House of Lords
Tuesday, 13 January 2015.
2.30 pm
Prayers—read by the Lord Bishop of Lichfield.
Introduction: Lord Hay of Ballyore
2.37 pm
William Alexander Hay, Esquire, having been created Baron Hay of Ballyore, of Ballyore in the City of Londonderry, was introduced and took the oath, supported by Lord Morrow and Lord Browne of Belmont, and signed an undertaking to abide by the Code of Conduct.
Syrian Refugees
Question
2.42 pm
Asked by Lord Selkirk of Douglas
To ask Her Majesty’s Government, with reference to the Oxfam survey which found that 65 per cent of Syrian refugees feared they might not be able to return to their homes, how they are co-ordinating with host countries such as Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq to improve the living conditions, educational opportunities and employability of those who have fled the conflict in Syria.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for International Development (Baroness Northover) (LD): My Lords, the United Kingdom is working with and through Governments and partners in the region to meet the needs of Syrian refugees and their host communities, including for food, shelter and education. In the current financial year the United Kingdom has committed over £62 million to activities in Lebanon, £39 million for activities in Jordan and £53 million for activities undertaken at a regional level, including in Iraq and Turkey.
Lord Selkirk of Douglas (Con): I thank the Minister for her very positive reply. Although providing food, shelter and medical assistance must remain an immediate priority to reduce human suffering, given that there are over 1.3 million refugees under 18 and that the United Nations says that two-thirds of these are receiving no education at all, does the Minister accept that the provision of schooling and vocational education is essential, in the longer term, for them to get a better chance of obtaining employment? Does she agree that, looking further into the future, there is a case for the host countries to relax restrictions on refugees getting legitimate jobs, especially where there are both skills shortages and gaps in the local labour market?
Baroness Northover: My noble friend is absolutely right. We are deeply concerned about the impact of the crisis on Syrian children. As he probably knows, we helped to launch—and gain international support for—UNICEF’s No Lost Generation initiative. We have allocated £82 million to provide protection, trauma care and education for affected children. In response
to the other points in the Question, we are in close consultation with authorities in host countries on the legal status of refugees and the importance of self-reliance through income generation.
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB): My Lords, the Minister will have seen reports not only of Syrian refugees dying on the high seas trying to escape, but, this weekend, of refugees dying of the cold in Lebanon, where there are 400,000 in the Bekaa valley alone. Has she seen the request by the United Nations refugee agency for an urgent, immediate response to that crisis? Will she also tell us how many refugees we have been able to accept in the United Kingdom, given the United Nations’ request that over 100,000 need to be accepted by developed nations, and following yesterday’s welcome decision by Canada to accept a further 10,000?
Baroness Northover: There are immense pressures on the Syrian refugees. In terms of the challenges of winter, the United Kingdom has contributed £32 million towards what is called “winterisation”—that is, the provision of warm blankets, tents, shelters, stoves and so on. As regards admission to the United Kingdom, a number of people have come through the vulnerable persons relocation scheme, but we have in addition given sanctuary to more than 3,800 Syrian nationals and their dependants.
Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale (Lab): My Lords, citizens and political leaders across Europe have rightly made a stand over recent days for humanitarian values, human rights and tolerance. I wonder whether there might therefore be an opportunity for the Government to discuss with the European Union an overall raising—and implementation—of the target for introducing refugees from these horrific camps in Jordan and elsewhere into the member states of the European Union in far greater numbers than have been admitted so far.
Baroness Northover: The noble Lord is right to draw attention to what happened last week and to the stand that we have taken for freedom of speech and the rule of law. What is clearly essential here is a long-term political solution. It is very clear that the refugees in the region wish to return to Syria. Therefore, the contribution that the United Kingdom is making to support refugees in the region is extremely important. We are the second-largest bilateral supporter. As I say, we are granting asylum where appropriate, as are other EU countries, but it is extremely important that we take forward a political solution here.
Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon (LD): My Lords, I repeat my declaration of interest as president of UNICEF UK. Is my noble friend aware that Syria now ranks as the largest humanitarian crisis that we have had since the Second World War, with 2 million children now in desperate need as an unusually cruel winter sweeps across the Middle East? Is she aware that the last UN appeal for funds was 40% underfunded at the end of last year, despite the Government’s acknowledged generosity? Will she assure us that the Government will be as generous in this year’s UN’s appeal and do everything they can to encourage laggards to follow their lead?
Baroness Northover: I can give all those assurances. We are a leading contributor, as my noble friend rightly points out. We also encourage other nations, both at the Kuwait pledging conference and at the UN General Assembly, to bring forward their own contributions, helping to raise $3.3 billion. However, he is right about the scale of this crisis. We continue to play our part internationally.
Lord Hylton (CB): My Lords, almost three years after the start of fighting in Syria, and given that a political solution is a long way off, is it not clear that resettlement in third countries outside the region will be necessary? Will Her Majesty’s Government therefore consult the International Organization for Migration on this very point?
Baroness Northover: A political solution has to be the way forward, given the population of some 22 million in Syria. At the moment, 12.2 million people within Syria require assistance. It is critical to try to take forward a political solution, and we are working internationally on this. The UN is working on it. There are conferences further down the track. It is extremely important that that is addressed.
