Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism

Rehman Chishti Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I am grateful for being called to speak and I am sorry that it looks as though there are not enough Members present to call a Division later. I personally believe that these are very serious matters and I have opposed control orders in the previous Parliament as well as in this one, so at least I have the benefit of consistency on this matter.

I oppose control orders not because I have any truck with those who wish to set off bombs in the cities of this or any other country. Indeed, my borough lost more lives on 7/7 than any other London borough, and attending those funerals because of what happened on that day is not easily forgotten. My concern is that Parliament is again voting through provisions that give extraordinary powers to a Secretary of State, who is able to impose a control order on an individual without recourse to a due process of law.

As the Minister said, these are people against whom no criminal charge could be brought and they cannot be deported, presumably because of the lack of convention applicability in the countries to which they might be deported. We do not know, of course, who these eight individuals are. I think that for Parliament to give such powers to any Secretary of State is an abdication of our responsibility for two reasons. First, the separation of judicial and political functions is central to the constitution and very important. We are not a court; we cannot put people on trial. We can pass laws, and it is for the courts to deal with them in a separate place. Secondly, if by this process we deny individuals access to any judicial process whatever and people are restricted and to some extent detained by Executive decision, that bypasses both ourselves as a Parliament and the independence of the courts. We should think very carefully about that.

We are apparently dealing with eight individual cases and I have no idea who those eight people are. I do not propose to discuss any of those cases; that is not the point. The point is one of principle relating to what we as a Parliament are doing. If this measure is part of the war on terror, I ask Members to remember what the hon. Member for Newark (Patrick Mercer) just said about the experience of internment in Northern Ireland. Indeed, for that matter, there is also the case of internment at the start of the second world war, when a large number of Jewish people were detained on the basis that they had German relatives. Of course they had German relatives: they had fled from Nazi Germany and came to this country to escape fascism, only to be promptly detained as suspects of fascism. I suspect that they found that experience deeply troubling and that it did not leave them for the rest of their lives. We need to reflect carefully on that.

If an individual has an order placed against them, their movements, their liberties and their life opportunities will obviously be restricted. If an employer knows about it, as he probably will, the person concerned will be unlikely to keep his job. I suspect that many universities will be very reluctant to allow students in that position to remain there, and might refuse outright. The lives of such people are seriously harmed in many other ways

Is this a fair thing to do? If there is evidence that an individual is manufacturing a bomb, planning to put a bomb on a plane, or planning to kill civilians for no obvious reason—indeed, to kill civilians in any circumstances—let a criminal charge be brought against them. We should bear it in mind that in Northern Ireland, internment became a recruiting sergeant for the IRA.

Let us look at the issue on a wider scale. Let us consider the hundreds of thousands of young people who are wasting their lives away in refugee camps in Gaza, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and many other parts of the middle east. Do they feel that they have a democratic choice? Do they feel that they have a democratic right for the rest of their lives? No. They see the rest of the world vicariously, through television screens and computers. Does their experience make them respect a democratic process? Does it give them choices and opportunities? No. It is the breeding ground for irrational acts of criminal violence against civilians.

The House cannot solve all those problems, but we can at least make two contributions. First, we can try to bring about peace and justice processes throughout the region concerned. Secondly, we can ensure that in this country we defend the democracy of an elected Parliament, defend the independence of the judiciary, do not allow Ministers to have powers to detain individuals without recourse to the courts or to an individual hearing, and allow such individuals to know what the charges against them are. We would condemn many other societies in which someone can visit an individual and say, “You are under suspicion; you are under arrest; you are under control”, and I think that we should be very cautious indeed about passing a law allowing that in the House of Commons.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman says that the accused should be allowed to know what the charge is. That brings into play the concept of special advocates who are given evidence behind closed doors and cannot take instructions from the accused, and hence the concept of not being given a fair hearing. On that basis, does the hon. Gentleman agree that the process involving special advocates should be reviewed, and that the concept of a fair hearing at which the accused can be given a chance to comment on the evidence must be right?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I more or less entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman. The Special Immigration Appeals Commission courts involve that concept of the special advocate who does not know—or, rather, may well know but cannot share with his client, the defendant—what the charges are against that person, and how the defence is to be mounted. Franz Kafka wrote about such circumstances extensively and with great passion. It is possible that descendants of Franz Kafka are working away in the Ministry of Justice, the Home Office or some grubby basement somewhere.

