Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism

Luciana Berger Excerpts

Wednesday 14th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

It has not happened since July. Two groups have been deproscribed. The People’s Mujaheddin of Iran or the MEK was deproscribed at the High Court and a Sikh group linked to allegations of extremism made representations and was deproscribed as a result.

Despite its name, National Action seeks to divide communities and stir up hatred—actions that are entirely contrary to the interests of our nation. Proscribing this neo-Nazi group will prevent its membership from growing and prevent it from spreading propaganda, which allows a culture of hatred and division to thrive. It will also help to prevent National Action from radicalising people who may be vulnerable to extreme ideologies and at risk of emulating the terrorist acts it glorifies.

[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does the Minister share my view that we should all revile this group because its members stood on the steps of St George’s Hall in Liverpool during one of its demonstrations and did Nazi salutes, which filled the whole of Liverpool with hatred and disgust for them? People will welcome this move today.

[Mr Wallace]

Anyone who seeks to glorify the Nazis is a threat to this country and our values. Members of this House died fighting Nazis to keep this country and Europe free. I would describe people who think that this country would somehow like to follow a Nazi course of action as twisted to say the least.

Under section 3 of the Terrorism Act 2000, the Home Secretary has the power to proscribe an organisation if she

“believes that it is concerned in terrorism.”

If the statutory test is met, the Home Secretary may exercise her discretion to proscribe the organisation. The Home Secretary takes into account a number of factors in considering whether to exercise that discretion, including the nature and scale of the organisation’s activities and the need to support other members of the international community in tackling terrorism.

The effect of proscription is that a listed organisation is outlawed and is unable to operate in the United Kingdom. It is a criminal offence for a person to belong to, support or arrange a meeting in support of a proscribed organisation, or to wear clothing or carry articles in public that arouse reasonable suspicion that they are a member or supporter of a proscribed organisation. Proscription acts to halt fundraising and recruitment, and makes it possible to seize cash associated with the organisation.

Given its wide-ranging impact, the Home Secretary exercises her power to proscribe only after thoroughly reviewing the available evidence on an organisation, including open source material, intelligence material and advice that reflects consultation across Government, including with intelligence and law enforcement agencies. The cross-Government proscription review group supports the Home Secretary in the decision-making process. The decision to proscribe is taken only with great care and after careful consideration of the particular case. It is appropriate that it must be approved by both Houses.

Having carefully considered all the evidence, the Home Secretary believes that National Action is currently concerned in terrorism, and that discretionary factors weigh in favour of proscription.

[Luciana Berger]

The Home Secretary told us just the other week that she was particularly concerned about the increasingly sophisticated methods that this group was using on the internet both to recruit new members and to promote its warped ideology. Will the Minister share a little more about how, if the order is passed, he and the Home Office will ensure that this organisation is held to account and any material it puts online is removed?

[Mr Wallace]

I have to be careful that we do not undermine the operational capability and effectiveness of the law agencies, which may take action. But it is certainly the case that, when an organisation is proscribed, it allows us to bring the full force of those agencies to bear on the threat posed by the proscribed organisation and the individuals within it. Within that, I would expect measures to make sure that any use of the internet for what is a kind of grooming is restricted or, I would hope, stopped completely, along with other measures. But I will leave that up to the security services and the police, as that will get the best effect, and it would be wrong of me to speculate further about what they may or may not do.

Although I cannot comment on the specific intelligence behind the decision to proscribe, I can provide the House with a summary of the group’s activities. National Action is a racist neo-Nazi group that was established in 2013. It has a number of branches across the United Kingdom, and conducts threatening street demonstrations and activities aimed at intimidating local communities. Its activities and propaganda materials are particularly aimed at recruiting young people. National Action’s ideology promotes the idea that Britain will inevitably see a violent race war, which the group claims to be an active part of.

The group rejects democracy, is hostile to the British state and seeks to divide society by implicitly endorsing violence against ethnic minorities and perceived race traitors. National Action has links to other extreme right-wing groups abroad, including in Europe. In May 2016, National Action members attended the Buchenwald concentration camp, where they made Nazi salutes and posted images online.

