Terrorism Act 2000 (Proscribed Organisations) (Amendment) (No. 2) Order 2015

Lord Ashton of Hyde Excerpts

Thursday 26th March 2015 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

That the draft order laid before the House on 23 March be approved.

Relevant document: 27th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments

[Lord Ashton of Hyde (Con)]

My Lords, the threat level in the UK, which is set by the independent Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre, remains at severe. This means that a terrorist attack in our country is highly likely and could occur without warning. We can never entirely eliminate the threat from terrorism, but we are determined to do all that 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 disrupt terrorist activities.

The two groups we propose to add to the list of international terrorist organisations, amending Schedule 2 to the Terrorism Act 2000, are Jamaat ul-Ahrar and the Haqqani network. This is the 18th proscription order under that Act. As noble Lords will appreciate, I am unable to comment on specific intelligence. However, I can provide a brief summary of each group’s activities in turn.

Jamaat ul-Ahrar is a militant Islamist group that split away from Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan in August 2014. JuA aims to establish an Islamic caliphate in Pakistan and aspires to extend global jihad into the Indian subcontinent. The group has claimed responsibility for a number of attacks in November 2014, including a grenade attack in Karachi that killed three members of the Sindh Assembly and injured 50 workers; twin bombings targeting peace committee volunteers in the Chinari village of Safi Tehsil in the Mohmand Agency, which killed at least six people; and the suicide bomber attack on the Pakistan side of Wagah border crossing, shortly after the famous flag-lowering ceremony had concluded, which killed over 60 people. In September 2014, its spokesman, Ehsanullah Ehsan, released a statement criticising the British Government for arresting al-Muhajiroun associates and made a threat, stating that,

“your future security depends upon how nicely you treat the Muslims in Britain”.

Additionally, the group claimed responsibility for the fatal attacks on Christian sites in Lahore earlier this month.

The Haqqani network is an Islamist, nationalist group seeking to establish sharia law and to control territory in Afghanistan. It is ideologically aligned with the Taliban. The Haqqani network has links with a number of terrorist groups in the region, including a proscribed central Asian group, the Islamic Jihad Union, and has long-established links with al-Qaeda. The Haqqani network continues to play an active and influential role in the Afghan insurgency in the east of the country and is seeking to expand its influence into other areas of Afghanistan.

It can be difficult to identify specific Haqqani network responsibility for attacks, given the Taliban practice of claiming attacks on behalf of the insurgency as a whole. The Haqqani network is believed to have been responsible for the attack against a British embassy vehicle in November 2014, which killed six people including a UK national and an Afghan member of the UK embassy staff, and injuring more than 30 people. It is likely that the Haqqani network will continue to view Kabul as a key target location due to the concentration of UK and western interests in the capital. The Haqqani network has been banned as a terrorist group by the USA since September 2012, by Canada since May 2013 and by the UN since November 2012.

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[Lord Marlesford (Con)]

My Lords, I support very much what my noble friend is proposing in this order, and in doing so I should like to say that the plethora of these splinter groups which are affiliated to what is now the umbrella body known as ISIS or Islamic State is an extremely worrying phenomenon. It is interesting to discover that new ones are constantly being created, which of course is quite a usual technique among terrorist organisations in order to avoid any disruption to their activities.

In that connection, I want once again to ask my noble friend about the Muslim Brotherhood, which is actually a very dangerous organisation. It, too, seeks to have theocracy with sharia law and is prepared to use violent methods to achieve that. As my noble friend will remember, the Muslim Brotherhood was started up in 1928 and in January 1949 it assassinated the Egyptian Prime Minister. It was banned by President Nasser after it tried to assassinate him in 1954. It was also responsible for the assassination of President Anwar Sadat in October 1981. The organisation is the trunk of the tree, the roots of which are the Wahhabi and the Salafists, and the branches of which are the various organisations to which my noble friend has referred.

At this point we are in more danger from terrorism in this country than probably at any stage in my lifetime, and it is getting worse and more serious. There are actions which could be taken which I much regret have not been taken on what are not very good grounds. A particular point which I do not apologise for returning to again is the need for tighter control over passports, in particular through the introduction of a system by which the British Government are at least aware of the other passports being held by British passport holders.