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean (Lab): My Lords, was not the Minister right when she said a little earlier that a long-term political solution is needed, and that this is a short-term crisis? She has acknowledged that this is one of the cruellest winters in the Middle East, and children are dying now—they cannot wait for the long-term political solution to come forward. Can she tell us whether the Government will review the figures of the refugees who we are taking at the moment? Compared with the numbers that we should be looking at, 3,800 is a tiny number. What numbers are our European partners taking? How do we compare? Will the Government please find it in their hearts to be more generous in taking these people who are in dire difficulty?
Baroness Northover: It is because they are in dire difficulty now that we are putting in our bilateral support of £700 million, which is way ahead of most other countries. We have also taken more refugees and asylum seekers here than most other EU countries. As the noble Baroness will know from her experience in the Foreign Office, that is not the long-term solution that is required. If she looks at the Oxfam survey of the refugees, she will see that they wish to return to Syria and not to move to other countries. We have to support them in that political aim, and support them right now in their immediate needs. That is what we are doing.
Companies Act 2006: Nominee Operators
Question
2.51 pm
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to review with the Financial Conduct Authority the implementation of the Companies Act 2006 in relation to nominee operators so that private shareholders with nominee accounts automatically receive reports and accounts free of charge for the companies in which they invest.
Lord Naseby (Con): My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper and, in doing so, declare an interest as a holder of some AIM shares.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Baroness Neville-Rolfe) (Con): My Lords, the Government are committed to encouraging better engagement between investors and companies. Indirect investors should be able to receive information from the companies in which they hold shares, if they choose to do so. We acknowledge that private investors in nominee accounts do not automatically receive such information, so we have recently commissioned research to determine how shares are currently held and what steps we might take to encourage more investor participation.
Lord Naseby: My noble friend’s Answer is encouraging, in that this research is being undertaken, but is she aware that the United Kingdom has the largest number of private investors anywhere in the world? Furthermore, thanks to the policy of my honourable friend in another place, those private investors can invest in AIM shares within their ISAs, which are one of the principal saving mechanisms of any family today. Against that background it is surely important that this research is done quickly, so that the holders of all shares can attend AGMs and receive the annual accounts.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: My noble friend is entirely right. We expect the findings of our research by the end of March and we will therefore be able to proceed with appropriate steps quickly.
Lord Lee of Trafford (LD): My Lords, given the pretty abysmal level of attendance at annual general meetings and the reluctance of those who attend to ask questions in a formal setting, would my noble friend consider encouraging public companies to hold a second, more relaxed meeting after the statutory one, essentially so that private shareholders can meet and question non-executive directors to encourage greater shareholder involvement?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: My Lords, the FRC corporate governance code already makes it clear that the board as a whole, which obviously includes the non-executive directors, has a responsibility to ensure satisfactory dialogue with shareholders. We believe that many companies and investors are already holding meetings of the kind that the noble Lord suggests, and we have encouraged such strategy discussions outside the formality of the AGM.
Lord McFall of Alcluith (Lab): My Lords, the financial crisis illustrated that shareholder engagement was a sham. Is there not a case for the Government taking immediate action, forgetting about having any consultation on this and ensuring that the noble Lord’s reasonable request—that private shareholders receive these free accounts—can be done with a loud and clear message from the Chancellor of the Exchequer?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: My Lords, I was very pleased to see the extension of ISAs to AIM. I am delighted that these questions have been asked today so that we
are debating the issue. I am sure that noble Lords will be pleased to hear that we are looking into exactly what is needed with a view to taking action.
Lord Stoneham of Droxford (LD): Could the Minister tell the House what progress the Government have made on implementing the recommendations of the Kay report to encourage long-term share ownership and commitment, rather than simply trading in the stock market?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: My noble friend raises a very important issue. The Government have made a sustained commitment to reform, working with companies and investors. We published a comprehensive progress report on that in October. Professor Kay also recommended that we look at the most cost-effective way for investors to hold shares electronically as individuals. That is one of the reasons why it is so important to explore that option.
Select Committee Reports: Government Responses
Question
2.56 pm
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they have any plans to improve the quality and timeliness of their responses to reports from Select Committees of this House.
The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Stowell of Beeston) (Con): My Lords, departments aim to provide considered responses to Select Committee reports within two months of their publication, as set out in the Osmotherly rules. Where delays occur or where a committee is dissatisfied with the quality of the response it has received, I stand ready to assist in taking up individual cases with my colleagues in government.
Lord Lexden (Con): Would my noble friend accept that, in the interests of the House as a whole, the Government might strengthen their commitment to their own undertaking, included in the handbook,
“to respond in writing to the reports of select committees, if possible, within two months of publication”?
Is she aware that, when responses arrive late, they are not always accompanied by the serious explanation of the delay that politeness demands? Finally, as regards the variable quality of the responses, may I invite my noble friend to read the short, rather perfunctory response to the Constitution Committee’s very substantial report on the constitutional implications of coalition government, for which the committee waited nearly 10 months?
