Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill

Stephen Doughty Excerpts

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

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Robert Buckland)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

The first duty of any Government is to protect the public from harm. Combating the unprecedented threat of coronavirus has, of course, been the focus of our energies over the last few months, but as our country begins to open up once again, it is crucial that we maintain our vigilance towards the all too familiar threat of terrorism. As the House will recall, there have been a number of devastating incidents in recent years. The appalling atrocities at Fishmongers’ Hall on 29 November last year and in Streatham on 2 February this year, barely two months apart, were brutal attacks on innocent members of the public just going about their day-to-day lives. Those incidents drove home some hard truths about our approach to managing terrorists in the justice system, with each committed by an offender who had been released automatically halfway through their sentence, with no involvement from the Parole Board. We cannot allow that to happen again.

Following the Streatham attack, we acted swiftly to introduce the Terrorist Offenders (Restriction of Early Release) Act 2020, which ended the automatic early release of terrorist offenders and ensured that any release before the end of a sentence is dependent on a thorough risk assessment by the Parole Board. I was extremely grateful for the co-operation we received from Members on both sides of the House on that vital piece of legislation, and I was proud of how quickly this place acted to get it on to the statute book. That piece of legislation built on the Government’s plans to bolster the United Kingdom’s response to terrorism and to ensure that we have some of the strongest measures in the world to tackle that threat.

[Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Lord Chancellor mentions the importance of speed in dealing with these situations. Does he agree that we have perhaps not moved fast enough in, for example, proscribing some organisations? I am thinking particularly of extreme right-wing organisations that target the black community, other people of colour, the Jewish community and the gay community. It took years to get System Resistance Network and Sonnenkrieg Division banned by the Government, and there are other organisations out there, such as the Order of Nine Angles, that need to be banned. Does he agree that we need to move further and faster on proscription so that people involved in those organisations can receive the sentences that he is talking about in this legislation?

[Robert Buckland]

The hon. Gentleman knows that the function of proscription is for the Home Secretary. From my knowledge of it, which is not as close as that of my colleague, proscription is a device that should be applied equally, without discrimination. He is absolutely right to talk about the rise of far-right extremism. At this Dispatch Box and elsewhere, I have readily acknowledged the fact that out in our community, sadly, and in our prison system, we have a proportion of far-right wing terrorists who have been convicted and brought to justice. What I would say about those individual examples is that wherever there is evidence of activities that amounts to grounds for proscription, I know that this Home Secretary—indeed, like her predecessors—will act with alacrity. Of course, her predecessor did in the instances that the hon. Gentleman mentioned, so I assure him that the Government will work within the law and apply it equally to all groups and organisations that pose a direct threat to our way of life. That is what we are talking about here.

I was dealing with the measures that we announced in the aftermath of the atrocity at Fishmongers’ Hall. In the current financial year, 2020-21, we have increased funding for counter-terrorism policing by £90 million. We announced a review for the support for victims of terrorism, with a further £500,000 being provided to the Victims of Terrorism Unit. We then announced our plans to double the number of counter-terrorism specialist probation staff. We are also working to increase the places that are available in probation hostels, so that authorities can keep closer tabs on terrorists in the weeks after their release from prison. Of course there is also the independent review—led by the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, Jonathan Hall, QC—of the way in which different agencies investigate, monitor and manage terrorist offenders. This was just the first stage of our response, because these attacks clearly demonstrated the need for terrorist offenders to spend longer in prison and to be subject to more stringent monitoring in the community.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Buckland]

I pay tribute to the work my hon. Friend did in my Department at the beginning of the coalition Government. He is right that in many instances the removal of flexibility in sentencing can pose huge challenges, but we are dealing with an exceptional cohort—a small group of people whose type of offending is very different in my view from the mainstream of other types of offender. As he knows, I have worked in the system for many years, and I have seen individuals capable of the most astonishing rehabilitation, who have turned away from crime and gone on to lead blameless lives, but I am afraid that within this cadre of people there is a stubborn minority who are not capable of rehabilitation, who might show superficial signs of co-operation but whose agenda remains unchanged and undeterred and whose chosen path remains the same, even many years later. That is the sad reality of terrorism and I make no apology for taking an exceptional course to deal with an exceptionally difficult, troublesome, and dangerous group of people.

