Terrorist Offenders (Restriction of Early Release) Bill
Debate between Khalid Mahmood and Julian LewisWednesday 12th February 2020
(4 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Committee of the whole House Amendments as at 12 February 2020 (revised) - (12 Feb 2020)
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.