Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism

Patrick Mercer Excerpts

Wednesday 10th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Patrick Mercer (Newark) (Ind)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson), and to hear the comments of the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), under whom I served with great pleasure a few years ago.

No one in the House will have failed to be completely horrified by the death of Drummer Rigby a few weeks ago, in a manner that was not only bestial, but designed to shock and grab national and international headlines with the minimum amount of resource from our opponents. I fear we will see more of that. If all it takes is a sharp knife and a little twisted courage—if that is the right phrase—to carry out acts that hold international attention for several days, if not weeks, we must be prepared.

Over the years I have referred to how surprised the House, and indeed the nation, is when such an act occurs. We need only to remind ourselves that just such an act was planned three or four years ago against a Muslim soldier who had been serving in Afghanistan.

[Keith Vaz]

indicated assent.

[Patrick Mercer]

I see the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee nodding; he and I discussed the issue at the time. That soldier was a Muslim, and on completion of his tour of duty in Afghanistan our enemies planned exactly the same sort of bestial—I use the word again—act. It is incumbent on us not to be surprised. Of course we will be horrified, but we should not be surprised. We must understand that this is about the most ghastly acts, particularly when combined with, I fear, the extraordinarily attention-grabbing technique of allowing individuals to carry out “suicide by cop”—I think that is the American phrase—by hanging around afterwards for more violence to be perpetrated and for their message to be broadcast even wider.

We have been warned. We know what attacks will be like in the future and how a small number of contorted and evil individuals can grab international headlines. That, of course, is what terrorism is about. It is not necessarily about killing or defeating; it is about terrorising, which is exactly what the very sad death of Drummer Rigby achieved for our opponents.

I commend the points the Government have made about Boko Haram, and the Opposition were correct to say that the group needs to be banned—we have perhaps been a little tardy about it in the past. If I may, I caution Opposition Members in their words of criticism for the Prime Minister over Hizb ut-Tahrir. The Chair of the Home Affairs Committee will remember that we debated that issue three or four years ago, and the then Leader of the Opposition made a precise point to the then Prime Minister about Hizb ut-Tahrir. However, with greatest respect to the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North, it is not as simple as that.

[Diana Johnson]

I was making the point that we are now several years on, circumstances have changed, and the Prevent strategy review identified that Hizb ut-Tahrir is operating in universities. That is a concern and ought to be looked at again.

[Patrick Mercer]

I entirely take the hon. Lady’s point, and my comments are not meant to be inimical. The fact remains, however, that there are sometimes clear legal reasons why it is difficult to pin down such organisations. The previous Prime Minister found exactly the same situation, and there are legal reasons why it is difficult to achieve. There are also good intelligence reasons why it is sometimes necessary—or advised—to be less robust with such organisations than might otherwise be the temptation. Simply put, if Hizb ut-Tahrir were to be banned, as appears likely at the moment, it would soon spring up as “son of” or “bride of” or “ghost of” Hizb ut-Tahrir, under a different name with a different faction and a different flag. We need to be cautious in how we criticise one another’s attitudes towards these things.

We have talked about home-grown terrorism and the sad death of Drummer Rigby, but what interests me most is that, unless my ears were distracted, I do not think anybody has talked about the home-grown terrorism that we have been facing for the past several hundred years, which is republican terrorism. If I, in my ill-informed state, were to be asked which organisation posed the greatest—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. May I gently say to the hon. Gentleman that the reason why the House has not been discussing Irish terrorism is that it is not referenced in the order? I know that that is a point at which, intuitively, he would speedily have arrived in any case.

[Patrick Mercer]

I am most grateful, Mr Speaker. I do think that if we are talking about home-grown terrorism, we should not neglect the lessons that we have learned over the past several hundred years in facing that particular form of terrorism.

I return for a moment to the thorny issue of detention without trial. There will be temptations for the Minister to change the detention period as there are different pressures and as the different forms of terrorism to which we are subject become more and more frequent. I ask him not to give way to the temptation to do so needlessly, pointlessly and damagingly, as the previous Government did. My view is that the period is currently far too long. I ask him to understand that we combated the Irish Republican Army and Irish terrorism, or republican terrorism as I should probably call it more accurately, with a much shorter period of detention without trial. I speak from personal experience, although I entirely take the point that Mr Speaker has just made, Madam Deputy Speaker. We combated that terrorism within the law and with the principle and understanding that a man or woman is innocent until proved guilty. We did so on the basis that those who opposed us were criminals, not freedom fighters or misguided soldiers.

