Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill

Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn Excerpts

Wednesday 28th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sharp of Guildford]

My Lords, my name is attached to quite a number of the amendments in this group. I am not going to repeat the arguments that have been put very ably by other noble Lords. I merely add that it is vital that there is the opportunity for open debate and discussion of radical and extremist views in our universities and in other educational institutions in this country so that they can be challenged and the views refuted. It seems to me that the great danger in shutting down this debate is that it goes underground. It goes to the internet and social media, which we know are of vital importance in influencing those who are susceptible to these sorts of views. That issue is just as important for schools, further education colleges and sixth-form colleges with 15, 16 and 17 year- olds. If universities were to be excluded from this legislation, serious consideration would need to be given to the exclusion of other educational institutions as well.

[Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn (Con)]

My Lords, this has been a radical debate in the profound sense of getting to the roots of things. We have been talking about the open society and its enemies, and the Government have rightly identified the enemies of the open society as armed terrorists. But who are the friends of the open society? Clearly, we are speaking about free speech and academic freedom. I think that the Government, in seeking to constrain the enemies of the open society, are wrong if they take steps that constrain free speech and academic debate. The debate this evening has very much highlighted those difficulties.

The noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, spoke of the difficulties of administrating these procedures if they were passed into law. They would indeed be difficult to administer in a university. I fear that they would not be very well administered in most universities if universities were invited to apply them, because the sort of bureaucracy that can develop in a university would be ill suited to the task. So I feel very strongly that another approach has to be found, and there is a very strong case for excepting universities, as has been argued so well. I declare an interest as a former master of Jesus College, Cambridge, and a former professor. Universities are places where free speech should flourish and should be constrained as little as possible.

This year is the 200th anniversary of the Cambridge Union Society. That may be a small matter in these grand considerations, but I cannot see how a society like the Cambridge Union Society could flourish with the constraints applied to it in the draft guidance, some of which were mentioned by my noble friend Lord Macdonald of River Glaven. Therefore, I very much support the amendment and I hope that the Government will give it very serious consideration, because very high principles are at stake and, indeed, at risk.

[Lord Elystan-Morgan (CB)]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly to Amendment 104. In so doing, I declare a past interest, as I was for 10 years a president of a Welsh university and the chairman of its management council.

I shall deal first with a technical constitutional point that is not a thousand miles away from the matter raised by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead. Universities and higher education in general in Scotland and Wales are, of course, devolved functions. Therefore, one could easily react in a rather crude and barbaric way and say, “This is not a matter for Westminster to intervene in”—although I certainly do not take up that argument.

Nevertheless, one should bear in mind that there are conventions in existence in the relationship between this House and the devolved assemblies. This is the Mother of Parliaments, and it stands to reason that it has the sovereign authority to cancel or amend in any way that it wishes any area of devolution that it has endowed upon it. But it will not do that and does not intend doing that wrongly. We have the Sewel convention in Scotland and a similar convention in Wales to the effect that such interference will not take place save in the most unusual—if not unique—circumstances. It would take place when either the devolved assembly requests that it should happen—the point essentially raised in relation to Section 43 of the 1986 Act by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope—or there is a situation that is utterly unique. One can imagine one or two where there would be justification for such action.

It is clear to me that another principle overwhelms that; for although higher education has been devolved to Scotland and Wales, counterterrorism has not. That surely must take precedence in every way because it involves the security and, at the end of the day, the very existence of the state itself. I raise the matter not to show off any understanding of constitutional matters but to raise a point in relation to what should happen in this unique situation where we have a devolved function being clearly brought under the microscope of Westminster. The Bill accommodates that possibility very clearly in Clauses 23 and 25. In Clause 23, it is in relation to adding an authority to the list in Schedule 3; in Clause 25, it is in relation to giving a direction. However, the Bill states in each case that there has to be consultation between the Home Secretary and Welsh Ministers, and that is the point that I seek to raise.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Berridge]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 118B. First, I thank the charity Walk of Truth and its founder, Tasoula Hadjitofi, who drew this matter to my attention.