Baroness Stowell of Beeston: I certainly understand the frustration expressed by my noble friend with the Government’s response on this occasion. I am pleased that the Minister for the Constitution apologised, quite rightly, to the committee for the prolonged delay. On that particular report, because it covered and inquired into the inner workings of coalition government,
I do not think it is that surprising that the Government wanted to give it careful consideration before responding. However, I disagree with my noble friend’s description of the Government’s response. I know that the committee was disappointed with some specific aspects and has written further to the Minister concerned, but I think that the report, as a whole, was adequate. Certainly the delay that was experienced in the context of this report is not systemic in the Government’s responses to Select Committee reports.
Lord Grocott (Lab): My Lords, is not any response to a coalition government fairly simple: that we do not want another one?
Baroness Stowell of Beeston: My Lords, I think we are all going to fight the election to win.
Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB): My Lords, the Minister is no doubt aware that a regular scorecard is now published on failures to fulfil the scrutiny procedures of the European Union. There is a scorecard of scrutiny overrides allocated by department. Would she consider carefully whether a similar regular scorecard could be published on reports of this House, with the identification of the government departments that are in arrears? This scorecard approach gently brings pressure to bear on people in a way that has been quite useful.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston: The noble Lord raises an interesting point. One of the things that I have been looking at in preparing to respond to this Question is whether records are even kept in the House itself as to how timely the Government respond to reports. We would benefit if we could improve record-keeping.
Lord Shutt of Greetland (LD): My Lords, I declare an interest, in that the report from the committee that I had the privilege of chairing on the Inquiries Act has been outstanding since 11 March 2014. However, there is a good reason for that, as we were not happy with the response. We did not feel that it was good enough. We thought it could be significantly improved upon. The Question starts on the basis of quality and timeliness, but would my noble friend agree that quality is the most important thing here? Timeliness is a wonderful thing, but the quality of the report is what we really want.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston: My noble friend makes an important point. I believe that the quality of government responses to reports is the most important thing. I also say to the House that the written responses to Select Committee reports are not the only way that we should judge how the Government are responding to inquiries undertaken by Select Committees. If you look, for instance, at the Mental Capacity Act inquiry, which was another post-legislative scrutiny report, that committee made some very important recommendations that the Department of Health has responded to and acted on. Some changes that are important to the people affected are now taking place.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab): My Lords, I notice that one of the responses that we are waiting for is on a report of the Communications Committee on
broadcast general election debates, which was published on 13 May last year. Are we still awaiting the government response? The election is only a few weeks away, so I would have thought it would be timely for us to have a debate—or is the Prime Minister frit?
Baroness Stowell of Beeston: I think the noble Lord is stretching the point here. The report he highlighted as one that has not yet been responded to has not been raised with me. If the relevant committee wanted to raise that as a concern with me then clearly I would raise it with my colleagues in government.
Lord Inglewood (Con): My Lords, as chairman of the Communications Committee, might I point out to the noble Lord opposite that the report he referred to specifically said it was not looking for a response from government? However, earlier today I made a request through the clerk that we should have a debate on this report.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston: I am glad for my noble friend’s clarification that the committee had produced a report that did not require a response from the Government, and I look forward to discussing further his request for a debate.
Lord Walton of Detchant (CB): My Lords, would the Minister accept that the Select Committee structure is one of the great strengths of this House? I served for many years on the Science and Technology Select Committee and had the privilege of chairing several sub-committee inquiries. One of those, relating to research in the NHS, led to the Culyer report, then to the establishment of the National Institute for Health Research and now has led on to the development of the massive Crick centre for research in the centre of London. Can the Minister give us any inkling as to the extent to which Select Committee reports in this House have led to major changes in government policy over the last few years?
Baroness Stowell of Beeston: As the noble Lord knows from the exchange he and I had last week in the debate about the effectiveness of this House, I acknowledged then his strong point that the work of Select Committees in this House is an incredibly important part of our work here. On the Science and Technology Committee, during this Parliament there has been some action by the Government in response to implementing long-term science capital investment, which was a recommendation that came out of that committee.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con): My Lords, can my noble friend indicate whether she might have a look at the experience of the other place and consider whether the authority of our Select Committees might be greatly enhanced if the chairman were elected.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston: My noble friend raises an interesting point, but I do not think that it has been raised particularly extensively by other noble Lords. Probably, one of the reasons for that is because we are
all very clear in this House that all the chairmen of our Select Committees, regardless of which part of the House they are from, act very independently.
Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab): My Lords, does the noble Baroness agree that the debate around this Question has been slightly confused? We appear to be discussing, on the one hand, whether the Government have responded to a Select Committee report and, on the other, whether that committee report and the response have been debated in this House. For the benefit of those of us who have forgotten, can the noble Baroness explain to the House the procedure whereby, once the Government have responded, a Select Committee report comes forward for debate?
Baroness Stowell of Beeston: The decision on when to hold a debate about a Select Committee report is taken very much as part of a discussion between the Whips’ Office and the Committee Office. Some Select Committees decide to hold their debates before they have had a response from the Government and some decide that they want to wait until after the Government have responded. There is no hard and fast rule on that.