We are talking about the creation of a miasma of untrustworthy or untrustable sources. There might be a case against an individual, but that individual does not know what it is. His advocate might know what it is, but cannot tell him and can say only, “Do not worry—I will try and get you off. You want to know what you are charged with? Oh, I cannot tell you that.” Hello? Let us get real. If we believe in a proper judicial process, let us practise a proper judicial process.

I feel very reluctant to support any anti-terror law that departs from the principle that anyone who has been charged must know what the charge is, must be able to defend himself against that charge, and must be either found guilty or acquitted, depending on what evidence is presented and what the court decides at the end of the process. That principle, surely, is the best defence of a free society. Departing from it weakens a free society and damages all of us.

It is disappointing that the Chairman of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Dr Francis), is not present to comment on its report. I want to make three brief points about the summary. The Committee calls on the Government to

“urgently review all existing control orders to ensure they are compatible with the findings”,

but it was not clear to me from the Minister’s earlier contribution whether that had happened, so perhaps he will tell us in summing up.

One of the other Select Committee recommendations was:

“The Director of Public Prosecutions should be asked to consider whether a criminal investigation is justified in relation to each of the eight individuals subject to existing control orders”.

Again, I am not clear whether that has happened. I apologise if I missed something the Minister said, but I would be grateful if he would say what has happened in that respect.

The Select Committee also said:

“We do not accept the Government’s reasons for not providing this opportunity”—

for pre-legislative scrutiny—

“and recommend that it be published and made available to Parliament”.

If the Government have measures to introduce on control orders or anti-terror in general, that is clearly an important and major piece of legislation. This House has slowly and reluctantly dragged itself from the 18th century into the 19th and the 20th, and although we have not reached the 21st yet, we do have a process of pre-legislative scrutiny. Therefore, I think a Bill should be published as early as possible so that the House can thoroughly examine it and we can have a serious debate on it before it reaches the light of day. These are serious and important issues. We are talking not about just eight individuals’ lives, but the whole principle of a democratic and free society.

We put in place control orders, secret courts, special advocates and all kinds of special measures, and we have a Security Service that is not public and that is unaccountable. We also have charges that are unknown against individuals who do not know what the charges against them are. That creates a rather unpleasant Kafkaesque secrecy surrounding our society and our lives. It does not make us any safer, and it does not make the world any safer; actually, it contributes to making the world a more dangerous and precarious place.

I hope the Minister understands both my reasons for making these points and why many of us hold these views. It is reasonable and fine for him or the Secretary of State to ask for opinions and views from the security services and the police; of course they should ask for their views. They should also, however, ask for the views of the judiciary, advocates, civil liberties groups and the people who spend their whole lives trying to defend the civil liberties of all of us. Their views are equally legitimate and important.

Protection of Freedoms Bill

Rehman Chishti Excerpts

Tuesday 1st March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Tom Brake]

I am sure the hon. Gentleman will be aware that many police forces intend to continue to seize that information. It appears that they are exercising discretion in that respect. He should reflect on the fact that his Government introduced those stop-and-search powers, which were applied in a blanket way across London and allowed the action that I have described to take place.

Although I welcome the announcement by the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) that the Opposition will not vote against the Second Reading of the Bill, I think that the tone of her comments in relation to the Home Secretary were a touch patronising. I am sure that our Home Secretary fully appreciates the need to balance security with liberty and freedom. That is what the coalition Government are doing by presenting a Bill to restore personal freedoms that were threatened by the last Government, and to end excessive surveillance of individuals.

The right hon. Member for Blackburn seemed to acknowledge that some of the policies implemented by the last Government were—if not draconian—an infringement of the rights of the individual, expensive, and in many cases ineffective. The Deputy Prime Minister was right to describe the Bill as a rolling back of the state. However, although I will not over-hype it, because I trust that many of the measures referred to by the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh), who is no longer in the Chamber—[Interruption.] He is, in fact, present. I trust that many of the measures that he mentioned will be subject to a protection of freedoms (No. 2) Bill, because I do not see this as the endgame when it comes to protecting our freedoms. I believe that we cannot place too high a value on liberty and freedom.

