Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill

Martin Horwood Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr Mahmood) who made a heartfelt speech and spoke as an authentic voice for British Muslims in a way that extremists of various ideologies do not.

I often speak in the House on international issues rather than domestic home affairs, but it is important to reinforce the importance of the international context. If we talk about tackling the free flow of potential terrorists to and from various countries in Europe to states in the middle east, and if we ask the Gulf states to stop the flow of funds and support to those organisations, or ask Turkey and others in the neighbourhood to stop the flow of people across its borders, we must also play our part. It is important that we respond to the new challenge of people going as potential fighters from this country and other countries across Europe to play their part in atrocities and the awful war in the middle east that is spreading from country to country.

We can do that in our own self-interest, not only because we are legitimate potential targets for Daesh, or IS, or whatever we want to call it, but because it is the right moral and humanitarian response to try to inhibit those who would cause such unimaginable brutality, and instead to promote peace and an end to the suffering. That in turn would reduce the need for us to contribute enormous resources in humanitarian, political and even military terms to help solve these crises.

The right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) was right to support the Government in saying that there is a clear and present danger to the UK from IS, as indeed there still is from al-Qaeda and other similar extremist organisations that pose a threat to the security of this country. However, it is important to remember that we have faced terrorism before, and while the dangers may be new and extremely violent, we must guard against over-reacting or reacting in such haste that in some way we compromise the liberties we seek to protect.

I am a great defender of our security and intelligence services—I have to be as the Member of Parliament for Cheltenham. I see a great tradition stretching back to the code-breakers of Bletchley Park. People regard them as absolute heroes for their contribution to surveillance and intelligence during the second world war, but the same people sometimes forget that the self-same organisation under the new name of GCHQ has continued through to the present day, and protects our liberties in a vital way. In fact, GCHQ works under a much more comprehensive scrutiny, legal and oversight framework. Such a framework did not apply to the Government code and cipher school during the second world war so, in a sense, we could say that Bletchley Park was illegal. GCHQ certainly does not act illegally.

Even my constituents in Cheltenham who work for what is euphemistically called “the office” would be the first to say that it is not for them to tell the Government or Parliament where the line should be drawn between liberty and security. It is also not for hon. Members to over-respond to the fears of the intelligence and security services in drawing those lines. We must take a measured view and judgment, and be cautious about where the line is drawn.

The Labour Opposition and Liberal Democrat Ministers have accepted that the Bill broadly strikes the right balance, and will support the Bill today. Therefore, it is right to point out that the modifications to people’s right to come back into the country with a British passport are not the same as making them stateless, and that the differences have been carefully drafted in the Bill; that the new version of TPIMs are not control orders, and that there are many differences between them; and that the data retention elements of the Bill on IP addresses were not objected to in the original draft Communications Data Bill by, for instance, the Liberal Democrats.

There are differences and the safeguards have been thought about, but there are serious questions. The former Attorney-General, the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield, and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell) raised some of those questions. They spoke of the process of temporary exclusion and asked where precisely it leaves the legal status of those who are temporarily excluded or denied passports, and what their rights are to challenge those orders. There might be a suggestion in the explanatory notes or the Government’s response that we need not worry, and that processes will ensure that the orders are designed only temporarily to interrupt someone’s return to this country, so that they can be met either by a person or by a legal measure designed to make them less of a threat to the public, but that detail or explanation needs to be in the Bill. Perhaps the question whether the phraseology of the Bill is clear enough will be addressed in Committee.

The same goes for the questions about TPIMs. Liberty and others have suggested that TPIMs reinstate aspects of control orders that allowed for internal exile, which led to some control orders being declared illegal. They say that that is not just the wrong thing to put into legislation, but a weakness, because it would make the measures less effective.

The Open Rights Group and others have focused on some of the loose definitions in the data retention portion of the Bill. If we follow the trail of what constitutes relevant data in the Bill through the various clauses to the annexes and the explanatory notes, we find that it is not absolutely clear what relevant data are in the Bill. Internet providers are not absolutely defined, so perhaps more clarification is needed and more safeguards need to be built into the Bill in Committee.

There is a slightly deeper question. The House often responds to a challenge to security and public safety with legislation, but the response we need is often not a legislative one. The hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) and others talked about ideology. There is good evidence that many young people who go out to the middle east to take part in these battles are not really seduced by any sophisticated form—or even a perverted form—of Islamic ideology. In fact, they know very little about Islam at all. They are more seduced by attractive slick internet videos, social media and social pressures from within a peer group who have become alienated from their own communities. That is not about ideology, but a propaganda war that has to be fought. The best response to that is not always legislation. The best response may be to understand what mainstream society needs to feed back to communities and young people, and to understand why they are so alienated and why they are being seduced by these social media techniques.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that these people are not steeped in the religion of Islam, and are receiving a perverted and simplistic message. Our side of the argument still needs to be put in a comparably efficient way.

[Martin Horwood]

The hon. Gentleman makes a reasonable point. My underlying point is that legislation is not always the forum through which we will provide the answers to these questions.

It seems there is consensus across the House that the Bill should go forward, but there are serious questions to be answered. There needs to be careful examination in Committee to ensure that the Bill strikes the right balance between liberty and security.