone says, “Why?” It is partly because the timetable has not required us to notify the European Union by that point.

Thirdly, under the convention, we would return to a system where 22 other member states would not extradite their own nationals to the UK and where, owing to constitutional bars, there would be no hope of that situation changing for some countries. In the last five years alone, those 22 states have extradited 105 of their own nationals to us to stand trial. That would end if we returned to the 1957 convention, and victims, and their families, would suffer as a result.

The convention would also mean that, if there is a long delay between the offence occurring and the extradition request being made, extradition can be refused because of the length of time that has passed under a state’s statute of limitations.

--- Later in debate ---

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

I thank the shadow Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), for giving the House this opportunity to discuss the European arrest warrant. I know that others claim we discussed it last week, but frankly the proceedings then were totally shambolic. Bearing in mind the fact that the Home Affairs Committee published its report on this matter on 29 October last year, in which it called on the Government to ensure that Parliament had as much say in this process as possible, it is a huge disappointment that it is only now—12 days before 1 December, the date on which we have to opt in—that Parliament has a real opportunity to discuss these matters.

I am an admirer of the Home Secretary and of her work on the landscape of policing. When she leaves her office when Parliament ends on 30 March, she will be able to point to the real changes she has made in that area. I have to say to her, however, that this has not been the Home Office’s finest hour. We had a real opportunity last week to give Members the chance to discuss the European arrest warrant, but that was not possible because of the shenanigans surrounding the motion and the vote.

[Sir William Cash]

The Home Affairs Select Committee has done a splendid job, but will the right hon. Gentleman also acknowledge the fact that the Justice Committee—not to mention the European Scrutiny Committee—has played a pivotal role in ensuring that we have at least examined these matters?

[Keith Vaz]

I was just about to say that. I do not want this to sound like self-congratulation—[Hon. Members: “Oh yes you do!”] Oh, all right—I do! I concede that point. To have united the three Chairs of the Select Committees and all their members, given their different politics and personalities, is a unique achievement for any Government. I am minded to join those on the two Front Benches in the Division Lobby to support the motion, if only to see the Home Secretary and the shadow Home Secretary in the same Lobby at the same time—I am not sure who will get there first—but I shall not be voting tonight. I am sure that my extra vote would not count for much anyway, given that the motion will be passed, but this is the only way I have of expressing my exasperation at the insufficient time we have had to discuss these matters or to look in real detail at the European arrest warrant.

The Home Secretary is right to say that there have been changes since we started last year, but those changes do not go far enough to deal with the kinds of issues that were raised in the Select Committee by several Members, including the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), and the hon. Members for Enfield North (Nick de Bois) and for South Dorset (Richard Drax), all of whom came and talked about specific examples.

I am not against the principle of the European arrest warrant. The Home Secretary and the shadow Home Secretary have made a powerful case in support of that principle. The problem lies in the practicalities involved and the difficulty in exercising any control—we have none—over jurisdictions in other countries. Poland has been mentioned. We have had more European arrest warrant requests from Poland—2,400—than from any other country in Europe. The Home Secretary says that Poland is changing its legislation.

[Sir Tony Baldry]

The fact is that these are mostly for Poles going back to Poland—they want their own Poles back—and they are not for our citizens.

[Keith Vaz]

Of course if the Poles want the Poles back, they should have them back. The problem is that Poland is issuing these arrest warrants because it does not do so when it is prosecution-ready; a judge has no jurisdiction in these matters and these things are just issued, no matter what the case is. We cannot intervene in Polish legislation to try to change that position. The right hon. Gentleman talks about Poland having the Poles back. There are 1,000 Polish people in our prisons as foreign national prisoners and if Poland wanted them back I am sure the Home Secretary would be delighted to send them back to Poland. However, they are still in our prisons.

The fact is that these practicalities do stand in the way of justice. As Lady Hale said in the case of PH, HH and FK, this rests, in the end, with the other national countries of the European Union; it does not rest with us. So no matter what we do in the House today, those practical difficulties remain. I know that successive Governments have tried hard to change the situation, but we cannot intervene in the legislation of other countries. That is why we get these absurd cases where European arrest warrants are issued for people without the need to hand them out. The figures show that 28% of people arrested in our country are foreign nationals, half of whom are from the European Union. The cost of executing a European arrest warrant is £20,000—it costs that each time. The figures for arrests and surrenders show 5,184 arrests and 4,005 surrenders, so we are talking about 1,179 more arrests than surrenders.

