Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 21st September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con) (Maiden Speech)]

My Lords, I am grateful to follow the noble Baroness and for the opportunity to make my maiden speech in this important debate. Perhaps I may begin in the traditional way by thanking the Doorkeepers and staff for making me feel so welcome. I offer them heartfelt thanks because nothing has been too much trouble for them. I also thank my noble friends Lady Bloomfield and Lady Fall for supporting my introduction. Both are extremely busy people. My noble friend Lady Bloomfield has been taking the Agriculture Bill through the Lords and my noble friend Lady Fall has, like me, been preparing for the arrival of Lady Swire’s memoirs, which will be published this Thursday.

I do not want to make this too much like an Oscar acceptance speech, but I hope your Lordships will indulge me if I pay tribute to my late father, who came into this place 44 years ago. It was a place he loved and he served it assiduously. He made his maiden speech on the race relations Bill, expressing the hope that the Bill would one day be redundant. Obviously, given the events particularly of this year, that hope has sadly not been realised. He had a mischievous sense of humour. His final Written Question, published on the day of his death, was to take the Government to task for the misspelling of a sign by the Ministry of Works outside Richmond House. My father came into this place on the lavender list. I know that it would have appealed to his mischievous sense of humour to read the article I read just last week, which began with the immortal phrase, “This list of Peers is the worst list since the lavender list.” That provided me with a valuable connection to my father.

I was lucky enough to serve in the other place for 14 years as the Member of Parliament for the wonderful constituency of Wantage and Didcot. It is a remarkable place, as every MP says about their constituency, being a place of ancient history and modern science, ranging from the ancient white horse to the Diamond synchrotron, and now the manufacturing centre for vaccines. That is attracting politicians by the bucketload to visit it, including the Prime Minister, as it rises from the ground. It is a great privilege to be able to take the title of Lord Vaizey of Didcot, of Wantage in the county of Oxfordshire, to represent my constituency, although I slightly resent my brother-in-law christening me Lord Vaizey of Parkway.

In any event, I was lucky enough to serve for six years as the Minister for culture and technology in the other place, and those are the subjects on which I hope to bore your Lordships on regular occasions. I do not know how attentively you will listen to me, because I am not sure how good I was at my job. I was, for example, the Minister responsible for rural mobile broadband coverage. I remember—and maybe the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, will recall—the day I was sacked by the new Prime Minister Theresa May. I do not know if there are any sackees in the Chamber at the moment, but you get a call from Downing Street; I was in my car, and Downing Street said, “The Prime Minister will call you in 15 minutes”. As I drove off through the rural hinterland of Oxfordshire, I realised that I had lost my mobile phone signal. It took the Prime Minister half an hour to get through to me, and I was a Minister for 15 minutes longer thanks to the lamentable job I had done in the previous six years.

I turn briefly to the provisions in the Bill, and I say again what a privilege it has been to listen to the remarks made so far—this House is justly well known for the extraordinary expertise it contains within its ranks. It goes without saying that the Bill is essential, following the horrific attacks that have been referred to, and I pay tribute to the victims who sadly lost their lives in those attacks. It is also right to pay great tribute to our security services and our police force, who do such a remarkable job in preventing so many attacks, as has already been referred to.

I want to pick up on the theme, remarked on in some of the earlier speeches, of rehabilitation. It may seem odd to have a former culture Minister seek to speak at Second Reading of a Bill on counterterrorism, but my last meeting as culture Minister was in the Ministry of Justice, where I had assembled a series of charities—the National Criminal Justice Arts Alliance—all of which work in prisons and with offenders in an attempt to engage them, give them opportunities and hope, and turn them away from a life of crime. It sometimes sounds frivolous or even facetious, but I am a passionate and powerful believer in the power of culture, the arts and sport in engaging young people. Noble Lords have already referred to young, vulnerable and disengaged young men. We cannot necessarily forgive their crimes, but we can, if we engage them as early as possible, perhaps turn these young people away from them.

I know that the Prevent strategy has become somewhat controversial, but I think its aims are absolutely laudable. All I would do, given that the Bill covers the Prevent strategy, is urge the Government to continue to look at, and redouble their efforts in, engaging cultural charities and institutions to provide young people with hope and opportunity. I know from my own work with the National Youth Theatre how important that is, and what amazing opportunities are often given to young people.

The other issue I want to talk about briefly is the role of technology; and here is an area, I think, where we should hold people accountable. Those people are the ones who run huge global platforms such as Facebook and Google. As I am sure noble Lords know, these platforms are used by terrorist organisations. They use them to organise themselves online, to proselytise online, to convert the young and vulnerable people whom we have been talking about—and to monetise their activity. Extraordinarily, they are able to attract, through ad technology, legitimate adverts from legitimate businesses for their websites. Even more extraordinarily, some are even able to sell merchandise—T-shirts and memorabilia—on their websites, which funds their terrorist activities.

It is not within the scope of the Bill to address that issue. However, I know that the Online Harms White Paper—which will lead, I hope, to the online harms Bill—will provide an opportunity for this Government to put in place some really ground-breaking legislation, which I hope will change the debate and tip the balance. So I am grateful indeed for your Lordships’ indulgence, and the opportunity to make those remarks on the Bill.