Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill

Rushanara Ali Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 9th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Robert Buckland]

I am grateful to the hon. and learned Lady for her question. Indeed, in the lengthy answers that I am giving, I am trying to do just that. What I am trying to explain is—I know that she knows this—that the TPIM mechanism is not something that is entered upon lightly. It involves a high degree of resource and a high intensity of resource management. It is a self-evident truth that the resources of the state, however large they may be, are not infinite and therefore choices and priorities have to be allocated. What I can assure the House of is that of course every time we assess that the grounds are met and that there is a risk, we will act. That is what our security services do, day in, day out, for us. What I am saying is that the change in the threshold creates that greater agility. I accept that it will be a lower standard, yes, but the reason for that is to allow for greater flexibility when our operational partners come to apply them.    



I was talking about the importance of TPIMs’ use being proportionate. I believe that the annual review of TPIMs, which is going to be part of this process to qualify the question about their indefinite duration, strikes the right balance between the need for vigilance and control against the need for those basic civil liberties that we all guard jealously to be maintained. Let us not forget that where it is no longer necessary or proportionate to extend a particular TPIM for the purposes of public protection, that TPIM will be revoked. That check and balance is very much at the heart of the regimen that we are proposing in the Bill.

The Bill also amends legislation governing serious crime prevention orders. Those are civil orders imposed by the courts that protect the public by preventing, restricting or disrupting an individual’s involvement in serious crime, which of course includes terrorism. The Bill supports the use of these orders in terrorist-related cases by allowing counter-terrorism policing to make a direct application to the High Court for a serious crime prevention order. We are therefore streamlining that process. The independent reviewer of terrorism legislation has noted that these mechanisms are at the moment an under-utilised tool in terrorism cases, and I believe that by streamlining the process we will see a greater reliance upon them.

We are also adding the offences of breaching a TPIM notice and breaching a temporary exclusion order to the list of relevant terrorism offences that can trigger the registered terrorist offender notification requirements. Again, the independent reviewer has publicly confirmed his support for that change. The regime requires individuals aged 16 or over who have been sentenced to 12 months or more in custody for a relevant terrorism offence to provide certain information about changes in their circumstances, such as their address, to the police and to notify them of any foreign travel plans. Together, these changes strengthen our ability to manage the risk posed by those of terrorism concern in our community, including those who have been released from prison without a period on licence.

The Bill also reforms how we deal with terrorist offenders under the age of 18. We recognise, of course, that there is a separate sentencing framework for that category of offenders, and that it has distinct purposes and aims that differ from those relating to adult offenders. We have carefully considered which measures it would be appropriate to apply to under 18-year-olds in developing this proposed legislation. Although we remain firm in our aim to ensure that custody should be used only where absolutely necessary, it is a sad and inescapable fact that some young people are susceptible to radicalisation or to the adoption of extremist views, and that among those, there are a few who pose a very serious threat to the public.

The Bill will therefore ensure that the courts have the right range of tools at their disposal to deal with those under the age of 18 who commit serious terrorist or terrorist-related offences. We will do that by introducing a youth equivalent to the special sentence for offenders of particular concern. This will mean that, if convicted of terrorist offences serious enough to warrant custody, these offenders will serve a fixed period on licence once they have been released into the community. This will ensure that they receive an appropriate level of supervision. We are also replicating the changes to the extended determinate sentence to ensure better public protection from young terrorist offenders who have been assessed as dangerous. This removes Parole Board consideration of the two-thirds point for the most serious terrorism offences, and in the interests of public protection, it gives the courts the option to apply an extension period of up to 10 years on licence. I accept that this is an exceptional series of measures, but we are dealing with an exceptional type of offending.

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

Can the Secretary of State explain, first, what additional resources will be made available within the prison system to ensure that those who commit terror offences are not then left there to radicalise other young offenders? That has been a huge concern, and the Government have been pretty lacklustre in dealing with it. Secondly, when they are released, what resources and support will be made available to local authorities and other partnerships to ensure that other young people are not susceptible to their influence? It is one thing to sentence, but quite another to deal with the underlying challenges in communities.

[Robert Buckland]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for raising that issue. I can give her the strongest reassurance that, though at times it might appear, from some of the coverage of how terrorism is monitored in prison, that our system is failing, it is not. There are many aspects of the counter-terrorism regimen in our prisons that are world leading and which other countries are learning from and coming to us for help and advice on. I can say this about our recent announcement: the doubling of the number of specialist probation officers, and imams with specialist training, will further improve the way we deal with terrorism both inside prisons and in the community.

