Security in the UK

Lord Judd Excerpts

Monday 10th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, I hope I will be forgiven if I start by saying that the concept of security can be very subjective. I think that if you talk today to thousands of people in Britain living in multi-storey blocks, their primary concern about security is about whether they are going to live securely and stably in their homes. I do not think it takes very much imagination to begin to draw lines between that reality, all that lies behind it and the issues which have preoccupied us in this debate.

I am one of those who believe absolutely fundamentally that ultimately the battle against terrorism is a battle for hearts and minds. In the context of this debate, we have had some very significant contributions from very experienced people which have strengthened my conviction. I was greatly heartened when the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, made the point that we have to look at the context and see the interrelationships and cannot look at the subject on too narrow a front. To hear her say that was indeed powerful.

In the same way, I thought my noble friend Lord Harris was making much the same point when he said that, in the end, there can be no absolute security and we should not pander to false illusions that there can be. What matters is society making rational choices about how it is going to allocate its resources: how much should go into building a society worth living in and how much should go into policing that society. That argument will never go away. It is a very real argument and has effects on people.

I have observed in my own life that terrorism thrives when there is a climate of ambivalence around, and of alienation and disaffection. Substantial numbers of people are not leaping out of their beds every morning and saying “These horrible things, how can they happen, how can we get these people and obliterate them?”. Many of them are saying, “How absolutely horrible these things are, and we would not be able to participate in anything like that ourselves, but perhaps, just perhaps, these people are on our side”. We have to face up to that. There is therefore a social dimension to terrorism and how we tackle it. There needs to be very intensive concentration on the provision of social infrastructure, particularly where communities find themselves in the midst of a large and growing number of people from completely different backgrounds. There must be good schools, good hospitals and good policing.

Several noble Lords have stressed in the debate today the importance of community policing, which is music to my ears, because I just do not understand how we can seriously take a stand against terrorism if we are not giving priority to community policing. It is not just about policemen going into the community to be the eyes and ears of the state in that community; it is about policemen building relationships with that community in which they actually enlist the community and create a shared sense of responsibility for ensuring the security that is necessary.

But we also have to be very clear about counterproductivity. I sometimes think that my biggest concern about the fight against terrorism is the danger of counterproductivity. Whatever the nature of terrorism and whatever its motivation, it is determined to reveal our society as hypocritical and ill founded, and our institutions as not worth having. We have to be very careful that we do not play into that sinister and manipulative argument. That is why, however tough the challenges and however real the immediate pressure on people in the front line, we have to maintain the highest standards of human rights and to ensure that our system of justice remains as transparent as it can possibly be. Of course I am a realist and realise that some of that justice cannot be transparent in a fight against terrorism, but we have to make sure that “because it cannot always be” does not become a convenient way of beginning to say more and more that the justice system is not going to be transparent. It needs to be transparent, and people need to have confidence in the system of justice. All these things matter tremendously, and I thought the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford made a very wise and thoughtful intervention about how we will win the battles in the fight against terrorism.

There is also an international dimension. I cannot accept that what we are doing in foreign policy has no implications for stability here. I was talking about alienation and disaffection. If we parade the significant part that we played in bringing about the arms trade treaty and claim credit for it but then refuse to stand up to the Saudi Arabians for what they are doing in Yemen, that has a direct relationship with the growth of alienation and dissolution, which becomes prey to manipulation by terrorist recruiters.

We have to be consistent, transparent and convincing in our foreign policy. Even journalists are now picking up the reality that, whatever may be said about victory in Mosul, this is about distorted minds: it is not just a physical defeat in battle. The terrorists will melt away and reassemble in other situations. Until we diminish the conceptions in the mind, we will always be on the defensive.

I applaud the police, the fire services—my God, I applaud the intelligence services—and all those involved, the medical and ambulance services and the rest, but this can become a sentimental rant. If we really value these people, how are we demonstrating that? How are we giving them pride of place in our society? We have been incredibly well blessed by the loyalty and devotion of our public services in a situation that has become intolerable given the great success, triumph and esteem of those who make money over those who serve the community.

All these things have to be brought together. There is no simple approach in which we can take one segment on its own and stand it up: they all interrelate.

I am most concerned that in all this we understand that, whether we like it or not, we are born into an international, interdependent community. There is no way that we can have an intelligence stand against extremism and terrorism on a national basis. Any effective stand must be made with others; we have to work with others. I have had the privilege of listening on Select Committees to people working in the area of policing and other spheres on an international basis. Let us call a spade a spade. I am not trying to refight the referendum—I am one of those who, however desperately unhappy, accepts the result of the referendum. If you have a referendum, you must accept the result. But virtually every person whom I heard who operates in this sphere talking to us on Select Committees said that of course pulling out of Europe is potentially a weakening of our security and police arrangements, because crime, drugs and trafficking—certainly terrorism—are all international issues.

Some people would argue that we have to keep a sense of proportion about this: we are particularly good at our policing and intelligence; will we not be weakening our position if we get ourselves bogged down with too many people internationally? The wiser people—my impression was that they were wiser; that was probably because I agreed with them—were saying no, you are only as strong as the weakest link. If you are to have an effective operation, where there is weakness, where things are not up to scratch, you need to be working at improving the situation internationally, not running away from it.

There is a huge and incredibly complex challenge here. I come back to what I said earlier: it is a battle for hearts and minds, and minds will win. Minds are influenced by hope, having a stake in a society that is worth living in, and individuals having a future and a stake in something that matters to their families, and the rest. That is how we will win. We have to be resolute in building social solidarity.