That is why we needed an early debate on this matter. We do not need to go right up to the wire, with 12 days to go before the end of these discussions. Parliament, especially constituency MPs, who have real issues to raise, should have had the opportunity to raise this matter before. I am sorry that the Government did not listen to what my Committee said clearly a year ago, in paragraphs 85 and 87 of its report. Paragraph 87 stated:

“To date”—

this was a year ago—

“we have been disappointed with the extent and timeliness of the Government’s involvement of Parliament in scrutinising the 2014 opt-out and proposed opt-in. We hope that it will engage more constructively with Parliament for the remainder of this process.”

Now, with 12 days to go, we have our first real debate on this issue, thanks to the shadow Home Secretary tabling this motion.

We have just been told by the Home Secretary that she has not even notified the European Union that we are going to opt in. Bearing in mind the paperwork involved and the way in which the Home Office deals with its paperwork, I have a suggestion to make to the right hon. Lady: when she signs her letter, she should give it to the hon. Members for Hexham (Guy Opperman) and for Meon Valley (George Hollingbery), who are sitting behind her, and make sure that they take it straight to the European Union headquarters in Brussels. Otherwise, given the history of the Home Office, this deadline will be missed, like so many others.

I hope the Home Secretary will, in her wind-up, further reassure the House that the points made by Members of this House in their evidence to my Select Committee and the reports the three Select Committees have issued will be taken even more seriously than they have been in the past.

Oral Answers to Questions

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Monday 17th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

Border Force uses an array of different techniques to secure our border which, as I have highlighted, include body detection dogs, carbon dioxide detectors, heartbeat monitors and scanners, as well as physical searches. I will look into the outstanding parliamentary question highlighted by my hon. Friend. Last year 18,000 people were detected at our juxtaposed controls—a 60% increase. That underlines the focus of our Border Force officers on preventing people who should not be here from coming to this country.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

The Minister is right: those pieces of equipment are useful, but they are not 100% effective. As of today, 2,300 illegal migrants are in Calais, seeking to come to the United Kingdom. According to the mayor of Calais, in her evidence to Parliament on 28 October, some will risk their lives to do so. Does the Minister agree that we need to do much more work with the countries at the point of entry—Greece, Turkey and Italy—to prevent people from going there, rather than waiting until they get to Calais when it could be far too late?

[James Brokenshire]

I agree with the right hon. Gentleman in that we need to look beyond the borders of the EU. That is precisely the emphasis that has been given by several countries, including the UK and France. Indeed, Italy is hosting a conference in a few weeks to do precisely that in relation to the horn of Africa. He is right to make that point, but equally the Government are focused on security at Calais, and that is why my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has agreed with the French Government an investment of £12 million in security at that port.

Wanless Review

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Tuesday 11th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

As I said earlier, the permanent secretary has accepted all the recommendations, and they are being put into place at the moment to ensure that the systems record information appropriately in the way that Wanless and Whittam have recommended, so that it will be possible to follow through any matters that are passed to the police to ensure that they are being properly recorded and dealt with.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

Mr Wanless and Mr Whittam gave evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee this morning. We gave the Home Secretary the opportunity to appear before us, before they came to see us, but she declined to do so. In my seven years as Chairman of the Committee, such occurrences have been extremely rare. It is important that Ministers should submit themselves to proper scrutiny by Select Committees on issues of this importance. Perhaps the only way to achieve that is to table an urgent question, and we will consider doing that in the future. When Mr Wanless and Mr Whittam gave evidence, they said that it was the Home Office’s shambolic record keeping over 30 years that had led them to believe that they could not rule out the possibility of a cover-up. The Home Secretary has said that she is writing to them with further information. When will she do so? Further to the point made by the hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr Clappison), we want the new system set out in recommendation 2 to start today. Can this be done, please?