The Bill has received support from a number of quarters. The Law Society, for instance, has described the destruction of DNA profiles of innocent people as “an improvement”, welcomes the reduction in the maximum pre-charge detention time, and believes that the new stop-and-search powers are “far more proportional”. It has listed a number of other proposals that it supports, including the changes in the vetting and barring system.

The Bill proposes regulation of biometric data, and I am pleased that we are adopting the protections of the Scottish model in regard to retention of DNA and fingerprints. Although the Bill will not ensure that all innocent people are removed from the DNA database, it will ensure that hundreds of thousands of those who are currently on it are removed from it. In Committee, those who have received a briefing from the Forensic Science Society will want to examine aspects of the deletion process to establish what deleting a DNA profile means and what constitutes the totality of such a profile.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

As one who practised at the Bar before becoming a Member of Parliament, I know that the whole ethos of the DNA database was that the data of those found innocent of offences should no longer be on the record. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the system used to be administered in a shocking way? Half a million records on the database were completely wrong: names and details were false. Although the Bill contains much that is welcome, we must ensure that the database is fully and thoroughly managed.

[Tom Brake]

Of course we must. Whenever a massive database is introduced, there is significant potential for errors such as mismatches to be hidden in it. I hope that the Committee stage will provide scope for further examination of the details relating to the database. I am thinking particularly of the retention of children’s DNA. In its briefing, Liberty expressed concern about the fact that a child who was caught shoplifting at the age of 10 and again at the age of 12 would remain on the database for the rest of his or her life. If Liberty’s understanding is correct, that makes me extremely uncomfortable.

I am pleased that children will no longer be fingerprinted in schools. I am astonished that schools have never been required to seek permission for that from parents. As for the regulation of surveillance and CCTV, my experience is similar to that of the right hon. Member for Blackburn and others who have spoken today. The most frequent request that I have received as a Member of Parliament has been for additional CCTV systems, but many people have approached me expressing concern about, for instance, the fact that CCTV cameras were pointing straight through their front windows, or their bedroom windows, from premises opposite. I believe that better regulation could solve the problems that have been reported to me, and I therefore welcome the proposals in the Bill.

Sex Offenders Register

Rehman Chishti Excerpts

Wednesday 16th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

We have already had one challenge on this ruled on by the Supreme Court, and there is the prospect of others. We have no further right of appeal through the Supreme Court mechanism, so we are introducing what we believe to be a tough set of measures that will address the issue. Of course, it will continue to be possible for sex offenders to stay on the register for life.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

I welcome the Secretary of State’s statement. I have appeared in Parole Board hearings. Can the Secretary of State confirm that the police officers who will make decisions will have all the information on an offender that is available in a Parole Board hearing, from judges’ sentencing remarks on dangerousness, to pre-sentence reports and the offender’s full record in custody, so that they can make a thorough decision, so that the public are fully protected?

[Mrs May]

That is absolutely our intention. The police should have the fullest information possible on which to base their decision on whether a sex offender should stay on the register. Indeed, I expect that when we lay the statutory instrument before the House, we will be able to go into more detail on the sort of information that will be available to the police.

Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism

Rehman Chishti Excerpts

Wednesday 19th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Indeed we must, because proscription puts a requirement—not just a pressure—on the police to do those things. Therefore, there is the potential for an enormous waste of resources, not to mention damage to community relations. After all, in this country, as I understand it, we try to include and incorporate, and to build good community relations rather than divisions.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

As somebody of Pakistani origin, may I say that the wider expatriate Pakistani community will fully support the decision to proscribe this terrorist organisation—there is no other way to describe it? Also, the people in Pakistan want a safe, prosperous Pakistan, whereas this organisation is committed to everything that works against that. This organisation was proscribed in 2008 in Pakistan, in 2010 in the United States of America and now in the United Kingdom. Should these periods not be shortened? As the host country of Pakistan proscribed it in 2008, should it not then have been proscribed in other countries soon after, so that it does not have the chance to launder money in other countries?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

rose—

Controlling Migration

Rehman Chishti Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

Labour Members really are going to have to get their story in order as to exactly what they want to do on immigration. We want to ensure that Britain is open for business and that we can bring in skilled workers, which we will be doing, but that we can put in a cap that enables us to reduce net migration into this country. That is what the British people want, and it is what this coalition Government will deliver.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

May I welcome the statement as representing a constructive way forward? Does the Minister agree that foreign students should leave the country and reapply if they want to change their course or apply for a work permit?