The Government’s counter-extremism strategy challenges extremism in all its form. Alongside the strategy, our Prevent work will continue to monitor whether extremist groups have crossed into terrorism. The group is relatively small and has been in operation in the UK for only a few years, but the impact of its activities has been felt in a number of United Kingdom communities.

--- Later in debate ---

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

I along with others in the House completely support the Minister’s decision to proscribe this organisation. Ministers obviously have important and sensitive information that they are unwilling to share with the House on such occasions, but the Minister has gone a long way to reassure the House that the information he has is more than sufficient to take the action he is proposing today.

National Action will be the first extreme right-wing organisation to be banned, which is a very welcome step. We certainly need to be very strong in dealing with right-wing extremism and we need to be very concerned about it. I raised the issue of what was happening in Europe. The world can never forget the 77 victims of Anders Breivik in 2011. The Minister mentioned the words of the organisation in question when it praised the killer of our colleague Jo Cox. My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) was right to remind us of what the Home Secretary said only this week: that this group has no place in our country.

The shadow Home Secretary—for whom I have enormous respect and who has campaigned all her political life against right-wing extremism and extremism of any kind—has visited the counter-terrorism unit, as she said. I am sure she will join me and the rest of the House in praising those who are part of that unit, who day after day, day and night, work so hard to keep us safe. Under the incredible leadership of Mark Rowley, they ensure that many of the plots that we do not know about are dealt with and prevented before they come to fruition. Mark Rowley has recognised that increasing numbers in the United Kingdom are “gravitating towards extremism” and has talked about 60 to 70 cases each month. This is a very large figure indeed.

It is important to recognise what has happened since the referendum this year. The number of hate crimes, especially against Polish and other eastern European citizens, has increased by 41% since 2015.

[Luciana Berger]

I note what my right hon. Friend has said about the number of people of concern. Does he share my concern that the latest figures from Prevent show that around 300 young people under the age of 18 have been identified as posing a threat of extremism from the far right? That figure should concern us all and should embolden the Home Office to do even more to ensure that the next generation embraces equality, not division.

[Keith Vaz]

I am astonished at those figures, but I think they are witness to what the shadow Home Secretary has said about access to the internet and social media. Individuals who may be very young could be operating from their homes, involving themselves in this kind of hatred. It is very easy to disseminate hatred, as my hon. Friend will know—she has been one of the victims in this House of hatred coming from social media and the internet. She has behaved with absolute dignity in the face of it. She is right to raise these figures. These are issues of enormous concern. The younger the people who get involved in these activities, the more difficult it becomes to turn them around once they become ingrained with them. There has also been a spike in anti-Semitic incidents across the country—11% higher than last year. We should thank the police and the counter-terrorism unit for the work they do in trying to combat this.

Oddly, just before this particular debate, the House unanimously endorsed without any debate the Government’s decision to opt into Europol—one of the very few organisations in Europe that we are joining at the same time as we are leaving the rest of the EU. Europol has an extremely important role to play in ensuring that we combat far-right extremism and extremism in general all over Europe. It has an amazing head in Rob Wainwright, who is a Brit, and it is able, through the capacity that we have helped to build as part of Europol, to ensure that we deal with these organisations.

I end by asking the Minister the question I asked a little earlier, as I think he may have misunderstood it. I asked how many organisations had been deproscribed since July. I think the People’s Mujaheddin were deproscribed several years ago—not since July. The Minister is right to prescribe that we should keep on monitoring the deproscription process. On numerous occasions when these orders have been discussed, I have raised the situation of the LTTE—Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam—and my Tamil constituents, who still feel stigmatised by the fact that the LTTE is banned, even though it no longer exists. We need to be very aware of the need to look at the issue of de-proscription and keep it under review, while of course welcoming what the Minister has done.

The independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, David Anderson, had made it very clear that he thinks there should be a time limit. In the case of this particular organisation, I think we are all agreed that the Minister has come to this House and made a powerful case. The House will speak with one voice in supporting what he has done absolutely. We look forward to this organisation being monitored very carefully indeed, so that none of its evil tentacles are passed on to other organisations, perhaps bearing a different name, but with the same personnel involved, who will seek to poison and destroy the minds of the people of this country.