Mohammed Ahmed Mohamed

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Monday 4th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

Parliament will be deeply concerned about the Home Secretary’s statement. Obviously, all hon. Members want the police and the Security Service to have all possible help to apprehend Mohammed Ahmed Mohamed as soon as possible. The Home Secretary says that Mr Mohamed poses no direct threat, even though he is widely reported in the media to have attended terror training camps, procured weapons and planned attacks. He has walked away from a terror suspect order in a very simple disguise, and the Home Secretary has no idea where he is. He is the second man in 10 months who has absconded while subject to a TPIM. There were only 10 such men to begin with, and two have now gone: one in a black cab and one in a disguise. The Opposition called for controls to be tightened, for the legislation to be revisited and for lessons to be learned. None of that has happened. The Home Secretary has done nothing.

Since control orders were strengthened some years ago, no one absconded—since 2007. Lord Carlile, the former counter-terror reviewer, has said:

“nobody absconded while subject to a relocation order”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 8 January 2013; Vol. 742, c. 20.]

However, since the Home Secretary got rid of relocation orders and control orders and introduced the weaker TPIMs, two terror suspects have vanished. Ibrahim Magag was previously relocated to the west country. The Home Secretary’s decision brought him back, and he disappeared. Mohammed Ahmed Mohamed was previously relocated outside London. The Home Secretary’s decision brought him back and he, too, has disappeared. Her policies brought those two terror suspects back into contact with their old networks and with people who could help them to disappear, and made it easier for them to run off.

Last time the Home Secretary said there was plenty of money for the added surveillance needed, so was Mr Mohamed under active surveillance when he entered the mosque, or was it just ordinary CCTV? His case was in court on Friday—he was accused of tampering with his tag—but why did the Government drop the case? Were the tags faulty? Were there other charges?

The Home Secretary said that Mr Mohamed was under a TPIM to stop him travelling overseas. What did she plan to do next year when his and all the other TPIMs ran out?

TPIMs apply to a very small number of difficult cases. Everyone recognises that there is no perfect answer and that there will always be challenges, but this Home Secretary has made it easier for serious terror suspects to disappear. That is irresponsible. She was warned about changing the law and weakening controls. She was warned that more people would abscond and they have done so—twice—but still she will not act. The question on everyone’s lips is: how many more warnings does the Home Secretary need?

[Mrs May]

This is a serious issue, but the right hon. Lady’s response was beneath somebody who is supposed to understand these matters.

The right hon. Lady referred to the money available for surveillance. I understand that she briefed Sky News this morning that she would tell the House of Commons that there have been cuts to the funding for monitoring and surveillance. I notice that she has dropped that from her argument, because the truth, as she well knows, is that as part of the TPIM package the Government introduced in 2011 we did not cut the surveillance budget for the police and Security Service but increased it—by tens of millions of pounds per year. We did not cut the budgets for counter-terrorism, policing and the security service; we protected them.

The right hon. Lady asked about the lessons learned from the Magag case. I can confirm that there was a review of that case, which was shared with David Anderson, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, who mentioned it in his annual review. All the recommendations of that review have been acted on. I can also confirm that a similar review will be conducted of this case.

The right hon. Lady referred to the changes in TPIMs. They are, of course, time-limited, but time limits have nothing to do with this case, as the subject was still bound by the terms of his TPIM. What she never tells the House when she makes this point is that 43 people who were subject to control orders have now exited those control orders. The truth is that even before time-limited TPIMs were introduced, the courts would not allow people to be left permanently on control orders. When the Metropolitan Police Commissioner was asked whether he had concerns about time limits, he said:

“I do not think so.”

[Yvette Cooper]

What about relocations?

[Mrs May]

I will come on to the relocations.

The right hon. Lady talked about tagging. GPS tags are used to provide information on the location of TPIM subjects and the tags that are used for TPIMs are significantly better than the ones they replaced, which had no ability to track subjects outside their homes. In this case, the police believe that the tag functioned exactly as it should have done, but it will be one of the aspects considered as part of the review of the case, and I should tell the House that I have been advised that this abscond does not raise any new operational issues with the tags.

The right hon. Lady also talked about relocation, but she knows that if someone is determined to break the terms of their TPIM or control order, there is little to stop them doing so in one place or another. David Anderson, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, says:

“The only sure way to prevent absconding is to lock people up in a high security prison.”

Unless the right hon. Lady is proposing the introduction of such draconian laws—and I thought she had conceded long ago that 90 days was too long—she should accept what David Anderson says. There will always be the risk of an abscond.

The shadow Home Secretary talked about the control order regime as though it never allowed any absconding by its subjects, but during the six years that control orders existed, there were seven absconds and only one of those seven people was ever found again. The idea that somehow control orders prevented absconds is not true. Even if we wanted to go back to the days of control orders, we would not be able to do so. The powers available under control orders were being steadily eroded by the courts, and the system was becoming unviable. Unlike control orders, TPIMs have been upheld consistently by the courts, so we now have a strong and sustainable legal framework to handle terror suspects.

The police and security service have always said that there has been no substantial increase in overall risk since the introduction of TPIMs, and despite the implication of what the right hon. Lady said, we have increased by tens of millions of pounds the annual budget for surveillance by the police and security service—and we have also given them new powers. In April this year, in a written statement, I explained how we would use the royal prerogative to remove passports from British nationals whom we want to prevent from travelling abroad to take part in extremist activity, terrorism training or other fighting. That power has already been used on several occasions since it was introduced. As for foreign nationals, the Immigration Bill will make it easier for us to get them out of the country, By the way, the Opposition failed to vote for that Bill on Second Reading.

The idea that under this Government the police and Security Service have fewer powers to keep us safe is just wrong. The idea that they have less money to keep us safe is wrong. The right hon. Lady should take her responsibilities seriously and support the police and Security Service in the important work that they do.