In this short speech, I wish to ask the Minister, if the temptation to increase the detention period arises again, to be fully cognisant of the fact that any period for which we take away a man or woman’s liberty, particularly when faced with the extraordinary difficulties and sensitivities of terrorism, means that we unintentionally add to, aid and abet the terrorists’ cause. In the same way, the death of Drummer Rigby—the death of simply one man, desperately sad though it was—has drawn attention to that cause. If we make an issue of the matter again and try to turn our liberties on their head by adding to simple criminal law in the case of terrorists, we will aid and abet their cause.

I will cease on that point, but I simply say that we must not forget the lessons of the past. We must understand where terrorism will lie in the future, and the House must never be surprised by the depravity and bestiality to which these people can stoop.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

It is a real pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Newark (Patrick Mercer), who served with great distinction on the Home Affairs Committee for five years during the last Parliament. He is regarded as the House’s expert on security matters, and when he was on the Committee he was able to bring his expertise and knowledge to a number of inquiries and reports. He is an assiduous constituency Member of Parliament, and it has been a pleasure to hear from him on this important matter.

The whole House will support the Minister in his order. That was made clear by the shadow Minister for security, and I doubt very much that anyone who speaks in this debate will disagree with the Minister. Having served in the House for a number of years and attended debates on a number of such orders, I can say that it is clear that when Ministers with the security portfolio come before the House to make a statement—some of it based on intelligence that cannot be shared with the House—the House always defers to them and accepts what they say. That is even more important when Members can consider the order, look at the organisations and support what is being done.

I want to raise a few points on how proscription affects groups and how we can improve such orders. I fully support the decision on Boko Haram and Minbar Ansar Deen/Ansar al-Sharia, two groups that ought to be proscribed. As we heard from the shadow Minister, one is predominantly active in Nigeria, but with people in this country who support what is going on in Nigeria, north Cameroon and Niger. The other has been involved in all kinds of activities, particularly in Libya, but also in other countries that promote terrorism. In the United Kingdom, it promotes terrorism by distributing content through a forum and its website activities. It regularly advertises its involvement in these matters.

Before I turn to my specific points, I want to pay tribute to our security services for the incredible work they do on a daily basis. They work hard to keep the people of this country safe and sometimes we forget to thank them. We only thank them after there has been a great tragedy, such as the one alluded to by the hon. Member for Newark: the murder of Lee Rigby. Day in, day out, they work extremely hard, necessarily in the shadows, and we need to thank them for what they do.

My worry about proscription orders, especially in respect of new groups, is how the heads of those groups can be chopped off, and, amoeba-like, they can form themselves into different organisations with different names. For example, the Home Secretary proscribed Muslims Against Crusades in November 2011 on the grounds that it was simply a new name for an organisation that was already proscribed. However, as we know from other proscription orders, it is possible for Boko Haram and Ansar al-Sharia, or the people behind them, to suddenly create themselves into new organisations with new names. One example is the case of Mr Anjem Choudary, who has created numerous new organisations after his organisation was proscribed by the Home Secretary: Islam4UK, the Call to Submission, Islamic Path, the London School of Sharia and the Saved Sect, all of which have been banned. The latest is called the Islamic Emergency Defence—the IED.

When the Minister comes to reply, I want assurances that when these two groups and the people behind them form themselves into other organisations, the Government will be ready to proscribe them. This is a difficult area that requires huge expertise from the security services. It is fine for the House to proscribe, but it is a problem if groups create themselves into other organisations.

As we have heard from the shadow Minister, I am concerned, and the Prime Minister is concerned, that Hizb ut-Tahrir is still not the subject of proscription. I thought that the hon. Member for Newark was a little unfair to describe the shadow Minister’s comments as a criticism of the Prime Minister. I know how highly my hon. Friend regards the Prime Minister, and on this issue we believe he is absolutely right: this organisation ought to have been proscribed. This was a criticism not of the Prime Minister, but of the system. The Prime Minister believes, as he did in opposition, that something should be done, but somehow the system does not allow it to happen. That is still a mystery to me, but I live in hope that come 2015 and the next election, the organisation will have been banned.