I can reassure the hon. Lady that, after 2017, when the Home Office and my Department came together with the joint extremism unit that deals with terrorism, a visitor to a prison with a particular specialism—Belmarsh, for example—would have seen embedded in the command and control structure police officers, probation officers, all parts of the system working jointly around a particular offender: not just monitoring but anticipating and understanding the trends, themes and information emerging. A lot of this is of a sensitive nature and it would be wrong of me to dwell too heavily upon the detail, but I can say that we have created separation centres. Those are challenging, as one should not use them on a whim and there needs to be a clear basis on which to separate individuals of known extremism from the rest of the prison population. Otherwise, there is a danger of creating an even more worrying unit or cadre of individuals who feed off each other and whose agenda of hate and terror is only entrenched by their being separated from the rest of the prison community.

The hon. Lady is right to say there is a challenging balance to be reached between separation and the danger of the proselytization of these views among other more susceptible members of the prison community, but we have the resources and are ploughing them in. The Bill is only part of the step-up approach I announced earlier this year. She can be reassured that not only is the work being done in prisons but—to deal with her point about the community—the specialist probation officers will have a community role as well. Furthermore, as I will refer to shortly, the statutory review of Prevent will give us all an opportunity to hone, improve and refine our approach to terrorism within the community.

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[Mr Lammy]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his careful and considered observations. Of course he is right in what he says, because when we are talking about this category of offender we are often talking about gross immaturity, and with appropriate intervention and the appropriate assessment it is possible to effect de-radicalisation. The removal of the Parole Board in this means that that assessment is not made at all. I think that behind the Secretary of State’s words and this Bill is the understanding that we will put this cohort automatically on licence, but of course that comes at a cost. Notwithstanding that, we want the intensive scrutiny of the Parole Board, with it looking once, twice, three times at this cohort of this offender. Removing that is a profound decision, as the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation suggested. For those reasons, I hope that the scrutiny that is required of that decision is undertaken carefully in Committee.

The Independent Reviewer of Terrorism legislation also rightly raises concerns about extending the maximum licence period for serious terrorism offenders to 25 years. We have concerns about both the proportionality and the cost of this reform. Even indeterminate sentences for public protection prisoners have the prospect of their licence period being terminated when they are no longer considered a risk. Importantly, the Government have not gone into sufficient detail about how they will pay for the heavy administrative burden this will place on probation services, coming after a decade of austerity and cuts, where we have seen changes that the Government are now determined to change once again. As we plunge into the deepest recession of our lifetimes, how does the Secretary of State propose to pay for this massive growth in the number of those under licence?

In addition, there are specific circumstances in relation to Northern Ireland that of course require scrutiny and discussion as we move forward. In terms of sentencing, these are the Opposition’s major concerns that we plan to address in Committee, but we also share the concerns raised by the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation when it comes to the changes of monitoring tools available to the security services and counter-terrorism police.

As the Secretary of State will know, he puts me in a strange position with his proposals relating to TPIMs. He will remember that it was a Labour Government, in 2005, which I served in, that first introduced control orders. Back then, in order to impose a control order, a Secretary of State needed only “reasonable grounds for suspecting” that the individual was or had been involved in terrorism-related activity. In 2011, the coalition Government raised the standard of proof, by replacing Labour’s control orders with TPIMs. The Secretaries of State could impose these controls only if they “reasonably believed” that the individual was or had been involved in terrorism-related activity. In 2015, the Conservatives raised the standard of proof even higher to require the Secretary of State to have evidence that on the balance of probabilities an individual was or had been involved in terrorist offences, but in the proposed changes we are debating today, the Government propose lowering the standard of proof from the balance of probabilities back to reasonable grounds for suspecting. The Conservative Government seem to have taken nine years to move away from Labour policy and then to return full circle back to it.

Whether or not it can be justified, lowering the standard of proof inevitably increases the chances of innocent individuals being subjected to serious constraints on their freedom. Given that the courts found no problems with the current threshold, as the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation notes, what are the reasons for this U-turn? As has been suggested by the Chair of the Select Committee and the spokesman for the SNP, the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry), I do not think the House has yet heard the reason for this U-turn, given that it was not indicated in February, and given that the independent reviewer does not support it and the last one certainly did not support it. Were the Conservative Government wrong when they raised the standard of proof in 2011 and then again in 2015, or are they wrong today when they propose lowering it?

