Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill (Second sitting)

Rob Butler Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 25th June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Order. We are going to move on now, to Mr Butler.

[Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)]

Q Thank you, Mr McCabe. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship.

Mr Dawson, in evidence this morning, the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation said that many terrorist offenders often come from a stable family background. Does that not undermine the typical view that we have of rehabilitation—that having a job, a home and a family are necessary to prevent reoffending? In fact, are terrorism and terrorism offences not driven by ideology? The rules are different.

Peter Dawson: I think I would say the reverse, actually. As a parent, I think stable homes with good parents sometimes have very difficult teenagers and people grow up in a very chaotic way, often—

[Rob Butler]

Q But that is exactly the point that he was making, was it not? The argument normally is that when you are released from prison, what will help you not to reoffend is having the stable family, the job and the home, but that is not the case in the case of terrorism.

Peter Dawson: But I think it is the case. I do not think a stable home protects someone from the ideology, but for someone coming out of prison, particularly after a long sentence, a stable home and relationships with people who have kept faith with you and who have belief in your future are absolutely the things that help someone as a mature person. This goes back to the issue of maturity. For a 35-year-old, those relationships are completely different from the relationships that they would have experienced when they were 18. I just think that that continuity, and the willingness of people to continue to provide hope for a future, is absolutely crucial to rehabilitation. It is not a protection against ideology in a teenager, but it is a protective factor for rehabilitation.

[Rob Butler]

Q We have heard about your career in the Prison Service as a governor and deputy governor. Were there any terrorist offenders in the prisons that you ran?

Peter Dawson: Yes, there were. I worked in local prisons and in a female prison. Local prisons of course do hold terrorist offenders. They hold them in the early stages of their sentence, when they are often at their most—well, “disruptive” may not be the word, but when they are coming to terms with what has happened to them.

[Rob Butler]

Q And from your interactions with those particular prisoners, is there anything in particular that you think we should be aware of on this Bill Committee?

Peter Dawson: I am not sure that I would seek to draw any conclusions. People often behave differently as prisoners. I do not underestimate at all the difficulty of making a risk assessment based on the way someone has behaved in prison, compared with how they might behave in the community. It is not an easy thing and not a certain science. But what I would say is that if you want people to behave in a civilised, law-abiding way when they leave prison, the way you treat them in prison is absolutely critical. You must provide a model that people can follow and that they see as fair. If we do not do that, the chances of change are radically diminished.

[The Chair]

Thank you. I call Ruth Cadbury.

--- Later in debate ---

[Joanna Cherry]

Thank you.

[Rob Butler]

Q Briefly, I want to pick up on your concern over polygraphs and what is written into the Bill, by looking at the explanatory notes that were issued. I refer to paragraph 213 of section 34, “Polygraph conditions for terrorist offenders: Northern Ireland”, which states:

“New subsection (5) establishes that statements or physiological reactions of the offender in polygraph sessions cannot be used as evidence in proceedings for an offence against the released person.”

Does that provide you with the comfort you were seeking?

Les Allamby: Yet again, it provides me with a very limited measure of reassurance. It is absolutely right that you should not be able to take someone back to court to suggest a new offence has been committed on the basis of the polygraph, so that provides a measure of reassurance.

But I am mindful that if, for example, you are released on licence and you fail a polygraph test, it can be used to revoke your licence and place you back in prison. That is a pretty severe consequence for technology that has not been piloted. The reassurance is welcome in those terms, but you have to understand where else the ramifications of—

[The Chair]

Minister, do you have a supplementary question you want to put to that?