Abu Qatada

Lord Clinton-Davis Excerpts

Tuesday 7th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, my noble friend is right to point to the development of modern means of communications over the past 20 or 30 years and the advantages that they give to extremist preachers of this sort, which was never the case in the past. That is one reason why it is very important that we have very tight controls on what forms of communications will be available to Qatada in his house, with his family, when he is subject to bail.

My noble friend asked about other countries and rightly pointed to the problems of deporting individuals to a large number of countries throughout the world because of their human rights record. That is something that we are simply stuck with; there is not much that we can do about it, because of the nature of the countries that we are talking about and the nature of what goes on. Certainly, that imposes enormous costs on us. I cannot give my noble friend precise figures of the costs of Abu Qatada over the past 10 years. However, I think all noble Lords will be pretty sure that they must have been fairly large costs considering that he has spent some five years in prison and is now going to be living at home, presumably surviving on benefits of some sort, along with his wife and five children. The same was true beforehand and there are all the costs of supervision that my noble friend mentioned, which are also very great indeed. Yes, keeping the security of this country is not a cheap option.

[Lord Clinton-Davis]

Is it not clear that this man has made outrageous and bloodthirsty comments about a variety of circumstances, particularly concerning the Jewish community? Is there any evidence that those threats have been resiled from? If not, that is highly relevant in the circumstances which the Government have to consider.

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I am not aware that those have been resiled from but I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, for emphasising the particularly nasty nature of this man and the sort of threats he has made, to Jewish people and to a great many others. That significant fact ought to be taken into account and I am grateful to the noble Lord for bringing it to the attention of the House.