An additional and significant issue about which the reviewer has raised concerns is the removal of the two-year limit on TPIMs, allowing them to be renewed indefinitely. Let me remind the House what a TPIM can involve: overnight residence requirements; relocation to another part of the country; police reporting; an electronic monitoring tag; exclusion from specific places; limits on association; limits on the use of financial services; limits on the use of telephones and computers; and a ban on holding travel documents. This would mark an unprecedented restriction of rights for individuals who, we must remember, have not been convicted of any crime. It raises significant issues, and for that reason I suspect that it will occupy the Bill Committee. It is entirely right when the Secretary of State says that we must be strong on dealing with terrorism—of course, that unites the House—but because we believe in the rule of law and the democratic traditions that we inherit in this House, it is also right that we have the right safeguards, and it is those safeguards that we will very definitely want to scrutinise.

[Rushanara Ali]

My right hon. Friend makes a very important point about the balance between security and liberty. It is not easy for any Government to strike the right balance, but it is very important that this Government recognise that we cannot afford to lose the wider community—we must ensure that people are not wrongly convicted and there must be assurance that there are safeguards in place to protect innocent people while we go after those who are dangerous and who are committing crimes and acts of terror.

[Mr Lammy]

My hon. Friend is right to raise the question in the manner that she does, because fundamental to our policing model in this country, even where it relates to terrorism, is the consent model. We must take the consent of communities with us, and when we lose consent, we get disorder. One might say that, in parts of the United States at the moment, one can see the loss of consent from particular ethnic communities. The point she raises is fundamental, and it is why we would not be doing our job properly if we did not scrutinise these changes carefully.

In 2015, the then Justice Secretary, the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), commissioned a report by former prison governor Ian Acheson into Islamist extremism in prisons, probation and youth justice. The report found evidence of growing Islamist extremism in prisons and called for

“a central, comprehensive and coordinated strategy”

to fix it. Acheson proposed 69 recommendations, which were consolidated into a total of 11, eight of which we were told would be followed.

It is unclear, however, how many of his recommendations have been implemented and what effect any changes have had on de-radicalisation. Indeed, last year, when Acheson published a report for the Centre for Social Justice, he did not seem confident that much had changed. He wrote:

“Our unsafe prisons provide a fertile breeding ground in which predators, peddling extremist and violent ideologies, can prey upon the vulnerable, creating significant risks to national security and the public at large…On the present trajectory, it is all too conceivable that a future terrorist will have been groomed and radicalised within our prison estate.”

How can the Government justify their failure to include any new policies on rehabilitation or de-radicalisation? Where is the new funding for de-radicalisation in our prisons? Where is the extra support for our probation services? We know that the Government believe in stricter sentences, but what do they have to say about defeating the ideology of hate? Only one part of this package touches on this question, and even it does not attempt to solve it. It instead pushes back the legally binding deadline for the completion of an independent review of Prevent. That review was supposed to be completed by August 2020, and yet this summer it will be further delayed until next year.

We will not seek a Division today because we recognise that there must be progress on this issue, but we are very disappointed by the lack of focus on de-radicalisation. Indeed, some of the Government’s plans, including removing the Parole Board, may actively reduce the chances of rehabilitation in prison. Defeating the ideology, not merely imprisoning those hypnotised by it, is what is necessary if we are serious about preventing reoffending.

After Jack Merritt was killed in Fishmongers’ Hall, his father Dave wrote poignantly about how his son would have perceived the political reaction to his own death. Dave wrote:

“What Jack would want from this is for all of us to walk through the door he has booted down, in his black Doc Martens.

That door opens up a world where we do not lock up and throw away the key. Where we do not give indeterminate sentences, or convict people on joint enterprise. Where we do not slash prison budgets, and where we focus on rehabilitation not revenge. Where we do not consistently undermine our public services, the lifeline of our nation. Jack believed in the inherent goodness of humanity, and felt a deep social responsibility to protect that.”

Jack Merritt’s death was cruelly ironic, but it is a further bitter blow that in its wake, punishment for the offenders he sought to help will become more strict. It is undeniably true that Jack’s murderer never rehabilitated. He maintained his twisted ideology to the very end. However, we must not let this nightmare blind us into believing that second chances exist only in dreams. The murderous terrorist who took Jack’s life would no doubt like us to lose our faith in humanity. But Jack would like us to keep it. The very least we owe him is not to forget this.