[Mrs May]

I would not normally reveal the interaction between myself and the Home Affairs Committee in relation to an appearance, but as the right hon. Gentleman has made reference to it, I think I should clarify the matter for the House. I am happy to appear in front of the Committee on these matters, but I did not feel that it was appropriate to do so before the report had been published. I would have been asked questions that it would not have been appropriate for me to answer, given that I had not yet made the report public. However, I look forward to receiving an invitation to appear on a separate date.

The right hon. Gentleman is right on the issue of record keeping, and the matter is being addressed in the Home Office. We want to ensure that this is done as quickly as possible, but we also want to ensure that the system that is being put in place will work, that it will be sustainable over time, and that everyone who is working in it understands it and deals with it appropriately. That is not something that can be done at the click of one’s fingers. It takes a little time.

Business of the House (Today)

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Monday 10th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee. I co-signed a letter with him and the Chair of the Justice Select Committee over the weekend to express our concern about how this legislation is being put through the House.

Mr Speaker, you were clear that this was not a vote on the EAW, but the Lord Chancellor, when he moved the business motion, told the House that we were voting on the full package of 35 measures, so that voting for the motion would allow the Government to inform the European Commission that we had opted back into the 35 measures. Mr Speaker, I prefer to accept your ruling that this is about the 10 regulations, not the EAW. The Select Committee was clear that the House should have the opportunity to vote on the EAW separately, because we felt that it was controversial and had huge implications for the British people. The position of the European Scrutiny Committee is that we should vote on each of the 35 measures. I am not against that idea; I just do not think we can do that tonight. We will need additional time to do so.

I share all the concerns of the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash). This is a shambolic attempt to get a vote on an issue of fundamental importance to the British people. I hope the motion will be withdrawn to give us an opportunity to vote on these measures.

Child Abuse Inquiry

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Monday 3rd November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I know that my hon. Friend has long campaigned for events that took place in Jersey to be included in any inquiry that is held. As I explained earlier, I will take steps to ensure that no work that is done by the inquiry into matters in Jersey is lost to this inquiry, if it is relevant to this inquiry, and that no one falls through the cracks. As for the case of the journalist coming through the border, I was not aware of it, but if my hon. Friend writes to me about it, I will respond.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

I welcome the tone and content of the Home Secretary’s statement, which drew a line under the flawed process that we have seen so far, and which will give hope to the victims who have been waiting for this inquiry. The Select Committee accepts her proposal that we should conduct pre-appointment hearings, which may well set a precedent for parliamentary scrutiny of future public inquiries. In the meantime, she has set a very ambitious programme for the panel, and it is right that it should begin its work by meeting every Wednesday until Christmas. Who will chair those proceedings, or will the chair rotate between the panel members?

I am glad that the Home Secretary will be publishing the Wanless-Whittam report. The Committee hopes to examine both gentlemen next week. Will the Home Secretary assure us that there are no other documents that are relevant to the inquiry and have not been published, and that, if there are any such documents, she will make them available to the Committee and to the panel?

[Mrs May]

It would be possible for me to appoint an existing member of the panel to chair it on an interim basis, but I think that that should be discussed with the panel members to ensure that they are comfortable with any arrangements that are made. They will have their own proposals about how they wish to conduct their work. I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman and the Select Committee for their willingness to take the process on board, and to hold a pre-confirmation meeting. I asked for that to be done because I think it important for the appointment to have a public element that can further guarantee the confidence of survivors in the process.

I certainly intend all Government documents to be made available to the inquiry, but I caution the right hon. Gentleman that it will be for the panel to consider the appropriateness of publishing some of the material that is put before it. The same process applied to the members of the Hillsborough inquiry panel. There were some matters that they considered, for a range of reasons, in relation to individuals with whom they discussed those matters, and it is possible that there are matters of that sort that this panel would not wish to be aired in public.