Lord Cormack (Con): My Lords, will my noble friend, as Leader of this House, tell her Cabinet colleagues that we feel that many of them do not take this House seriously enough and do not pay enough attention to what this House says either in reports or on the Floor of the House?
Baroness Stowell of Beeston: I would like to think that, in the responses that I have already given to some of the questions today, I have demonstrated that the Government have taken the reports from Select Committees very seriously. There has been action as a result of them. So far as concerns my colleagues in government giving evidence to committees, last year alone nine Cabinet Ministers gave evidence to Select Committees of this House, including the Chancellor, the Home Secretary, the Justice Secretary, the Deputy Prime Minister, the Scotland Secretary, the Transport Secretary and the Environment Secretary. Tomorrow the Home Secretary and the Justice Secretary together will give evidence to a Select Committee here. We take this House very seriously, and we are right to do so because the work of the Select Committees is excellent, as is demonstrated all the time.
Transport: London Bridge Station
Question
3.07 pm
Asked by Lord Kennedy of Southwark
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they are taking to address the problems suffered by passengers at London Bridge station.
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Baroness Kramer) (LD): My Lords, this will be a difficult period as we spend over £1 billion improving London Bridge station. Steps have already been taken to address problems at London Bridge by increasing the number of staff, adding further passenger information
displays and temporarily adjusting the timetable to improve reliability. The Secretary of State met senior Network Rail and train operator executives on 9 January to understand the problems and discuss preparations for the Southeastern service changes from 12 January. We thank passengers for their patience.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab): First, I declare an interest as an elected member of Lewisham Council. The chaos and failure to manage the situation at London Bridge has just highlighted to a wider audience what we have been experiencing in south London for many years. At Brockley, Crofton Park, Honor Oak Park and other stations, trains are cancelled or, when they arrive, are already full up. Either the trains do not turn up or, if they do, there are not enough carriages and people cannot get on them to get to work. As a result, the platforms become overcrowded and dangerous. Will the noble Baroness agree to arrange and host a meeting between me, local campaigners, Network Rail and the train operators Southern, Southeastern and TfL rail to deal with this problem?
Baroness Kramer: As your Lordships know, I am always happy to meet on these issues, so that is something that I shall be glad to try to accommodate. Whether we need to do so in two phases or one is not entirely clear but I hope that we can discuss this matter. The underlying issue of congestion on the railways is obviously behind many of the problems that we face. This massive set of improvements around the London Bridge area, costing about £1.5 billion, will play an absolutely key role in removing one of the major bottlenecks in the system, even though it will take several years to achieve that.
Lord Palmer (CB): My Lords, are not the fiasco at London Bridge, and indeed the chaos at Finsbury Park—I was caught up in it after Christmas—and Paddington, a very good cause to renationalise everything to do with our railways?
Baroness Kramer: I point out to your Lordships that quite a number of the problems that have occurred have been National Rail problems, which is the one part of the system that we directly own. One of the lessons that I have learnt from watching all the problems that have been taking place—they are inexcusable and must be dealt with—is that the rail network is complex and that there is a need to make sure that it is in manageable sections which, although they have to work together, are totally driven around their primary responsibility.
Lord West of Spithead (Lab): My Lords, I declare an interest as a waterman and lighterman. Does the Minister believe that we should make greater use of the River Thames for commuters, which would take a lot of weight off the railway system and the roads?
Baroness Kramer: My Lords, I always think that it is exciting to look at opportunities to use the River Thames. However, one of the problems is that the Thames winds and bends around loops, which often means that journeys, rather than being quick, are
fairly slow. However, Transport for London is always interested in looking at any proposed use of the Thames, and so are we.
Lord Bradshaw (LD): Does the Minister agree that for decades there has been tremendous underinvestment in the railway, which is now busier than ever, and that the party opposite did not do much while it was in office to help the situation? Does this not pinpoint the imperative of getting HS2 working—where you can build a railway without having to inconvenience passengers—so that something new comes on stream to relieve the congestion?
Baroness Kramer: I agree with everything that my noble friend has just said.
Lord Davies of Oldham (Lab): My Lords, I do not. The noble Lord and the House are aware that the developments at London Bridge were planned and started under the previous Administration. The Minister rightly says that Network Rail is the one part of the railway system that is directly under the control of Ministers who are directly answerable. How frequently do Ministers meet the planners of Network Rail when these crunch occasions can clearly be foreseen? It seems that not enough work is done when difficulties begin to arise and Ministers should realise that the buck stops with them.
Baroness Kramer: My Lords, meetings are very frequent at all levels. Obviously Network Rail is the entity with direct understanding of its own operations and interfering in the day-to-day operations would not be appropriate for a government department. The ORR plays a key role in all of this. However, the Secretary of State, for example, meets Network Rail every week. All through the system there are regular meetings. However, there are many lessons to be learnt from the experiences of the past couple of weeks, which, frankly, have been inexcusable. We need to make sure that they are not repeated.
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab): If the Secretary of State meets Network Rail on a weekly basis, what responsibility does the Secretary of State take for the failures at London Bridge?
