Islam: Tenets

Lord Rosser Excerpts

Thursday 7th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rosser (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, for providing the opportunity to discuss government strategy against terrorism. It is on that issue rather than Islam and its meaning that my contribution concentrates. Listening to the general tone and tenor of what the noble Lord said I do not know whether he regards, for example, Members of this House and the Commons who are Muslims, along with Sadiq Khan as the Mayor of London, as stealthily working towards a future Muslim takeover of this country, to which he made reference, or as fellow law-abiding and peace-loving British citizens—full stop.

The noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, framed his Question for Short Debate around one specific area rather than more generally. As the briefing from the House of Lords Library for this debate reminded us he raised almost the same Question, only orally, at the beginning of this year. The noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Trafford, replied then that:

“The Government’s strategy for tackling Islamist terrorism is firmly based on strengthening our partnership with communities, civil society groups and faith organisations across the country”.—[Official Report, 24/1/17; col. 552.]


I assume that when she comes to reply, the Minister will indicate not simply what actions the Government may have taken this year in pursuit of that strategy, but what the hard evidence is to show that whatever the Government have done since the beginning of this year, it has had a positive impact on strengthening partnerships, civil society groups and faith organisations across the country. Actions are not the same as impact; it is the impact of their actions on which I seek a government answer.

I presume that the Minister will also indicate in her response that the Government are seeking to tackle terrorism across the board, including from supporters of the kind of organisations in this country that now appear to have a surprising degree of unwelcome support from the President of the United States of America.

It has been helpful to have it confirmed in the recent report by David Anderson QC that our security and intelligence agencies seek to ensure,

“consistent assessment and investigation of all terrorist threats, regardless of ideology”.

Questions have been raised in a number of quarters about the effectiveness of the Government’s Prevent strategy. Home Office statistics apparently show that only 5% of the 7,631 people referred to the Prevent counterextremism programme in 2015-16 ended up with specialist support to turn them away from terrorism. What lessons do the Government draw about the effectiveness or otherwise of the Prevent strategy, and the way it is being applied and implemented, from that figure of just 5%? The Government must have a clear answer to that question, since the Minister told this House last January that “we regularly review Prevent”.

Are the Government really satisfied that they are allocating sufficient resources to combat the threat of terrorism, whether through preventive programmes or through the work of our security and intelligence agencies, including the police? In his report this month on the attacks in London and Manchester, David Anderson QC quoted the director-general of MI5 as saying in describing the work of his staff that:

“They are constantly making tough professional judgments based on fragments of intelligence”.


Mr Anderson then went on to say:

“The reason why the judgements can be ‘tough’ is that they are made against a background of imperfect information, and yet frequently require staff to choose which of a number of current and potentially deadly threats is most deserving of scarce investigative resource”.


What do the Government read into the use of the word “scarce” by Mr Anderson? Is it that sufficient resources have been made available or that sufficient resources have not in reality been made available? In that context, let us remind ourselves that we are talking about national security and the safety of our citizens.

One of the three considerations that Mr Anderson chose to mention in his report in saying,

“no responsible person could offer a copper-bottomed assurance that terrorists will always be stopped”

was,

“current CT resourcing of around £3 billion per year”.

In her Statement to Parliament on Tuesday the Home Secretary said,

“We will shortly be announcing the budgets for policing for 2018-19, and I am clear that we must ensure that counter-terrorism policing has the resources needed to deal with the threats we face”.—[Official Report, Commons, 5/12/17; col. 915.]


In his report Mr Anderson, referring to CT policing, says,

“the indicative profile of their grant allocation over the next three years sees a reduction of 7.2% in their budgets”.

What parts of policing activity and what numbers of officers and staff do the Government include in their definition of counterterrorism policing, in respect of which the Home Secretary has said the Government will ensure they have the resources needed? Which police activities do the Government not consider to have a role in countering terrorism and are therefore not covered by the Home Secretary’s statement about ensuring the provision of the necessary resources? Does the Home Secretary’s commitment about resources, which she gave on Tuesday, cover, for example, community policing, or is community policing not considered by this Government to play an important role in countering terrorism?

I would appreciate clear answers from the Government to these questions, not least because the executive summary of the Anderson report states that MI5 and CT policing recommendations,

“include commitments to better data exploitation, to wider sharing of information derived from MI5 intelligence (including with neighbourhood policing) and to the consistent assessment and investigation of all terrorist threats, regardless of ideology”,

which some might not unreasonably conclude means that community and neighbourhood policing have an important role to play in countering terrorism.

I conclude by again thanking the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, for providing me with the opportunity to raise the points and questions I have raised.