Refugees and Migrants (Search and Rescue Operation)

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Thursday 30th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

I entirely reject the analysis that my hon. Friend seeks to proffer in this regard. No one is turning a blind eye to humanitarian issues or needs. The purpose of the actions being taken is to put fewer lives at risk, and I am sorry that she is unable to accept the clear purpose of what we are undertaking. On the idea that boats in need of assistance would simply be ignored, I point her to the head of Frontex who said that if a boat in distress is spotted, rescue is the top priority. I am sure that that is precisely what will happen.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

The mayor of Calais told the Home Affairs Committee on Tuesday that the destination of choice for many who arrive in Italy is Calais and after that London, and £12 million has been allocated in Calais. The unintended consequences of not allocating support will be that more people will die in the Mediterranean. I understand why the Minister does not want to give succour to people traffickers, but that is what will happen. The real problem is the failure of Frontex to act appropriately to ensure that the borders are secure. He will see that at the Greek-Turkish border, and at Melilla in Morocco where people are climbing over the fence that the Spanish have put up, this issue will remain a problem. When he goes to Rome will he please also visit Lampedusa and ensure that the real long-term solution is with the countries of north Africa? We must support them in preventing people from leaving in the first place, and that is where our focus should be.

[James Brokenshire]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman, and I commend him and members of his Committee for the focus they have attached to this issue. I know they have undertaken a number of visits to the region to see the situation for themselves. He is right to say that the solutions lie in north Africa, which is why I made a point about the need for focus and attention there. The mayor of Calais characterised the UK as the primary destination, but let us analyse where asylum applications are being made. The UK anticipates around 25,000 applications this year, but France anticipates around 65,000, Sweden around 80,000, and Germany more than 200,000. This is an issue for the whole EU, and it is important, as I have said, to continue to work together to find solutions.

UK Drugs Policy

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Thursday 30th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention and absolutely agree with him. Reviews take place in many other policy areas to check whether objectives are being met, and it is high time we had such a review of the 1971 Act.

The Government’s drugs strategy is itself subject to review, but that is a self-limiting process. In other words, it intends to look only at value for money and in terms only of whether the amount spent is more or less than the value of the positive outcomes. That review will be carried out in 2015 and it will not consider whether other approaches would be better value for money. Neither will it include the negative outcomes—the presumably unintended consequences—of the policy in its calculations.

I warmly welcome today’s publication of the Government’s international comparators study. I pay tribute to the Minister for Crime Prevention, who is in his place, for the leadership he has shown in the process. The study has been long awaited. It was commissioned on the recommendation of the Home Affairs Committee and is a considered review of the different approaches to drug policy pursued around the world.

The review indicates that introducing an alternative to prohibition would not, contrary to some claims, boost drug use, and it could save millions of pounds if users were treated for addiction rather than jailed. It seems that the evidence for the issue of drug use to be moved to the Department of Health, in order for the focus to be on treating rather than punishing addiction, is overwhelming as well. This is just the first step towards a drugs policy that puts harm reduction first, and I welcome it warmly, but we urgently need to follow up on this comparison of international approaches and learn the lessons from it for our own UK-based legislation. That is why this debate is so important.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

May I also congratulate the hon. Lady, not only on her award, which is well deserved, but on her work on this issue? In respect of following up, I also welcome the report led by the Minister. The Home Affairs Committee, prompted by the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert), will hold a separate session specifically on our last set of recommendations. It will be held in Cambridge, in honour of the hon. Gentleman, and I hope we can persuade the hon. Lady to come along and speak.

[Caroline Lucas]

I pay tribute to the right hon. Gentleman for all his leadership on this issue as Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, and to the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert). I am very happy to take up that kind invitation. To be serious, I am very glad that the Home Affairs Committee is doing that extra piece of very important work.

Such work is important because drug misuse destroys individuals, families and communities, and an ineffective drugs policy only compounds that damage. All too often, success in the war on drugs is measured in numbers of arrests or seizures of drugs, but many of us believe that we should assess whether the harms associated with drug misuse are rising or declining.

The Home Secretary acknowledged in the foreword to her Government’s drug strategy:

“Individuals do not take drugs in isolation from what is happening in the rest of their lives.”

