Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill

Lord Marlesford Excerpts

Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords & Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 17th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stunell]

My Lords, I support the amendment. We have rehearsed this issue at each stage of the Bill and I remind the House that a wide range of external organisations share the view that there should be a review. We heard from the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, and now from the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, that such a thing might add value. The Government have struggled to resist the reasoning put forward. The bottom line seems to be that the Government do not want a review and it is extremely difficult to penetrate why that might be when one looks at the advantages that flow from having one.

It is important to understand that activity is no guarantee of effectiveness. A lot of work goes on, but how effective is it? We heard evidence from the noble Lords, Lord West and Lord Harris, that it is not uniformly good. Certainly, the impression of those who believe themselves to be the targets of Prevent is that it is not uniformly good. The Minister needs to answer in detail what the Government’s reservations are about any sort of review along the lines of the amendment.

I noted carefully what the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, had to say about the Prevent oversight board. He said that it had not met often enough. Providentially for his case, it had met in the last week, but he did not disclose how long before that it last met. If the next meeting is in six months and he thinks that is soon enough, I presume the gap was quite extensive.

I notice that my supposition was, to some extent, supported by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, who said of last week’s meeting that he was glad the Prevent oversight board was at last showing some signs of life. I hope I am not putting words into his mouth; I think that is what he said. Bearing in mind the qualified support that has come for the Prevent oversight board’s activity and effectiveness, I wonder whether the Government are really satisfied it is the right vehicle for a review, a substitute for a review or gives all the answers that a review would. It seems likely that that is not the case.

Other specific concerns have come to light since our previous debate. I have been approached by an outside organisation that, until this year, was a provider of Prevent projects to those who had been referred. It pointed out to me that it has now been superseded, at short notice in its opinion, by a private provider. It alleges that there is no effective procurement policy for those programmes. Far too often, it appears to depend on the knowledge and contacts of a Prevent co-ordinator, rather than a rigorous management process. I hope the Minister will be able, at least in principle, to give some reassurance on that. To help her in giving that reassurance, could she say something about the proportion of projects that are delivered through NGOs, the proportion delivered through private companies and the proportion delivered through local authorities or other public services directly? Have those proportions changed over the last four or five years, as my informant alleges? If there has been a change, was it cost-driven or based on an evaluation of whether particular projects were the wrong part of the curate’s egg, and were therefore dropped, or were too expensive for the results?

All of this raises the question of what results and criteria are being used in allocating, renewing or discontinuing such contracts. Surely evaluation is a key part of that; therefore, review of the process seems all the more necessary. I hope, for all the reasons that have been rehearsed, not least that one, that the Minister is able to accept this amendment today.

[Lord Marlesford (Con)]

My Lords, Prevent is an important part of the Government’s anti-terrorism strategy. We have heard about a number of problems relating to it, which have been there for a while. I am persuaded that it is therefore sensible to review the policy and see whether it should be changed, replaced or whatever.

The noble Lord, Lord Stunell, said he could not understand why the Government were resisting this idea. I can tell him exactly why. It is because the Home Office ploughs on regardless. Even when the tractor’s wheels are stuck in the mud, they go on spinning. That is why the Home Office needs constant help in knowing when things should be reviewed. I strongly suggest that my noble friend tears up the brief that says “Don’t review” and says, “Yes, we’ll look at it”.

[Baroness Warsi (Con)]

My Lords, with the leave of the House—and I have spoken to both our Front Bench and the clerk—I will refer slightly to the last amendment, which does actually refer to the current amendment. I was in the Chamber when this amendment was called.

I want to put a couple of things on record—first, my views on Prevent. I have written about this extensively. I will not plug the book, but it is available on Amazon. In that book, I talk about Prevent in detail. I talk about how, when the policy was started in 2003 and first published in this iteration in 2006, I supported it. It was effectively an upstream intervention into areas where we felt we could intervene, predominantly with young people and British Muslims at that time, although we are increasingly dealing with far-right extremism now. We were predominantly intervening with young people who may be attracted into terrorism. How could anybody disagree with that principle?

In my book—and this is the issue that I raised with the noble Lord, Lord Carlile—I work through the various iterations of Prevent. It has changed from what it was in 2003 to what it is now in 2018. It started as a policy specifically designed to be run as an internal discussion within communities of what could be considered to be extremist views. It was supposed to be a genuine, non-criminalised safe space and a battle of ideas—something I fundamentally supported—but it became a policy that was done not by the community but to the community. This is an issue I have consistently raised: what the policy became and the way it was then implemented; the level and quality of training, the material being used, the way it was implemented in different schools and differently across different communities. All of this—with 100 pages of citations if that helps the noble Lord—is detailed in the book, because it was important to say clearly that a principle of policy that I supported has, over time, become fundamentally flawed in its implementation and lost the trust of the communities we were trying to influence.

As a British Muslim parent whose children are likely to be vulnerable and to be approached by those who want to lead them astray, whether into extremism, terrorism or elsewhere, I would be the first in line to say this policy needs to be supported. But I do not want a policy on our books, which has statutory basis, which is badly implemented.