Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill

Lord Carlile of Berriew Excerpts

Tuesday 13th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (LD)]

My Lords, the terrible events in Paris last week give great grief without measurable mitigation. Nevertheless, such events provoke an instructive debate in which we have an opportunity to reassess some of the beliefs we have about the way in which politics, legislation and the authorities should deal with issues such as civil liberties and terrorism. The events in Paris have led many to re-examine the crucial balance between state power and civil liberties; we do well to remember that this is not science but art, and that it must to an extent reflect the development of events.

The civil liberties effect of what happened last week was not merely the continuing results for those few suspects who are still being hunted as alleged conspirators in what occurred. The effect on civil liberties has been to demonstrate how such events can put the majority in fear of exercising their basic rights, such as: free speech; artistic impression, which I regard as very important; the right to laugh at other people’s beliefs in a democratic society; and the corresponding responsibility to absorb being laughed about—particularly if you are involved in politics.

In this House, we are fortunate to have such a wide expertise of all the relevant disciplines and issues that can inform a Bill which is going to have considerable debate before your Lordships’ House, as the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, said, and will be fully considered. In this debate we have been particularly fortunate to hear two skilled maiden speeches from people who understand the security services and how they act. I look forward to hearing future contributions from the noble Lords, Lord Evans and Lord Green, on these issues. Indeed, I believe it behoves those who govern this country, and the two Houses of this Parliament, to listen to the advice of people such as those two noble Lords; to the advice of the predecessor of the noble Lord, Lord Evans, the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, from whom we shall hear later; and to the advice of his successor, Mr Parker, who gave an unusual and not quite unprecedented but very well informed and important speech last week.

I say to my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford that to caricature a group of officials at the Home Office as a cadre, in the way in which I think he intended, does little justice to people who—in my experience—agonise over every issue that affects civil liberties well before they ever reach the point of advising Ministers. As others have said, we must remember that the people who police terrorism— whether they are police officers, the Security Service, the Secret Intelligence Service, or those officials in the Home Office and others—are brave and thoughtful people who play a very important part in the life of this country, and who have been extraordinarily successful. One of the reasons why there have been so few terrorism events in this country is because of the rate of attrition which has been caused by those services, and we should not forget that for one moment.

This Bill takes a few necessary steps. Some of them do not go quite as far as one would wish, others a little further, but it takes some important steps which are a responsible act by this Government. There are other issues to which we will return after the election, such as the whole picture of communications data. The canard “snoopers’ charter” is a brilliant piece of branding, but it is grossly misleading. We must allow the authorities of course to have a proportionate, reviewable, and judicially scrutinised set of powers, but a set of powers that will enable them to catch terrorists and putative terrorists. When the media naively said that there had been 50 telephone calls between the wives of the two terrorist brothers in France last week, what they should have said was that the wives’ telephones were used for communications which may well have been relevant. The authorities need to be able to take an interest in such communications. Those people who really believe that the authorities spend their time looking at the Amazon or Tesco Direct communications, or the idle chatter of your Lordships and other more ordinary citizens, are simply not looking at reality. As I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Evans, would confirm, MI5 does not have the time to intervene in the communications of ordinary citizens unless there is a reason; occasionally it happens by mistake.

Subject to proper control by legislation, and subject to proper review, these measures are broadly necessary. One of the most effective forms of review is scrutiny. As I was David Anderson’s predecessor, my noble friend Lady Hamwee wanted to be courteous to me, so I will say what she wanted to say: one of those scrutineers is David Anderson and I can state, with uncharacteristic modesty, that the present Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation is matchless and incomparable in his role. We are very lucky to have him doing that job. In my comments on this Bill, I merely reflect what has been said by David Anderson, with whom I agree in all respects, and indeed the cogent summary that was given in a relatively short intervention by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, earlier in this debate.

