Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism

Richard Arkless Excerpts

Wednesday 14th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Richard Arkless (Dumfries and Galloway) (SNP)]

We in the SNP support this organisation’s being added to the proscribed list. I struggle to say its name in the House, for risk of glorifying it, so I will refer to it as NA. Issues of national security are of course reserved to this place, but there has been close co-operation between the Scottish Government and the UK Government, and that will continue. It is our desire in Scotland, as much as in the rest of the UK, to do everything possible to meet the threat of terrorism.

On the basis of the tweets alone about our departed and much loved colleague Jo Cox, which will have disgusted anybody with a sense of reasonable objectivity, as well as the appalling words it put out about the terrible attack in Orlando, we have no hesitation in backing the Government’s call to add this organisation to the proscribed list. Of courses, all additions to the proscribed list must be necessary and proportionate. We must always have those two criteria and qualifications in mind, and we believe it is abundantly clear that they are met in this case.

We came to the House a couple of months ago to add another four or five organisations to the proscribed list, which was successfully done with our support. When we debated that statutory instrument, the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), who is not in his place today, and I called on the then Minister, the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes), to contact the British Broadcasting Corporation to see whether it would desist from using the phrases “so-called Islamic State” and “Islamic State” when referring to the organisation that the Government now rightly call Daesh. The Minister gave clear commitments to contact the BBC and make those representations, but I must admit that in my very occasional watching of BBC News, I have noticed that the phrase continues to be used, perhaps more than ever. I therefore respectfully ask the Minister today, for whom I have great respect, whether he will take that suggestion away, perhaps talk to the previous incumbent, and contact the BBC so that it stops using this awful phrase, which frankly gives legitimacy to an organisation that is neither Islamic nor a state.