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend has raised an important point. One of the issues around students relates to those who come here to study one course and then move from course to course in order to be able to stay here. We will be looking at that issue in the consultation, and I can assure him that the proposal he has just made is exactly the kind of thing that will be in the consultation.

Immigration

Rehman Chishti Excerpts

Thursday 18th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Chris Skidmore]

We have certainly been left with a legacy, and we have to play the cards that we have been dealt. I might like things to have been different, if that were possible. However, we must accept that the European Union covers 47% of our trade and is therefore a major player that we have to deal with, and we need to operate within that framework in terms of border controls.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

My hon. Friend talks about the future, but we also need to look at the existing system. Before coming to this place, I practised as a barrister and prosecuted cases for a number of years. An illegal immigrant or an immigrant who had committed an offence would be served with an IM3, an order for deportation, and a judge then made a recommendation. From that point to the point of deportation—and in the time it took to put that into practice—the left arm of the Home Office did not know what its right arm was doing, and in the meantime the taxpayer was paying for it. Before looking to the future, we need to ensure that the problems with the previous system, which has been in place for several years, are put right.

[Chris Skidmore]

I defer to my hon. Friend’s expertise on this matter, but thank him for raising that valuable point.

I want to return to the issue of employment. While hundreds of thousands of British citizens are still seeking a job, and when 10% of recent British graduates are still looking for jobs, the economic recovery must begin here. Although it is important that low-skilled jobs are filled in order to encourage growth in the economy, there are hundreds of thousands of British citizens who can fill them. If we are to build an economic recovery, it must be on the back of the talents of the British people.

--- Later in debate ---

[Heidi Alexander]

I agree that it is very important that we discuss the matter openly and rationally. I agree entirely with the comment made earlier by the hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr Brazier) that if politicians from the mainstream parties do not discuss it, we leave a space for other parties. That is why I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead on securing the debate.

I also believe that people’s concerns about immigration are symptomatic of the other big challenges with which we are grappling, which some Members have mentioned. They include the availability of housing at a price that people can afford and of jobs that pay a salary that makes taking the work worth while. We need to address those fundamental problems at the same time as ensuring that our immigration system is, to coin a phrase, “fit for purpose”. It is to that issue that I now turn.

What frustrates me more than anything else about our immigration system is our failure—yes, I accept that it was a failure of the previous Government as much as it is of the current one—to enforce decisions in a fair and humane way. We need appropriate enforcement at the point at which decisions are taken. Given that 37% of immigration appeals are successful, there is also a problem with the right decision being made in the first place, but perhaps that is a discussion for another day. I simply say that we should learn from our mistakes and make better decisions at the outset.

I suspect that I have many constituents who were told years ago that they were liable to deportation or removal, but nothing has happened. Such people carry on their lives, which is understandable. Some might be working in the informal economy, and some will have hung on to jobs that they legally should not have done. They have started relationships and had children, and their children have started school. It is then, years down the line, that they get a visit from the enforcement officers. I do not know what it would feel like to be a six-year-old child and be taken out of school—often the only school they have ever known—and have to move to a country to which they have never been, but something tells me that it would not feel great. I accept that every case is different, and that people who have been convicted of crimes in the past should not be allowed to stay, but I question why we are so intent on causing such upheaval to families.

[Rehman Chishti]

The hon. Lady brings us back to the existing system being completely bizarre. For example, when immigration judges determine a case, they are not allowed to examine an applicant’s previous convictions because of a problem between the Association of Chief Police Officers and the Home Office. Does she agree that to improve the system immigration judges must be able to see an applicant’s previous convictions when determining whether they can stay in this country?

[Heidi Alexander]

The hon. Gentleman clearly has a degree of expertise in the matter, and his suggestion sounds sensible.

I was talking about the upheaval caused to families who have been in this country a long time who face removal or deportation proceedings, not all of them as a result of doing something that the vast majority of the population would think drastically wrong. We need a sensitive approach, and if we are to have fair immigration controls we need to deal humanely with the people who are in the country at the moment.