[Stephen Doughty]

The Lord Chancellor is being incredibly generous in giving way. He will be aware of the tragic circumstances in which young people in my constituency were recruited to Daesh/ISIS, and that the perpetrator of neo-Nazi actions a couple of years ago in Grangetown was only 19. It is right to focus on issues that relate to young people, but will the right hon. and learned Gentleman say a little more about the specialist probation officers, and about what training skills they will be given to look at the increasingly sophisticated way that some of these individuals engage online? As he said, they might be superficially engaging in face-to-face conversations, but then having a completely different set of conversations online, including through gaming platforms.

[Robert Buckland]

I know the hon. Gentleman’s community very well through my work in the criminal justice system. It sounds as if his community has particular criminal justice problems—that would be an insult, as it is a diverse and lively community that I know very well indeed. From that knowledge, I know that he represents a wide and wonderfully diverse range of cultures and views in the great city of Cardiff. He can be reassured that online work is as important as any offline interaction. I am impressed by the constant attention to renewal when it comes to the training of probation officers, and there is an acknowledgement that the threat is constantly evolving. The sad reality of the tender ages of some of these perpetrators is something we had to acknowledge in the Bill, hence the measures we are taking.

I was talking about the statutory review of Prevent. As we know, there was a deadline in statute for the completion of that review. We are having to change that, which is unfortunate and not something we wanted. We know there was a difficulty with the process, and Lord Carlile had to step down. We are engaging in a full and open competition to appoint the next independent reviewer, which is what the House would want; it has to be open and independent. We want to give the new reviewer the time necessary to carry out the review, so the statutory deadline will be removed. That does not in any way diminish my commitment, or that of the Home Secretary, to the success of the review, or our determination for it to be done properly and at speed. Our aim is for the review to conclude, with the Government response, by August next year.

In response to an intervention from the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) I made the point that, perhaps unusually for a criminal justice Bill, this Bill has UK-wide application, because of the devolution settlement and the question of reserved matters when it comes to counter-terrorism. We have committed to ensuring that the seriousness of terrorist offending is treated equally across the three jurisdictions of the UK, and that we are able to protect all our citizens. We owe it to the people of Northern Ireland, of Scotland, and of England and Wales, not to discriminate in any way or to create false and unhelpful distinctions between all corners of our kingdom. To that end, the provisions will apply equally to the three jurisdictions. That includes applying the measures that we took in the Terrorist Offenders (Restriction of Early Release) Act 2020, in full, to Northern Ireland.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

The point of terror attacks is to make us despair, but the public’s response to them shows us why we are still right to believe in hope. We saw that clearly in the attack on Fishmongers’ Hall on 29 November last year. I will not name the attacker, but I will praise the bravery of the Polish porter, Łukasz Koczocik, who risked his own life to help overpower the terrorist with a narwhal tusk. Two former offenders, James Ford and Marc Conway, also became heroes when they helped tackle the attacker to the ground. I also pay special tribute to Jack Merritt and Saskia Jones, who dedicated their young lives to seeing the best in people, working in offender rehabilitation only to be killed in the most bitter twist of fate.

That terrorist attack, like another on Streatham High Road on 2 February this year, was committed by an individual who was already convicted as a terrorist offender, but who had been released automatically at just past the halfway point of their sentence. They were neither de-radicalised nor deterred by their time in prison. In fact, their time at Her Majesty’s pleasure may have made them worse.

There are two possible conclusions we can draw from those harrowing stories. First, prison sentences for terrorists are not long enough and, secondly, deradicalisation programmes in prison are not working. The Government, with the support of the Opposition, went some way to addressing the first of those concerns with emergency legislation passed earlier this year. The Terrorist Offenders (Restriction of Early Release) Act 2020 ensured that terrorist offenders sentenced to a determinate sentence could not be released before the end of their custodial sentence without the agreement of the Parole Board.

The measures in today’s legislation build on the emergency legislation. They, too, are based on the conclusion that there remain some terrorism offences where the maximum penalty is not sufficient for the gravity of the offence. The Opposition will not be seeking a Division on Second Reading, but we will scrutinise the Bill as it moves through the House into Committee and on Third Reading.

We understand that the terrorism threat level in the UK remains substantial. We also note that the threat does not come from Islamic extremists only. As Britain’s top counter-terrorism police officer, Neil Basu, has warned, the fastest-growing terrorist threat comes from the far right. Of the 224 people in prison for terror-related offences, 173 are Islamic extremists and 38 are far-right ideologues. Of the 16 plots foiled by the end of 2018, four were from the far-right community. In a world that is increasingly tribal, the Opposition believe that the broad thrust of these changes is needed. Labour’s priority is to keep the British public safe.