As I mentioned at Second Reading, it is clear that one of the streams of funding for IS in Iraq and Syria is the sale of looted religious and cultural heritage—anything from ancient coins to frescos literally hacked out of church walls. Due to the obvious difficulty of accessing IS-controlled territory, much of what we know is from reports by news outlets. Given the time, I will mention only one. In November 2014 an article in Newsweek quoted the executive director at Iraq Heritage, Aymen Jawad, as saying:

“By some estimates, these sales (of ancient artefacts) now represent ISIS’s second largest source of funding. One of its biggest paydays recently came from looting the ninth century B.C. grand palace of the Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II at Kalhu, which is now called Nimrud … Tablets, manuscripts and cuneiforms are the most common artefacts being traded, and, unfortunately, this is being seen in Europe and America”.

Most of the reports indicate that these stolen treasures are finding their way into or through London. The news reports are confirmed by UNESCO, which has now alerted museums, Interpol, and the World Customs Organization to be vigilant,

“over objects that could come from the current looting of Iraqi heritage”.

The amendment requires the Home Secretary within three months of the Act to appoint a panel that would look carefully at this issue and specifically at the mens rea required for the offence under the Customs and Excise Management Act 1979. At the moment, the offence is committed, by auction houses and others, only where there are reasonable grounds to suspect that the goods were removed—in the case of Syria, for example—after 9 May 2011. I question whether that is sufficient, bearing in mind the current context.

The panel could investigate whether the UK should copy Germany’s law that will oblige dealers and collectors to present an export licence for where the object is coming from, in order to receive an import licence for any ancient artefact. The panel could also report on whether or how many stolen cultural and religious artefacts are coming through London. It could collate data on this matter, including how many cases the proceeds of crime unit of the Metropolitan Police is currently dealing with, which I presume has operational responsibility for this matter. Whether any artefacts have already been seized by the police and what happens to those artefacts would also be considered by the panel. If they have seized items, are the museums and galleries in London involved in helping to ensure that the artefacts are kept in conditions to preserve them, not only as criminal evidence but also to preserve their condition so they can one day be returned to Iraq or Syria? These items may require much more specialist handling than the colloquial “bagging up of evidence” to avoid contamination.

This panel would not be costly and would provide Parliament and the Government with much-needed data and recommendations to deal with the atrocious fact of stolen cultural heritage, which needs to be preserved for the time when Iraqis and Syrians can return to their homes and to the cultural heritage that should exist for them at that time. I beg to move.

[Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn]

My Lords, I certainly support the intention behind the amendment. My noble friend the Minister may well say in his reply that some of these issues are already covered by the Dealing in Cultural Objects (Offences) Act 2003. It is certainly the case that it is illegal to sell in this country cultural objects that were illegally exported from their country of origin after 2003. However, there are many new dimensions and my noble friend is right to draw attention to them. The scale on which terrorism is being funded through the sale of such artefacts gives cause for concern. I am not sure that many artefacts of this kind are being sold in this country now, but many will be in transit. As they may well be sold in the future they could still command a good price in the market.

I draw attention to one point. Proposed new subsection (2)(c) would require the examination of,

“the possibility of placing a strict liability on United Kingdom auction houses in respect of the provenance of any cultural artefacts they sell”.

This is not the occasion for a long debate on these matters. Some of them were raised in amendments during the passage of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009, although they were not carried. They placed an onus on auction houses in particular to be more transparent about vendors because auction houses are not obliged to declare for whom they sell such objects and somebody selling privately on the open market is not obliged to declare from where the objects came. There is a real problem. Indeed, there have been cases recently where auction houses have offered for sale objects which, it turned out, did not have a respectable provenance and had emerged on the market by shady means. It is therefore time to place an onus on the auction houses to check the provenance of the artefacts and to be assured that they left their country of origin legally after 2003, which would comply with the Dealing in Cultural Objects (Offences) Act. However, there is at present no onus on auction houses to be clear about the source of their objects. That is a glaring loophole, and that is why I support the amendment.

[Baroness Brinton]

I will speak to Amendment 118B but will not repeat the points made by my noble friends Lady Berridge and Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn. I want to remind the House of the scale of this problem and that it is a key funding area for Islamic State. A flash stick recovered after a courier was killed last year revealed that $36 million of goods had been taken from one town alone in Iraq. If you scale that up, and understand that each item can be sold for between $20,000 and $50,000, one begins to understand where IS’s money to resupply itself with weapons comes from. In addition to the provenance arguments and making sure that auction houses deal with appropriate items, there is a real issue of funding terrorism that needs to be addressed as well.