Baroness Kramer: London Bridge is a massive and highly complex programme. We have to learn the lessons from what went wrong. The key management team at London Bridge has delivered magnificent improvements at Blackfriars and Farringdon, of which many noble Lords will be aware. However, it is crucial that we understand the extraordinary complexities at London Bridge. Improvements are already taking place. This service should bed down, but we will be watching it very closely at all levels.
Stamp Duty Land Tax Bill
First Reading
3.12 pm
The Bill was brought from the Commons, endorsed as a money Bill, and read a first time.
Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill
Second Reading
3.13 pm
That the Bill be read a second time.
Relevant documents: 5th Report from the Joint Committee on Human Rights, 8th Report from the Constitution Committee
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Bates): My Lords, the emergence of ISIL and its territorial gains in Syria and Iraq present a clear and present threat to our national security. Noble Lords will be aware that nearly 600 people from the UK who are of interest to the security services are thought to have travelled to the region since the start of the conflict. It is estimated that almost half of them have since returned to the UK. On 29 August 2014, the independent Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre raised the terrorism threat level from substantial to severe, meaning that an attack is highly likely. On 1 September, my right honourable friend the Prime Minister announced that legislation would be brought forward.
The horrific events in Paris last week were the latest in a long line of shocking terrorist attacks, following the brutal beheading of Fusilier Lee Rigby, the murder of four civilians at the Jewish Museum in Brussels last May, the shootings at the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa and the Sydney hostage crisis. They all demonstrate the threat posed by ISIL and other terrorist organisations, such as al-Qaeda, across the democratic world.
I know that the whole House will join me in paying tribute to the incredible and courageous work of the men and women in our law enforcement and security and intelligence agencies. Their tireless efforts to keep us safe have thwarted around 40 attacks since 7 July 2005. Since April 2010, 210 people have been charged and more than 140 have been successfully prosecuted for terrorism-related offences. It is those security services that tell us that the nature of the threat has changed and so must our response. It is against that backdrop that we bring the Bill before your Lordships’ House.
The Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill will help us to disrupt people who intend to travel abroad to fight, as well as their ability to return here without ensuring adequate protection for our citizens. It will enhance our ability to monitor and control the actions of those in the UK who pose a threat, and it will help to challenge the pernicious underlying ideology that feeds, supports and sanctions terrorism. Part 1 of the Bill contains two powers that will enhance our ability to restrict the plans of those suspected of travelling overseas to engage in terrorism-related activity. The first is the power for the police, or a Border Force officer acting under their direction, to seize a passport and, in so doing, temporarily to disrupt the ability of an individual to travel. This will allow the agencies to investigate and decide whether further disruptive action is necessary—for instance, criminal prosecution or cancelling their passport under the existing royal prerogative.
Chapter 2 creates the power for the Home Secretary to issue temporary exclusion orders. This will allow us temporarily to disrupt the return of a British citizen suspected of involvement in terrorism-related activity abroad, ensuring that when individuals return it is on our terms. In the light of the comments of the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, David Anderson QC, and following the debates in the House of Commons, the Government have committed to considering judicial oversight for this power. We will return to this issue in Committee should the Bill be successful at Second Reading.
Part 2 of the Bill enhances the existing terrorism prevention and investigation measures—or TPIMs—regime. Here, we are again acting on the recommendations of David Anderson QC in his most recent report on the operation of TPIMs. This includes allowing us to relocate an individual subject to a TPIM order up to 200 miles from his or her current residence, to help disrupt terrorist networks. It also involves raising the legal test for imposing a TPIM, providing further reassurance that they are used only where absolutely necessary.
Part 3 relates to data retention, specifically the problem of internet protocol address resolution. This is a technical issue and we will get into the details in Committee. However, these provisions will deliver vital additional capability to the police and intelligence agencies, helping to address the ongoing degradation in the availability of communications data.
Part 4 covers aviation, shipping and rail security. It includes measures in three broad areas: our authority-to-carry or no-fly arrangements; systems for providing advance passenger information to the UK authorities; and enhanced security and screening measures. Carriers will have to comply with our requirements if they are to operate to the UK.
Chapter 1 of Part 5 creates a duty on a range of authorities—listed in Schedule 3 to the Bill—to have due regard to preventing people being drawn into terrorism. The detail of what this duty will mean in practice for the schools, universities, police forces and prisons that will be subject to it will be set out in statutory guidance. We have published that guidance in draft for consultation alongside this Bill.
Chapter 2 of Part 5 also provides a statutory basis for the existing programmes for those at risk of being drawn into terrorism. As many noble Lords will be aware, in England and Wales this is known as the Channel programme. These provisions will ensure that such programmes are consistently available to all local areas.
Part 6 amends two provisions in the Terrorism Act 2000. The first ensures that UK insurance companies cannot reimburse the payment of a ransom to a terrorist organisation, putting the existing law beyond doubt. The second relates to the examination of goods at ports under Schedule 7 to the 2000 Act. It will clarify the law relating to where goods can be examined and the examination of goods comprising postal items.