The Government recently announced the reintroduction next month of exit checks, which is thoroughly desirable. I am glad that that is going to happen, although I am a little worried about the mechanics of how it is to be done. Will the checks on exit be as thorough as those on entry? Apparently, the exit checks are going to be done by the agencies carrying the passengers—the shipping lines, train companies and airlines—rather than by immigration officers who check entrants.

It would be a great help if we had at least some knowledge of the second passports being held by people. There is no discrimination about it. I was very concerned by the argument used by the Home Office against this proposal because it struck me that it was totally out of proportion to the threat we face. Perhaps I may remind the Minister by quoting from the letter signed by his noble friend:

“If there were security benefits, we would look to make best use of such a database”—

that is, a database of second passports. The letter continues:

“However, we are not persuaded that this is the case. It would create a level of intrusion for all British citizens who hold dual nationality, who would be obliged to keep HMPO informed of any change to their second passport. There are legitimate concerns about imposing such intrusion on one particular class of UK nationals, which we do not believe would be outweighed by operational benefits”.

I suggest that, with the situation we face, the arguments against this are so trivial that it is absolutely astonishing that they have even been raised. We have had cases in recent weeks and months of people getting out of the United Kingdom who should have been kept in the country because they were on bail or wanted for terrorist offences. Of course, in many cases these sorts of people have other passports, so they may travel in and out when it suits them on British passports and then do other things on other passports.

All I am asking is for my noble friend to ensure, please, at any rate during the period when all of us are campaigning for our particular political persuasions, that the Home Office will continue to work on better methods of securing our borders and defending the realm. It is certainly true that a balance has to be struck between national security and human rights, but personal privacy, in such a period of crisis as we currently face, cannot itself rate highly against the need to introduce all necessary measures.

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords who have participated and particularly the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, for her support not only today but in previous discussions on terrorism, along with her noble friend Lord Rosser, who has been constructively critical over many hours of debate on these subjects.

I begin with the noble Baroness’s question about why we have not proscribed the Haqqani network before, when it has been proscribed by other countries. When we proscribe a particular organisation depends on the extensive consideration that we have across government. We know that the Haqqani network has met the statutory test for proscription for some time, being concerned in terrorism. When a group meets the test of being concerned in terrorism, there are then discretionary factors which may mean that a decision is not taken to proscribe it at a particular time. Those include the nature and scale of an organisation’s activities, the specific threat it poses to the UK, the specific threat that it poses to British nationals overseas, the extent of the organisation’s presence in the UK and the need to support other members of the international community in the global fight against terrorism.

We keep groups of concern such as the Haqqani network under review. The attack against the British embassy vehicle in November 2014, which killed six people, including a UK national and an Afghan member of the UK embassy staff, and injured more than 30 people, meant that the Home Secretary considered that the discretionary factors are now balanced in favour of proscription.

By contrast, the other organisation that we are talking about today, JuA, has not been proscribed by any other country in the world. Depending on the nature of the particular threat from each of those organisations, we can act before other countries, but in some cases it is not appropriate to do so, in the light of the tests that we have to apply to proscribe organisations.

My noble friend Lord Marlesford asked—not, I think, for the first time—about the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood is not proscribed in the UK at the moment. Proscription can be considered only when the Home Secretary believes it to be concerned with terrorism. However, the Muslim Brotherhood is an organisation that the Government have significant concerns about and we will continue to monitor its activities very closely. We will seek to ensure that the Muslim Brotherhood and groups like it cannot operate without challenge in public places in this country. We will not tolerate secretive meetings behind closed doors on premises funded by the taxpayer. We will ensure that civic organisations are made well aware of the Muslim Brotherhood and groups like it and of the names under which they operate and the ways in which they go about their business.

As noble Lords will know, the Prime Minister commissioned an internal review, which was submitted to him in July. The National Security Adviser is advising the PM on the resulting policy options. We understand that the PM has not yet made a final decision about the timing of an announcement on the Muslim Brotherhood review, although the Government have committed to making the findings public.