[Stephen Doughty]

I thank my right hon. Friend for giving way, and I completely agree with his comments. Does he agree that the particular threat we face from far-right organisations is put in stark relief for us by the fact that we have just passed the 21st anniversary of the London nail bombings, which were done by an individual who targeted the black community in Brixton, the Bengali community in the east end and then the LGBT community at the Admiral Duncan pub. The trial judge at the time said it was unlikely that he would ever be able to be released safely, given the awfulness of the crimes he committed. Does my right hon. Friend agree that that is why we need to go after these organisations, such as the Order of Nine Angles and others who have the same ideology?

[Mr Lammy]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for the interest that he takes in these issues and the seriousness and expertise with which he brings them to the House. He is absolutely right. This is incredibly serious and, unfortunately for us, here in the UK we have a number of groups that are globally connected to very dangerous far-right movements. He will know also that sadly, as has already been indicated by the Chair of the Defence Committee, when we come out of the coronavirus period, partly because of the recession and the tough economic times that are likely to follow, there will be individuals who seek to exploit increased hardship and poverty with very extreme rhetoric. Indeed, sadly, in our own country we can see one particular individual taking to social media to whip up a storm in relation to the Black Lives Matter campaigns that we are seeing at the moment.

It is our job in the Labour party to fulfil our role of scrutinising every line of this legislation. First, we want to ensure that the changes balance the threat of terrorist offenders with the rights and freedoms on which our society is built. Secondly, we seek to square the importance of punishment with the necessity to rehabilitate. Some Members may be sceptical about whether it is possible to deradicalise terrorist offenders, but we in the Opposition believe that we have a duty to try—if not for the sake of the offenders, for the sake of the public we must protect.

Even with the extensions to sentences that the Bill proposes, terrorist offenders will be released at some point from our prisons. There is little use increasing sentences for terrorists if we are to release them just a few years later, still committed to their hateful ideology, still determined to wreak havoc. If we are to honour the lives of the young people killed at Fishmongers’ Hall, we cannot give up on rehabilitation. We must not lose faith in the power of redemption—the ability of people to renounce the darkest chapters of their lives and move towards the light.

Let me start by outlining the most significant measures proposed in the Bill that the Opposition support. Next I will explain those areas that we have concerns with. Finally, I will explain the Opposition’s greatest problem with the Bill: not what is in it, but what is not.

The elephant in the room this afternoon is the Government’s failure to announce a coherent deradicalisation strategy to go alongside the Bill. We accept the creation of a new serious terrorism sentence which ends loopholes in the current laws. We support increasing the maximum penalty from 10 to 14 years for certain terror offences, to better reflect their gravity, although we think that further pause must be taken to consider the warning in the impact assessment that

“Longer periods in custody could disrupt family relationships which are often critical to reducing the risk of reoffending.”

We also believe that it is wholly right to make it possible for any offence with a maximum penalty of two years or more to have terrorism as an aggravating factor. Although not all the details of those specific reforms are perfectly drafted, in spirit they are proportionate and fair.

Amid changes that are fair and reasonable, there are others that will need serious scrutiny. As the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, Jonathan Hall QC, has pointed out, the removal of the Parole Board for serious terrorism offenders is a “profound” and, we would argue, problematic change. No one on either side of the House wants to see terrorists getting out before they have served their time, but we must not allow our anger to distort the lessons from Fishmongers’ Hall and Streatham.

This House expressed dismay that both those terrorists were released without ever coming into contact with the Parole Board. The laws in place failed to use the expertise of the Parole Board to understand the risks of their early release and to make the necessary assessments. The Parole Board is, of course, sceptical when these individuals come before it, and its record of release is very low indeed in these sorts of cases. So why are the Government planning to remove the Parole Board for serious terrorism offenders now? Surely we want terrorists to be assessed by the Parole Board more often, not less.

Removing the Parole Board for serious terrorism offenders is not only a problem in terms of monitoring the threat level of convicted offenders and the ability to use the intelligence gleaned; it could also actively undermine these offenders’ incentives to abandon their ideologies. When prisoners know that they have to behave well in order to get out earlier, this engagement can have a transformative effect. Without the extra incentive, we reduce the chances of engagement in rehabilitation. That is particularly concerning when we consider young people under the age of 21 who have been convicted of terrorist offences. Whatever they have done wrong, those seduced by dangerous ideologies in their teenage years must be given every opportunity to change.