Along with other miscellaneous provisions, Part 7 allows for the creation of a Privacy and Civil Liberties Board to support the work of the Independent Reviewer
of Terrorism Legislation. We are at present conducting a further consultation on this proposal, prior to bringing forward regulations for Parliament to consider.
I welcome the cross-party support for this legislation in this House. I know that the Home Secretary has appreciated it in the House of Commons. I particularly want to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, and my noble friend Lady Hamwee for their constructive approach in negotiations about this legislation.
I am also aware that there is a very long and distinguished list of Peers seeking to speak in this debate. I am sure that noble Lords are particularly keen to hear the maiden speeches of the noble Lords, Lord Evans of Weardale and Lord Green of Deddington, who bring considerable knowledge and expertise to these matters. I do not, therefore, intend to detain the House any longer, but will of course respond in greater detail to the points which—
The Marquess of Lothian (Con): I am grateful to my noble friend for giving way. I am intervening because I cannot stay for the rest of the debate. I welcome his statement that he will consider introducing judicial authority over control orders. Does he accept the general constitutional principle that, where such control orders are to be introduced, they should be under judicial control rather than under the control of politicians?
Lord Bates: I referred to that earlier. In another place, the Minister, James Brokenshire, said that we would look at it and seek to bring forward amendments, should the Bill go into Committee. We will do that.
I was saying, in conclusion, that I will address the points made in the course of this debate, perhaps at greater length, in my closing remarks.
We are in the middle of a generational struggle against a ruthless terrorist ideology that challenges the core values of our society. Those charged with our security must be properly equipped to do the job that we ask of them to maintain a free, open and tolerant nation. That is what the Bill is designed to do and I commend it to the House. I beg to move.
3.23 pm
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab): My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his explanation. I am both impressed and slightly disappointed at its brevity. This is a complex and difficult Bill. I should like to have heard a little more from him about some of the issues but no doubt we shall have those discussions in Committee. I thank him also for the meetings that we have had so far on some of the details of the Bill.
In some ways, the objections to this Bill are straightforward. I think we are all agreed that the first duty of the Government is the security, safety and liberty of those they represent. The shocking atrocities in Paris last week bring home to us yet again how important it is to do all we can to afford that protection. They also show how much free speech and liberty are valued across the world. That is part of the challenge and complexity of our legislative response to the threat
of terrorism. I join the Minister in commending those who, in their daily lives and work, investigate and seek to prevent terrorism. They face enormous risks and challenges and there is no doubt that the growth of ISIL and Islamic State has increased those risks and challenges.
We have heard from the Government that more than 500 people have travelled to Syria from the UK and that around half have returned. Some may return more radicalised and more dangerous; others will return disillusioned. Our response can never be purely legislative. We have to try to understand and tackle the underlying reasons why young people become so radicalised that they resort to such shocking violence, which can never be justified. This is an international problem. We need to co-operate with other countries and recognise the role of our foreign policy in dealing with such issues. Of course, our response must also be humanitarian. There was a Question today on Syrian refugees and the Minister will understand the disappointment and concerns there have been about the number of refugees—the most vulnerable and those who face the greatest dangers—that we have taken into this country.
The Bill seeks to introduce several new measures to help prevent young people becoming dangerously radicalised and travelling abroad to engage in terrorism, and to manage the return of those who do. We accept the need for new powers to tackle extremism and terrorism. The Minister will be aware from the debates and discussions in the other place that we support the Bill. However, there are a number of areas in which we continue to seek improvements and greater clarity. We have to ensure that we achieve that balance between protecting our security and our liberty and that the measures are proportionate. The measures must be workable and feasible in their practical application, not only in theory. Your Lordships’ House will want to seek assurances and evidence that the measures have the effect intended, can achieve the stated objective and are not open to abuse.
Before I move on to the detail of the Bill and its clauses, let me say that I am grateful for the reports of the JCHR and the Constitution Committee. I share the concerns of the JCHR that it was not able to produce a report prior to the Commons debates. I understand why the Government want to bring forward this Bill quickly and I appreciate that they have to maintain debate time, but the accelerated timetable affects the ability of parliamentary committees to produce reports in time for full consideration by both Houses. This is particularly important for Bills which deal with such fundamental issues as security and human rights. Given that there are 39 speakers, I do not intend to comment in detail on all clauses but I hope that I have been clear about our general approach to the Bill.
Part 1 on travel restrictions provides wide powers. We believe that both Chapters 1 and 2 would benefit from sunset clauses to allow reconsideration and review at a later stage. We understand why the Government have proposals for the seizure of travel documents but our concern about the lack of an appeals process remains. Mistakes can be made and there are a number
of reasons why an individual could be travelling, other than involvement in terrorism. It was extremely disappointing that when we proposed and voted on these proposals in Committee, both government parties voted against them. We will pursue these points and I urge the government parties to reconsider.
Clause 2 proposes what the Government call “temporary exclusion orders” and what others including the independent reviewer, in effect, refer to as “managed return orders”, as the Minister said in his comments. I suspect that the name of these in the Bill has more to do with the Prime Minister’s speech on 1 September, to which the Minister also referred, when he announced that those suspected of involvement in terrorism abroad would not be allowed to return to the UK. That is evidence of the dangers of a speech coming before policy.
