Terrorist Offenders (Restriction of Early Release) Bill

Khalid Mahmood Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 12th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

I am pleased to hear that, and I hope we will never again be in a situation where someone who led a review is not aware of what is going on years later. That simply cannot and should not happen, as I am sure the Justice Secretary would agree.

There are concerns about the Ministry of Justice listening, and the extent to which justice has been a priority for the Government over the past decade. The coalition Government chose not to make the Ministry of Justice a protected Department when they implemented spending cuts That led to 40% cuts over the past decade, including to the prisons that today we expect to play a vital role in offender management. We know that 21,000 police officers disappeared from our streets, and prison officer numbers have been slashed. There are currently 18,912 front-line prison officers, which is not yet back to 2010 levels. That loss of prison officers has not just reduced the capacity of prisons to deal with rehabilitation; it also means that years of experience of working in challenging environments in our prisons have been lost.

In 2019, 35% of prison officers had been in post for less than two years, compared with just 7% in 2010. I do not mean that those officers are not doing their best in difficult circumstances, but the Government needlessly threw away valuable experience in our prisons.

[Mr Khalid Mahmood (Birmingham, Perry Barr) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that that lack of prison officers, the privatisation of some of our prisons, and having those young officers, has led to problems in Her Majesty’s Prison Birmingham, which has seen a number of riots over the past couple of years? It adds more to the Treasury’s costs if we have to take away people with experience and later bring them back.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

My hon. Friend speaks with great authority about HMP Birmingham, and he is right to identify that if prisons are run in such a way there will be consequences because the time available for meaningful activity is reduced.

The Justice Secretary talked in the media at the weekend about improvements in our justice system since Mr Acheson’s report. He repeated that in his speech and he has repeated it in an intervention a moment or two ago. I therefore thought I would compare what the Justice Secretary is saying with the views of the independent chief inspector of prisons. The latest annual report from Peter Clarke states that

“far too many of our jails have been plagued by drugs, violence, appalling living conditions and a lack of access to meaningful rehabilitative activity.”

That should be a wake-up call to the Government. Mr Clarke went on to say that

“levels of self-harm were disturbingly high and self-inflicted deaths tragically increased by nearly one-fifth on the previous year.”

That is no way for the Prison Service to be run and things must change.

There is also, if I may say so, an issue at the Ministry of Justice with the Government failing to provide it with stable leadership. The right hon. and learned Gentleman is the seventh Justice Secretary since 2010. Of those seven, five have served for 18 months or less. The role of Lord Chancellor should have been respected and not been subject to a revolving door. No wonder there is such a lack of direction and no wonder there is no long-term planning. Justice Secretaries are simply not in post long enough. There are even indications from 10 Downing Street that half the Cabinet could be out by Friday.

I say in all sincerity to the right hon. and learned Gentleman that I very much hope he survives in this role—I hope I have not jinxed him by saying that; I could have just ruined his Friday—because there is an enormous job to do. There are 224 terrorist prisoners in England and Wales, of whom 173 have been assessed as having extreme Islamist views. We also know that there is a growing threat from far-right terrorism. If we want properly to manage the risk of terrorist offenders, we need the most effective targeted de-radicalisation programmes to be delivered by staff working in the best conditions we can provide for them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Khalid Mahmood (Birmingham, Perry Barr) (Lab)]

It is always a privilege to follow the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes). I was privileged to work with him when he was Minister for Security—a time he mentioned in his speech.

My thoughts are with the victims of all terrorist attacks and their families, and I recognise the hardship that they have all gone through. It is important, in this debate and in any debate on the subject, that we remember those who have suffered incredibly because of our failures as parliamentarians, failures of our legislation, and failures in the support with which we provide people.

There are two issues to consider: resources for our Prison Service, and the things behind that—the soft power, which we need to get right. It is not enough to extend sentences; we have to put right the things behind that. That is what I want to concentrate on. Of course we should look at the number of prison officers and the support they get—a point my hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds) rightly made. It is important to ensure the right corrective controls in the prison framework. At the moment, we are failing on that. We need to get that right, get proper resourcing, and move forward.

