Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill

Debate between Keith Vaz and Hazel Blears

Tuesday 16th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Hazel Blears]

The hon. Lady has deep, if not unique, experience of the practicalities of these issues in her community in relation to Northern Ireland terrorism, which we have faced for many decades in this country and in Ireland as a whole. She makes a powerful point. I am sure that the provisions aimed at preventing young people in particular from being drawn into terrorism would have the same applicability in Ireland as they do in our country. In fact, I am sure there are many lessons we can learn from the dreadful experiences in Ireland that could inform our policy and practice in England, Scotland and Wales. I hope she will return to that in her remarks later on.

I welcome part 5 of the Bill and putting the Prevent and Channel programmes on a statutory footing. I hope that that will succeed in achieving more consistency, better practice and the sharing of projects. At the outset, I say to the Minister that I was very grateful for the recent briefing given to members of the Intelligence and Security Committee on the operation of some of these programmes. I think I saw a step change in intensity, breadth and depth in some of the programmes being implemented. I give the Government credit for doing that. As ever, I will say to him, “Good try and good effort, but there is much, much more we can do,” but I was pleased to have that information.

Amendments 30 and 31 are small, if not quite perfectly formed, but I hope that they will enable us to have a good debate on one of the most important things we ought to be doing to stop people being drawn into terrorism: challenging and combating the ideology that is the foundation of many of the problems we find here and across the world in the global jihad movement and in extreme political Islamism. I hope the amendments will be a catalyst for debate and I am very interested in what the Minister has to say.

Amendment 30 relates to clause 21(1), which puts a general duty on local authorities and other agencies to have regard to work done to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism when they are exercising their functions. The amendment specifically requires that when those duties are being carried out, they must also develop capacity to combat and reject the messages of extremism. Amendment 31 relates to clause 24, which provides that the Government should produce guidance on how those duties in clause 21 are to be carried out. I am very disappointed that the guidance has not yet been published. The Government’s explanatory notes to the Bill state that the guidance will be published in tandem with the Bill. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to have the fullest possible debate that I want us to have, without having some guidance in front of us. A key question for the Minister is when the guidance will be available. Will it be available before Report at the very least, so that we can have a full and proper debate when the Bill returns to the House? Amendment 31 states that the guidance should include provision on developing capacity to combat ideology.

The purpose of the amendments is to fill a gap in the Bill. My biggest concern is that part 5 of the Bill is couched in terms of addressing the vulnerability of individuals being drawn into terrorism. Clause 28 refers time and again to working with individuals who are already at risk of being drawn into terrorism. There are two things to say about that: it is a narrow interpretation that deals with individuals, but it also deals with individuals when they are already on the path to radicalisation. I believe there is a real gap in the Bill. As well as work with individuals, work ought to be undertaken on a broader basis with families and communities to build resilience so that people are able to withstand and reject the messages of extremism in the first place.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

I thank my right hon. Friend for all the amazingly important work she does on this issue. She is making a very powerful argument. Do we not also need to reassure families that the purpose of participation in those engagement activities is not punishment but rehabilitation? We have had far too many examples of families ringing up and reporting young people at the centre of this only for those young people then to be broken away from their families. It is important to keep the family unit close together when dealing with these issues.

[Hazel Blears]

My right hon. Friend makes an important point. He is correct to say that much of this work needs to be done with families in a supportive environment. People who are already involved in terrorism are another matter. Unfortunate though this may be for some of the families affected, there will often be a case for prosecution when people cross the line and engage in criminal activity. Before that point, however, if we can find at the earliest possible stage people who are just beginning to be groomed—this is about grooming, which is relevant to other contexts as well—and who are about to take that path, and if we can support them and get good families and the rest of the community around them to give them resilience, we will have a much better chance of keeping them out of trouble than if we let them go down that path. It is much harder to bring people back than to stop them getting on that conveyor belt in the first place. That is why this work is so important.

Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill

Debate between Keith Vaz and Hazel Blears

Tuesday 2nd December 2014 Commons Chamber

[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.