I agree. Poverty, social exclusion and inequality all have an impact on drug use and drug markets. Research by the Equality Trust has shown a clear and demonstrable correlation between drug misuse and inequality. There is a strong tendency for drug abuse to be more common in countries, such as the UK, that are more unequal. Ending social exclusion must therefore be at the heart of any effective strategy to reduce drug-related harms. To do that, we need to marshal the evidence.

--- Later in debate ---

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

I was not planning to speak in this debate, because I felt that most of what I have to say would be covered by the hon. Members for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) and for Cambridge (Dr Huppert), and my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn). However, I want to emphasise a couple of important points, which I hope will help the House to understand the issue.

The Home Affairs Committee has looked carefully at this issue and took a year producing a report, including a visit to Portugal. I was not able to go, but other colleagues, including the hon. Members for Hertsmere (Mr Clappison) and for Cambridge, as well as the then hon. Member for Rochester and Strood, went to Portugal and provided a good outline of what is happening there. The hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston), Chair of the Health Committee, is right: we need to make comparisons and see what works elsewhere. That was reflected in the excellent speech by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion, who has campaigned long and hard on this issue.

The main conclusion of the Committee’s report in 2012 was to urge the Government to initiate a royal commission, which we said could be done in a short period of time. We were not in favour of a royal commission that would last an age, and we felt that it could be completed to a timetable. Had that been accepted in 2012, we would have had the results by now; sadly, the idea was not taken up by the Government. I do not think a royal commission will be set up in the next six months, but I hope that future Governments will see it as a way of ensuring that all voices on drugs policy are heard. There are many voices out there, as we see from the number of right hon. and hon. Members who wish to take part in the debate, many of whom have great expertise in this matter. Let us hear all those voices, take the evidence, and come to a conclusion. A Select Committee can only do so much—all Select Committees try their best to cover a full agenda—and a royal commission would enable us to do much more.

[Mr Mike Hancock]

Will the right hon. Gentleman draw the attention of his Committee very rapidly to the issue raised by the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith)—I also raised it in the Chamber 30 years ago—about people going into prison and coming out as heroin addicts? There needs to be a review of the way that prisons combat drugs, and I hope the Home Affairs Committee will take up the issue rapidly.

[Keith Vaz]

The first point I was going to make about drugs policy after calling for a royal commission was about prisons. The issue was raised by the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith), and brilliantly and eloquently exposed in the book by the hon. Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman), who is sitting behind the Minister. He has great knowledge and expertise from his years at the criminal Bar, and he mentioned many different aspects of the criminal justice system. There is a whole chapter on drugs in prison, and I commend the book to Members of the House. He may even have copies of it to sell to Members after the debate.

The Committee called for mandatory testing of prisoners on entry and exit, and we wanted to ensure that on exit, ex-prisoners are met at the gates and given the treatment they deserve, so that they do not reoffend and go back to prison. We found, as the hon. Member for Richmond Park said, that a quarter of prisoners first discover a taste for drugs while in prison. That is a shocking statistic and the number may even have gone up. Drugs are being used in prison and it is not acceptable. The prison authorities need to do much more, but we need to rehabilitate people, so that they do not reoffend as soon as they come out. A former Minister with responsibility for prisons is in the Chamber. He will have more knowledge of that, but I hope we get commitments from the Government and the Minister that more will be done.

[Ian Swales]

Will the right hon. Gentleman ensure that, in any work his Committee does on drugs in prison, we do not narrowly define drugs? Legal and illegal drugs have been mentioned in the debate. I know from a visit to my local prison that the main drug misuse is of prescription drugs.

[Keith Vaz]

That was going to be my second point. I have a feeling that Liberal Democrat Members have a copy of my speech.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

That is impossible. You were not going to speak.

[Keith Vaz]

Exactly. The Liberal Democrats have an incredible mind. They are able to predict exactly what hon. Members are going to say.

Correctly, the hon. Gentleman referred to prescription drugs, which had not been mentioned. The Committee was extremely concerned by the increase in the use of prescription drugs. Indeed, when the Committee was in Miami, as hon. Members would expect it to be, en route for Colombia to look at where 70% of the cocaine in our country comes from—we have done our homework—we heard of the first case of an American doctor being prosecuted for prescribing drugs. As we know, drugs become currency in prisons and outside. That is why there is a responsibility on the medical profession to ensure that doctors prescribe effectively and understand what is happening to prescription drugs if certain patients keep coming in and asking for them. It is important to ensure that we consider the availability of those drugs, which are perfectly legal.