I want to comment first on Clause 1, which relates to the seizure of passports. We heard some criticism of Clause 1, but I say to your Lordships that they have got to get real about what Clause 1 is dealing with. Let me give you an example. It is hypothetical but not unrealistic. Suppose a suspicious travel agent who is public spirited telephones the police and says, “I have just sold an air ticket in suspicious circumstances”, and the authorities decide it is worth following the person who has bought the air ticket. That kind of incident can occur within an hour, and it does not leave the time to go off to a judge to get permission to seize that passport. We have to allow the authorities to deal with the urgent provisions made in Clause 1 and Schedule 1.

Secondly, I turn to temporary exclusion orders. I absolutely welcome what my noble friend the Minister said in response to the representations by Mr Anderson. I agree with the independent reviewer that judicial intervention at the appropriate stage and in the appropriate way is desirable, and I look forward to seeing the Government tabling amendments which may not exactly reflect what Mr Anderson says but reflect the spirit of his representations.

The third thing I want to say is about Prevent. As someone said earlier, Prevent is a really difficult part of counterterrorism policy. I say that with feeling, because I played a part in the formation of the current Prevent strategy. The first thing to say about Prevent is that it cannot actually be done by the police. It is best done at ward level, at community level. It is better administered by local authorities, and by far and away in many areas the most successful participants come from the third sector and are not officials at all. Prevent needs imagination; it needs originality. I went to see one Prevent programme in which a young Muslim man was teaching young people about the dangers of being radicalised on the internet in the boxing club he was running, when they had had their bouts, were tired, and were drinking Lucozade or Red Bull by the side of the ring. The evidence was that that kind of activity is very successful. However, it is quite difficult to bottle that activity, so it needs a great deal of work and that means resources. Prevent has not had sufficient resources. Resources have been removed from some good programmes. It also needs better oversight. The Prevent Oversight Board, of which I am a member, actually does very little. It does not need control, but it either needs to be replaced by something that exercises a much more imaginative oversight over Prevent or it needs to be given more to do.

The fourth issue I want to mention is the Privacy and Civil Liberties Board. I am intensely suspicious when I open a tin that says “chocolate biscuits” and it contains cheese biscuits. I prefer what is in the tin to be reflected by what is on the tin. This is not a Privacy and Civil Liberties Board; this is a counterterrorism legislation review board, so if we are going to have that kind of board let us call it that. Let us be honest about what it is. I believe that reflects a view held by David Anderson. More importantly, it is vital that the independent reviewer has the capacity to see secret material, to act quickly in real time if necessary, and to communicate with the security services without having to consult a whole range of people, although he or she should be able to consult whom he or she wishes. My understanding—and I look forward to hearing from the Minister on this in due course—is that the board is being postponed in its operability at least for further reflection and consultation. It is inevitable that we will return to this after the general election has taken place, and through clear policy which will be subject to affirmative resolution if it is to be brought into force. I hope that the Government will agree that this provision, while welcome in principle, is not quite ready to be fully enacted at present. That is a perfectly respectable position for any Government to take, and I hope and trust that my Government will take it.

Those are my reflections on the Bill. I give one coda, which returns to where I started. It is about religion. I am not a religious person; indeed, I suspect that if I were provoked I would say that I believe that religion is responsible for quite a lot of ills in the world. But one thing that struck me when I looked at that parade in Paris on Saturday was that behind the phalanx of European leaders with their arms linked there was no phalanx of world religious leaders—although there were some. But among those religious leaders, there were four men from Albania, a small country which has desires to be part of mainstream Europe but which has quite a long way to go. They were the four leaders of the religious communities in Albania—two Muslims and two Christians arm in arm in declared solidarity that religion should never be used for the ends that were claimed last week. My call would be to the religious leaders of the world to link arms, as the European political leaders did, to draw to the world’s attention that, if there is a God, and if there are blessings from that God, one of them is peace and not a ghastly, asymmetrical conflict that threatens to visit us for another generation.