A lot of Members spoke about imams coming into prisons. The issue is twofold; there is the question of psychotherapy and counselling for the people they are visiting, and the need to tackle those people’s misguided version of Islam. They do not practise Islam; they practise what they believe is Islam. Islam in itself is a peaceful religion.

[Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)]

As a religious education teacher, I concur with the hon. Member’s viewpoint. In no way do the radical views of this small minority reflect the views of Islam. I am glad he raised this point; it is important that we ensure that it comes across in our national media, and in national debates.

[Mr Mahmood]

I thank the hon. Member for his contribution.

How do we assess and work with these radicalised people? A lot has been made of deradicalisation, but we need the right people, theologically speaking, to do it. We do not have a principal education facility to train imams who go into prisons. I had a friend who was deputy governor at HMP Birmingham. The prison brought in an imam to try to speak to somebody who was radicalising the rest of the inmates. After a two-hour one-to-one, the imam came out saying, “I think I agree with the inmate.” That was due to the so-called imam’s lack of knowledge. Just because someone calls themselves an imam, it does not mean that they are able to deal with this important issue.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

Is the situation not even a little worse than that? There have been reports of imams from the Deobandi sect of Salafists being allowed access to prisoners.

[Mr Mahmood]

The right hon. Member speaks from experience of these issues. He is quite right to say that. It is very difficult for those who do not understand religion to put people into places of religious control and support. That is my clear point. We should have proper registration of people who go into these institutions. Anybody who goes into them should be required to have the proper qualifications and certifications, yet we let most people walk in, and we say that they can do this job. We have heard stories of radicalisation being perpetuated in certain prisons by some of the people who have gone into them. It is important that we look at how we move forward.

[Sir John Hayes]

I intervene partly to pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman for the good work that he has done in this field over a considerable time. He points out the difference between Islamism and Islam—a difference too rarely identified by our media, as he says. Perhaps a review of all the Prison Service’s work on the appointment of imams and their work in prisons should be part of the Government’s ongoing plans to address the issue.

[Mr Mahmood]

Again, I concur with the right hon. Member. As for the Government moving forward on this, for the past 10 years we have not paid enough attention to what has gone on. We need to look at this seriously. The two incidents we are considering, as well as others, and the potential release of other prisoners have brought the issue to our attention.

A big functional issue in prison is how we position inmates. The Acheson report looks at segregating these prisoners. How to deradicalise is a really big issue. If we put these prisoners all together, they become a group. If we put them with other prisoners, they radicalise them. We cannot keep prisoners on their own, because human rights law does not allow that. There is no magic wand of deradicalisation. We have to take the issue very seriously. We have to get the right people, with the right understanding. Good work has been done in Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia on ways of deradicalising. We have to learn lessons from how those countries are proceeding, in order to address these issues. We have to go further in looking at those methods, whether they are relevant, and how they relate to what the community wants to do.

We have to look not just at prisons, but at external departments that deal with the issue. We have to consider education, under what licences we allow madrassahs to operate—if they have a licence at all. The only consideration for a local authority in granting permission for a madrassah is whether it would cause traffic congestion. If an applicant clears that hurdle, they can have one. No heed is given to the qualifications of the imam, there is no proper scrutiny of their past, and there are no security checks. Those are very important issues for us to look at in deciding how we move forward.

As for the people we know of, they are the tip of the iceberg. There is still significant radicalisation taking place, and we need to address that in the community. Radicalisation is progressing in prisons because there is a captive audience there. We need to move forward. We need to look at the availability of resources in prisons, because the resources that are required to deal with this problem are quite significant







While we are looking at Islamic extremism, we also need to look at far-right extremism. If this Bill is to apply to terrorists, it must also apply to far-right extremists —it is important that that is said. The contribution of my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) made a lot of sense. I pay tribute to her for the great work that she has done on these issues, including as Chair of the Home Affairs Committee. She deserves commendation for the great balance with which she has worked on these matters. It is important for that work to move forward.

It is also important to look at how we police these issues. As my right hon. Friend said, we need to look again at control orders for when people come out of prison. In the past 10 years, we have forgotten about control orders. We need to get back to that issue, look at what is valid and appropriate, and see how we can move forward. That is hugely important.

I support the Bill because it is necessary for us to move forward with the resources currently available to us, but we need to have a much deeper look at how to resolve this issue for all our communities in the long term.