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[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

Our overriding aim must always be to keep the British public safe and to ensure that horrific terrorist attacks, such as the ones at the Fishmongers’ Hall and in Streatham, cannot be repeated. We were all shocked and horrified by the attacks, and we mourn the death of Jack Merritt and Saskia Jones, who were killed on that day.

Of course, as has already been mentioned, over the years we have witnessed so many terrorist attacks, with so many lives lost and so much suffering, and it is vital that we have a set of policies to ensure that those who commit such atrocities are prosecuted. However, we must also make sure that we take action to do the prevention work to deal with the underlying causes. There must be proper investment in our schools, our local authorities and our communities, so that we can ensure that young people in particular are protected from the dangers of radicalisation, of being groomed online and of being prey to extremists, whether religious extremists or far-right extremists.

As we have heard, there is a growing threat of both kinds, and the mutually reinforcing threat of violent extremism from the far right and from the religious right—religious extremists—is going to pose an even greater danger to our society. It is therefore right that Opposition Members support the actions to ensure that sentencing is improved, but that has to come with proper safeguards, as my hon. Friends have already highlighted in this debate. That means that we have to question why it is that the Government have lowered the standard of proof for suspected terrorist activity, replacing it with “reasonable grounds”, which is a relative term, as we have heard.

We have already heard about some of the risks and dangers of doing that. We have heard about what that could mean in operational terms, and we have seen that many mistakes can happen despite the valiant efforts of our security, police and other services. Mistakes can happen at the operational level, which is why checks and balances have to be put in place to ensure that we strike the right balance between the liberty of people who have not done anything wrong but who may be suspected, and our security services and police having the right legal framework to work within in relation to those who are committing crime. This particular change is actually not going to make matters better, and it is likely to create greater resentment if mistakes are made, which is why I appeal to Ministers to reconsider it.

On my other major concerns, we need to make sure that, alongside the sentencing changes and ensuring proper checks and balances, the Government set as a matter of urgency a deadline for the review of the Prevent strategy. Without action on prevention, we will deal with only one side of the coin. I know all too well the dangers of Prevent not working. Although I recognise that many interventions over the years have had some significant success, the review is critical for us to learn the lessons of what does not work and what needs to be reformed and improved. We need radical action on supporting the young and those at risk, and on looking at online threats and the new threats that are emerging, particularly from the far right. I therefore hope that the Minister can say today when the review will be completed. I recognise that there is a delay, but we need an urgent response and we must ensure that the delay does not continue.

Another issue is how we resource our public services. Sections 36 to 41 of the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015 place a duty on local authorities and partners to provide support for people who are vulnerable to being drawn into any form of terrorism. Yet local authorities were already facing cuts. My local authority, despite some support from the Government, will face a deficit of about £50 million. At a time of great pressure, local authorities should be properly supported when they have a duty around this agenda. I hope that the Minister will say what additional resources will be given to them, and also to schools to provide proper training and support for our teachers who are being expected to take action without proper support. I raised that issue previously after the three girls from Bethnal Green in my constituency went to Syria. That was years ago and I am not yet convinced that the Government have seriously taken on board the need for investment and support in our schools, local communities and youth services. Indeed, youth services have experienced dramatic cuts over the years. I therefore hope that the Minister will look at the wider agenda as the review takes place.

[Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady concur with me, as a former citizenship teacher—a great subject that her party introduced—that although citizenship is statutory, it does not have to be taught in lesson format and that it should be given greater emphasis in the curriculum to tackle the difficult stuff that she mentions?

[Rushanara Ali]

I agree and it is disappointing that the coalition Government made those changes. The important thing now is to look forward to see how we can make improvements. That requires the Government to focus not only on being tough on terrorism once an act of terror has happened, but on the causes. That means proper partnership and proper investment, which we have not seen in recent years.

It is not difficult for Governments of any party to introduce tough legislation. The heavy lifting is done in communities, schools, youth centres and places of worship. That is where we need to redouble our efforts alongside what is happening today so that we can genuinely work together as a society to prevent terrorism and extremism of all forms, far right as well as religious extremism. That is missing and I hope that Ministers will heed our advice, focus on the Prevent agenda and get it right so that others, particularly young people, are not at risk as my constituents were. They left the country and, as we all know, it ended terribly.