[Patrick Mercer]

I hear everything the right hon. Gentleman says, but I think he would agree that there are extraordinary circumstances when what appears to be a clear-cut case on the surface is, for intelligence purposes, rather different.

[Keith Vaz]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, but I do not think the Prime Minister would have used the words he did unless he was being very careful, and he certainly would have retracted them after he became Prime Minister had he received more information indicating a problem.

We shall leave that to one side, however, as it is not the subject of the order. I am sure the Prime Minister and everyone else is fully behind the proscription of these two organisations. I was disappointed with the Minister’s response to my intervention. He is an accomplished performer at the Dispatch Box and before the Home Affairs Committee—we will be calling him again for our inquiry into international terrorism and crime—but he did not give us any answers today or take us any further on from what he told us on 4 July 2012. That was the last time such an order was put through the House.

The hon. Member for Newark—I was about to call him the Minister for Newark; of course, he ought to have been security Minister at some stage, given his knowledge of the subject, but there is still time, with two years to go—the shadow Minister and I are not suggesting it in this case, but when we proscribe, we ought to put in place a time limit for reviewing the order, not because we would want to de-proscribe as soon as we proscribe, but because it would be right to keep reviewing these organisations, just in case they turn out to be shell organisations. I have mentioned the Tamil Tigers on the two most recent occasions that we have discussed this, although the Minister was not here last time—the Immigration Minister stood in for him. The Tamil Tigers have ceased to exist—everyone in the organisation has ceased to exist—yet they are still proscribed in the United Kingdom.

The Minister invites us to make an application for de-proscription for which there is no timetable. That means, I am afraid, that the matter ends up not in this House, which is responsible for proscription, but in the courts, where organisations are able to spend a lot of money. I think of the People’s Mujahedeen. Like me, Madam Deputy Speaker, you were in the House when that happened, on the Government Benches. A Minister came before the House and said, “We are de-proscribing the People’s Mujahedeen, because they’ve gone to court and won their judicial review.” I do not want these two organisations to do the same thing, which was why I said that the Minister’s answers were unsatisfactory.

The Minister told us one year ago, on 4 July 2012, that there would be a response “in due course”. I have discovered that that is one of the Minister’s favourite sayings—I am going to look in Hansard at how many times he says it; but he was a distinguished lawyer before he came to the House, and “in due course” is something that lawyers tend to say in their arguments. On 22 November 2012, however, the Immigration Minister, who is not a lawyer, used the word “shortly” in the House. “Shortly” clearly means “not next week”, because the response came in March this year.

Indeed, the word “response” also needs to be looked at, because although the Minister said that there had been a response—you were not in the Chair at the time, Madam Deputy Speaker, so I will not draw you into this debate—the Government’s response was to say that the report by the independent reviewer of terrorism, David Anderson, QC, had been “noted”. That is a very odd response from the Government. We are used to them saying, “A Select Committee”—or an independent reviewer—“has made a recommendation, and this is what we think about the subject.” This poor chap went through the preparation of that entire report and then waited a whole year to be told that it had been “noted”. Now we hear from the Minister, in his response to me, that he is going to respond—[Interruption.] I am afraid I have forgotten what he said—it was not “in due course” or “shortly”—and I do not have access to Hansard, so when he winds up, perhaps he can remind me what he said he would do.

When we proscribe, we need to be careful that we do not get organisations that can then de-proscribe. There is no point having someone as distinguished as David Anderson, QC, producing reports—poring over all the detail and providing expertise to the Government—and then the Government not responding. All I say to the Minister is this. He has told us that officials are looking into the matter. Well, hooray for officials—distinguished officials, I am sure. He has told us that they are “actively” considering the matter. What does that mean? Since I last raised the matter in the House on 4 July 2012, have officials “inactively” considered it? We have had activity and officials; what we now have are Ministers—good Ministers, such as the security Minister. He is on top of the brief—