Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill (Fifth sitting)

Debate between Rupa Huq and Simon Hoare

Committee Debate: 5th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 3rd July 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I speak to clause 18, in support of my hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen’s plea for an independent review of the programme. As he said so persuasively, it is doing some good work out there, and nobody is arguing against safeguarding. However, we have to accept that in its current guise and its earlier incarnation of preventing violent extremism, Prevent has been dogged by accusations of feeding mistrust and harbouring suspicion against certain communities, who feel disproportionately targeted by its impact. I am speaking mainly about Muslims, who may already be feeling jumpy in this post-Brexit climate of the rises we have seen in hate crime. We do not want to be unwittingly pushing them into the wrong arms.

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

What would the hon. Lady say to the counter-accusation, if we can call it that, that some within a variety of communities sought to undermine the robustness and work of the programme, by making such allegations? They did so not because they had any particular axe to grind against Prevent; they were just trying to divert attention away from their activities to create distrust in the agenda. What does she say about that, given that a canon of evidence seems to be building, which demonstrates that as a fact?

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[Dr Huq]

I am grateful to the Minister for flagging up that one should be cagey about Cage. I have never encountered Cage directly, but am reporting verbatim what someone said to me. That is my point: if people feel they are being alienated, we do not want to radicalise them and drive them into the arms of the wrong people.

The Somali girl said she had undertaken training at the London borough of Hillingdon. She had been shown a video that said that the tell-tale signs for spotting that someone is becoming radicalised include going to a mosque and having a beard. She said that that covers most of the people she knows. Again, it may be that some of the training materials are a bit defective. She said that after her niece’s schoolteacher had been on training in Feltham in the London borough of Hounslow, the kid—a primary school child who sometimes wears a hijab and sometimes does not—was called in with her parents. Again, perhaps we should have a review of the materials that are being put out there. Her point was that the video would make anyone feel a bit mistrustful of Muslims, but would not have done the same for far-right activists. Although the video gave an example of far-right activism, it was not on a par.

The vast majority of referrals come through schools, and there are figures on that. Academic papers from the law department at Oxford—I went to Cambridge, so I intrinsically mistrust anything from Oxford—

[Simon Hoare]

Order.

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[Simon Hoare]

I do not wish to detain the Committee for long, not least because all the copious notes I took from the meeting that the hon. Gentleman alluded to seemed to go missing in the lunch recess. Perhaps we should be more concerned about our security and counter-terrorism than anything else.

I want to support the probing nature of what the hon. Gentleman just said. The licensed vehicle fleet is very large and represents a significant percentage of new car sales in the UK. We know full well the huge importance that the automotive sector has for our UK economy.

It is also an important part of our UK tourism sector. Lots of people live in our big towns and cities because there is good transport and they do not require to run a motorcar. However, they want to go on holiday in the United Kingdom with their kit, their kids and everything else, so they hire a car. We also want to ensure that foreign tourists who are here on a UK-only destination or as part of a wider European tour have access to a vehicle.

As we know, insurance is a pivotal measure that vehicle rental companies must have. The hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark alluded to the huge problems that that can create when trying to find insurance. That seems to be a difficulty not just for the larger players in the sector but smaller business. Businesses large and small create a significant number of jobs.

The hon. Gentleman referred to the ongoing consultation on the vote. One hopes that that will address the issue. As the Bill progresses towards Report and processes in the other place, I urge my right hon. Friend the Minister that it is a timely trigger for a more intragovernmental conversation about how our mature and well respected insurance sector considers altering its products and remit, and how it looks at requests for insurance in sectors that are prone to claims, which are themselves hard to define. Vehicles would obviously be one of those. There seems to be a time lag between the mindset of the insurance sector and what today’s modern business requires.

A constituent is having to claim on his domestic insurance for loss of possessions as an indirect result of terrorist activity. His insurer has told him, “Terribly sorry; you are not covered.” Lots of other sections, be it Government, police, security and so on, have had to recalibrate a lot of what they do in order to face these new challenges. That is what we are trying to do in the Bill. There is a time lag in some elements of the insurance sector, so I support the hon. Gentleman.

[Dr Huq]

rose—

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[Dr Huq]

I wanted to say that the Riot Compensation Act 2016 tidied that up. It would be good if that were considered in some form.

[Simon Hoare]

I was drawing my remarks to a close. I am not going to speak to all of the amendments, conscious of your injunction, Mrs Main.

Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Rupa Huq and Simon Hoare

Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 26th June 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

Q This morning, as you were saying, I asked the two panels about clause 3 and the potential for criminalising thought without action. I raised a case that was quite high profile at the time, and nobody from the two panels this morning had heard of them.

I wanted to ask you about, first, the issue of thought without action and secondly, the difference between lone wolves and proscribed organisations. The case I wanted to raise was the first ever person convicted under the Terrorism Act, in 2007, the 23-year-old “lyrical terrorist”—the person writing extremist poetry about beheading people. That resulted in an Old Bailey conviction that was later overturned by the Court of Appeal. What are your thoughts on that and this Bill? How would they apply? Have you heard of that case? Nobody this morning had, and I was surprised by that.

Peter Carter: No, I am afraid I have not. It was not one I acted in.

[Simon Hoare]

Are you sure you did not dream it?

[Dr Huq]

It was all over the news at the time in 2007 and it was overturned in 2008.

Peter Carter: The difficulty with section 58 is that it is not about terrorist material; it is about

“information of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism”.

If it was about terrorist material, as identified by the Minister, I think there would be very little problem with it.

The difficulty of extending the definition of “material” in section 58 of the 2000 Act, as this clause does, is to take it into thought. We are at risk of getting close to a heresy idea. It would be trying to stop what is genuine interest in political issues of extremism and people being able to inform themselves about extremism in order to engage with the debate and to defeat these views. Unless we engage in a debate with those views, we will not defeat them. There has to be a capacity for ordinary people to be able to understand what extremism is and why these views are so dangerous that we must engage with them and overcome them.