The concept of managing the return of someone who has been or is involved in terrorism-related activity outside the UK, ensuring that they are interviewed on return and subject to terrorism prevention and investigation measures, if appropriate, is not an unreasonable power. However, it has been clear to us from the beginning that judicial oversight is needed. When we proposed this in Committee in the other place on 15 December, the Government rejected our proposals and made clear that they considered it a matter for the Home Secretary. We then retabled our amendment last week at Report but the Minister, James Brokenshire, insisted that the House had not had enough time to consider the proposal and both government parties voted against it. However, the Minister made a welcome concession that the Government would look at this again and return to it in your Lordships’ House. The Government are in charge of the parliamentary timetable and have known of the amendments since the debate on 15 December, so I find their position on this convoluted. I had also hoped to hear more from the Minister on this in his opening comments. I regret that the confusion probably comes from internal coalition government politics. However, whatever the reason, we welcome the change of heart and await with interest any government proposals that are brought forward.
The effectiveness of any legislation lies in enforcement. We want to explore with the Government how these temporary exclusion orders will work in practice. The Government have provided on their factsheet a very helpful diagram of how they expect them to work, but I would like some greater clarity. What happens, for example, when someone is refused access by the carrier: how are they, in practice, going to apply for a permit? What notification will the Government receive? At what point and in what timescale will they be returned to the UK for interview and consideration of TPIMs? In the part of the Bill that deals with deportation, has any consideration been given to those facing extradition or required to attend a court in the UK?
I am sure that none of us wants a situation where someone who could be a danger to the public could just disappear, making any surveillance of where they are or what they are doing impossible. It would, therefore, be helpful if the Government were to tell us with what other countries they have discussed this issue and what
arrangements are being put in place for those refused permission to travel back into the country. I want to explore with the Government whether there are also cases where a more effective approach would be to allow someone to travel home, once they have presented to the carrier, and be interviewed immediately on debarkation.
Part 2 deals with TPIMs, which we accept are useful tools for prevention and investigation. Now, as the Minister said, the Government are seeking to reintroduce a residence measure, which we welcome. We were against it being totally removed in the first place. However, if TPIMs are to be effective, they need to be used appropriately and enforced. How many TPIMs are in place and being used now? My information is that there is just one. If that is the case, we need to understand the reasons why, because the Government have to ensure that they make the best use of the powers available to them.
Part 3 is on data retention. We believe that data communication information and intercept evidence are vital for tackling the most serious crimes and for national security. I think all noble Lords recognise that we do not live in an ideal society where all citizens can be guaranteed total and absolute privacy. Modern technology requires that legislation to protect security and liberty must be kept up to date and be relevant. Equally importantly, we recognise that there must be safeguards to ensure that any collection of information will be proportionate and justified: measures should be used only for the purpose for which they are intended. There must be safeguards to protect the public interest and public privacy. The public have a right to be confident that the collection and retention of data meets these criteria. We will also wish to probe whether it meets the test of being up to date and relevant. I am no expert—and we are going to have quite a technical debate—but the Bill appears to have a lack of clarity about how web logs are to be separated out from communications data. This is a vital difference, as more of our communications today move on to social media accessed through mobile apps. It would be helpful if the Minister could explain how this will work in practice.
Yesterday, David Cameron said that new powers were needed relating to communications data. As we have already seen with TEOs, it is not unknown for the Prime Minister to make a speech before the policy has been worked out. Then the Deputy Prime Minister took to the airwaves to denounce the “snoopers’ charter”, as he saw it. Obviously, any proposed changes to principles already established would require evidence, debate and consideration. We all know that there are tensions in the coalition around these issues but this is an issue involving national security, where wise heads and calm thoughts are needed. This kind of rhetoric and electioneering does nothing to facilitate sensible, informed debate on either side.
Part 5 places a duty on specified authorities to have due regard to the need to prevent people being drawn into terrorism. We support the Prevent programme, and will again want to probe with the Minister how this will work in practice. Clause 24 provides a power to the Secretary of State to issue guidance to those specified authorities. The Minister referred to the
consultation, which we welcome. Surely, however, parliamentary scrutiny is essential; we want to ensure that this guidance is feasible and effective, and that it is debated in your Lordships’ House and in the other place. There is already considerable good practice in universities on how they manage to provide for free speech, while seeking to prevent abuse of that right. The input from universities to ensure that balance will be central to making this work. The Government have to provide far greater clarity if they are to allay the concerns of universities.
The final part of the Bill provides for a Privacy and Civil Liberties Board. The Minister may recall that this was raised at the time of the DRIP Act, when we welcomed the consideration of such a board, depending on the details of its remit and functions. I am pleased that the Government have modified their original proposals but a number of issues need further probing on this. Other noble Lords may well have read the evidence of the independent reviewer, David Anderson, to the JCHR, including his consideration of the Government’s proposals and what he needed to be more effective in his work. It is fair to say that there is a lack of clarity here given the terms of reference, which we support, a title which does not quite match those terms and a clause which provides powers for the Secretary of State to change the procedure, membership and work plan of the board by secondary legislation. That lack of clarity needs to be resolved.