Enforcement is a case of needing to be firm to be fair—not aggressive, not rough, but firm, competent and timely. I do not underestimate the difficulty of getting the balance right, but I cannot help but worry that cuts in the number of UK Border Agency staff will make the problem even worse. Perhaps fewer staff will just mean fewer legacy cases being processed and more people hanging around the system waiting to get on with their lives. I do not know the answer to this question, but perhaps the Minister will enlighten us about why, at a time when his Government are talking tough on immigration, he is cutting the very staff who are needed to do the job.

My second main frustration about the cases that I see in my surgery relates to the poor quality of immigration advice that many of my constituents receive. Although many private and voluntary sector providers deliver an excellent service, there are also many so-called advisers who simply exploit vulnerable people who do not know which way to turn.

Aviation Security Incident

Rehman Chishti Excerpts

Monday 1st November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

There are two aspects to the expenditure on equipment. Much of the equipment used for screening at airports and some other aspects is paid for by the industry rather than Government. The hon. Gentleman has reminded me that I failed to respond to one of the questions put by the shadow Home Secretary—about capital expenditure at the UK Border Agency. I assure the hon. Gentleman and his right hon. and hon. Friends that, within the capital programme for the UK Border Agency. key aspects of the work needed to enhance our border security, such as e-borders, are protected.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

The Friends of Yemen task group reported back to the United Nations in July on a strategy for Yemen. What steps have been taken to implement the findings, prior to the group’s meeting in Riyadh?

Missing Persons

Rehman Chishti Excerpts

Tuesday 26th October 2010 Westminster Hall

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey) on securing a debate on such an important and sensitive issue. In Medway, in Kent, 65 people were reported as missing, but that number was reduced to 15 through the excellent work of Kent police in partnership with the local authority in Medway.

Time is of the essence, so I will make my points brief. My first point relates to the community policing and case tracking system used first to report that a person is missing. Somebody who has been dealing with these issues for 30 years says of the system:

“I must stress that there are, in my opinion, far too many inconsistencies, duplication, multiple recording, and unnecessary recording, in the data, to rely on the result for any serious statistical purposes, which for a system, which is essentially a management tool, not a bona fide investigative tool, is staggering.”

I ask the Minister to review the system, which is used by a number of constabularies and local authorities around the country.

My second point relates to the hon. Lady’s point about having a national investigation system. Some would say that such a system should be aligned or compatible with murder investigation principles to meet the issue of investigation. At the moment, different constabularies use different systems, so having a national investigation system, as the hon. Lady suggested, would be a key point.

Finally, there is prevention. Local authorities, education services and housing and welfare services should intervene earlier to ensure that those who might go missing get support in the very beginning.

Policing in the 21st Century

Rehman Chishti Excerpts

Monday 26th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

This is something that the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues have raised on a number of occasions, and I will give him two answers. If he looks at the voting record so far, he will see that the British National party has never managed to get more than 15% of the vote in an election. But let us set that to one side; I actually believe in trusting the people of this country.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

I welcome the Home Secretary’s statement as a way of empowering communities and making our streets safe. With regard to unnecessary bureaucracy, what steps are being taken to review the work of the NPIA, which costs millions and achieves nothing, according to some senior police officers?

[Mrs May]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question. The document makes it absolutely clear that we will be phasing out the NPIA. We will review its functions, and we believe that it will be necessary to transfer some of them elsewhere, but the NPIA will be phased out.

Counter-terrorism and Security Powers

Rehman Chishti Excerpts

Tuesday 13th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I am happy to do so. The previous Government set up a process to consider intercept evidence, and a Privy Council group is in existence to do that. In fact, the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) is a member of that group. I want to talk to it about how we can take that issue forward in the best and most appropriate way, and I think it is better to do that over time rather than shoehorn it into this review.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

We had a previous Government who made legislation for the sake of legislation: in the past 13 years we had more legislation than in the previous 100 years. With regard to point two in the review mentioned by the Secretary of State—photography and terrorism—will she receive representations from the president of the Kent photographic organisation about how badly photographers have been affected by the legislation?

[Mrs May]

I would be very happy to receive those representations from my hon. Friend.