I have not seen the Government statement on psychoactive substances so I cannot comment on it—I believe it was a written statement, and they never send the Committee advance copies. I just remind the House that the Committee was clear that the onus ought to be on the retailers who sell psychoactive substances. I did not realise that the Government were calling for a complete ban, but where psychoactive substances are sold, we should prosecute retailers for selling them. There is no point waiting for someone to die. It is essential we do something at the beginning by getting those who sell the drugs in the first place.

My final point is on money laundering and the weakness of successive Governments’ regimes to deal with criminality. As we have heard, the drugs trade is the second most profitable illegal activity in the world. It is worth some $380 billion a year, most of which enters the financial system, some through offshore areas such as Gibraltar and other areas of that kind. We need to ensure that authorities co-operate. I am not singling Gibraltar out because you are in the Chair, Mr Deputy Speaker.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Order. Just for correctness, I am not the chair of the Gibraltar group, but I was in the past. I am sure the right hon. Gentleman needs to take this up with the new chair.

[Keith Vaz]

There is no criticism of you, Mr Deputy Speaker, of the new chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Gibraltar or of anyone in Gibraltar, but we have discovered that some areas of the world are being used to launder money from drugs. Our financial authorities are not strong enough to deal with the way in which money goes through the system. That is why the Committee believes that bankers at the very senior level should be held criminally responsible if they know or are aware of laundering, or if they did not take action to prevent it.

[Stephen Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman is right to consider asset recovery to deal with money laundering and criminal actions. He will be aware that we have an opportunity to consider that under the Serious Crime Bill. Does he share my concern about the drafting of the asset recovery clauses? Will his Committee consider that before we debate the Bill? Does he agree that the Bill needs to take on board lessons from places such as Italy?

[Keith Vaz]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I am not sure that the Committee has time to consider that before Christmas, but I will do so with him. Let us sit down and see whether we can get an amendment together. I am happy to support him to make the Bill tougher, because it needs to be.

I commend the proposers of the motion.. This is a very important debate, and we do not debate UK drugs policy often enough. We need to ensure that we have more time to debate this serious and important subject.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Diana Johnson]

I do not want to be considered complacent, but we need to get all the evidence on the table so that we can assess it. There is some merit in looking at what has happened regarding treatment in this country over the past 10 to 12 years. The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction says that this country is well ahead of comparators. In 2010 60% of opioid users were in treatment. That compares with 12% in the Netherlands and 25% in Sweden, so I am not sure that I agree with the motion that the status quo is failing. Drug-related deaths among the under-30s have halved in a decade, and it has been calculated that getting people into drug treatment has prevented 4.9 million crimes being committed, saving the economy £960 million. This is evidence that we should all consider.

[Keith Vaz]

My hon. Friend has always been very thoughtful and careful in the way in which she has dealt with this issue. I agree that we need to get all the evidence out and examine it. Will members of the Opposition Front-Bench team commit to establishing a royal commission to look at the issue in detail so that we can base our policy on the evidence?

[Diana Johnson]

I am grateful to the Chair of the Select Committee. What worries me about the idea that a royal commission will solve the problem for us is that there are issues that we need to tackle now—for example, legal highs. I am pleased, as I said at the outset, that we now have a plan from the Government for legislation in relation to legal highs. I am not discounting a royal commission, but we need to keep abreast of the issues that are developing now. We need to put in place ways of tackling legal highs and other issues.

It is important to remember that access to treatment is a key issue. In 2001 it took nine weeks to access treatment; in 2011 it took five days. We should be mindful that that was because of the investment in health services. Once people are in treatment, it is important to make sure that they complete it. In 2005-06, 35,000 people dropped out and only 11,000 completed treatment, whereas in 2011-12, 17,000 dropped out but 29,000 completed treatment. We should be aware of such evidence when we debate the drugs situation.