Finally, I want to put on record, as I have said before in your Lordships’ House, that we care about crime, national security and public safety. We also care about the rights and privacy of individuals. It is not unreasonable for the public to demand both security and liberty. In their interests, we have to get that balance right. We need public understanding of the issues and public consent as we move forward on them. We look forward to today’s debate and to hearing the maiden speeches from new Members of your Lordships’ House. I hope that in Committee, we will be able to seek clarity in some areas and achieve improvements in others.
3.36 pm
Baroness Hamwee (LD): My Lords, it is apposite today to refer to the words attributed to Voltaire:
“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”,
because it is sadly topical and neatly expressed. I start with the importance of language in both general discussion of the issues and the Bill. Messages are taken from tone and emphasis as well as from the detail.
The term “temporary exclusion orders” immediately made me think of Shakespeare’s words in “Richard II”, when two of Richard’s court are exiled after allegations of treachery:
“England’s ground, farewell;Where’er I wander, boast of this I can,Though banish’d, yet a trueborn Englishman”.
TEOs are not banishment; they are about the converse—managing return to the UK. I am worried about misleading language being misunderstood and suggesting something more aggressive and alienating than is intended. I refer to the tone at the start of the Bill, because the application of money often follows tone and because
the softer measures, to which the noble Baroness referred, must not be relegated. The most effective dissuasion of individuals from going out to fight may come from those who return disillusioned.
The Minister indicated, and I very much welcome, that the House will have the chance to consider changes to the scheme, particularly judicial oversight. I hope that any revised scheme will address where decisions are taken as well as what the decisions are. It will be very difficult for a court in this country to consider action taken overseas. I am also concerned that an individual who comes back to this country on a permit should not be taken to have incriminated himself. That point is made by the JCHR with regard to TPIMs.
I confess that I have not got my head around quite how the TEOs will operate on the ground. The possibility of being picked up at an airport in Turkey on the way back from Syria to the UK will obviously quickly become known, but what if the individual books to, say, Frankfurt with a view to travelling through Europe, where there is free movement? My question underlying that concerns what discussion the Government have had with our European partners.
The same question occurs to me—I am sorry that I have not managed to give my noble friend notice of this one—about the power in Schedule 1 to seize a passport that is not a UK passport. UK passports are not the property of the passport holder. I assume that the same is the case with other nationalities. Are UK authorities entitled to seize them? If the individual is travelling to somewhere close to the war, or simply buying a return ticket to Frankfurt, great care will be needed to avoid both discrimination and the perception of discrimination. The individual must be given reasons for the exercise of the power under Schedule 1, and be given them immediately. It is a separate matter from there being reasonable grounds for suspecting an intention to become involved in terrorism-related activity and the judicial oversight of that.
I believe these powers should be statutorily subject to review by the independent reviewer and we should consider all the points that Mr Anderson has made so cogently about his remit, his powers and his resources. My admiration for the current postholder—this is not a comment on any predecessor of his—knows almost no bounds but, like the JCHR, I have not quite made the link between this specific power of TPIM relocation and a change in the nature of the threat other than,
“wider powers are always useful to deal with the challenges a growing threat might throw up”.
The JCHR also referred to Mr Anderson’s heavy heart on the topic.
On TPIMs, the increase in the maximum penalty for breach of the provision condition to 10 years seems harsh, given that there has been no conviction for an offence. The independent reviewer’s points about requiring attendance at meetings with probation and others resonate more comfortably with me. As he said, do not waste opportunities—there is a positive strategy of engagement to be used.
I want to dwell on engagement because not everything is capable of being dealt with in legislation. I am pleased that a number of my noble friends are speaking today and I know that others wanted to. At least two
of my noble friends will mention data retention but I will simply say that for the agencies it must be not just a matter of powers but of resources.
There is less formal, more imaginative work that warrants a lot of our attention. How should we counter peer pressure, usually on young men but also, to a lesser extent—although it is still a significant number—on women? What is the impact of social media and how can they be used to dissuade people from going to fight for what they may wrongly see as a humanitarian mission, and to encourage those who have gone to come home? These people are a source of intelligence. They can provide an excellent counternarrative, and if we drive them away we may never solve the problems.
I have heard some interesting discussion about the need not just to talk the counternarrative but also to do it. Rather than focusing on taking down content from the internet—which is probably impossible to deal with completely because of the volume involved—we should put up content to dissuade people. I have heard that this can be effective and it is thought to be effective because of the material ISIS itself is seeking to put up in response. A lot of the propaganda is about lifestyle, not ideology, so those who have had experience of conditions on the ground can counter that.
The Prevent strategy of Contest and the Channel programme are in some ways bound to be the hardest. Prevent has lost funding and, perhaps, focus. I have considerable reservations about putting it on a statutory basis. There is, I have heard, some resentment from those who have been doing the job about the implication that they have not been doing it well. Those who have not been doing it well may need assistance rather than direction.
I declare an interest as one of the joint presidents of London Councils, which says that the boroughs are “ready to play their part” but asks for the comfort of on-the-record confirmation that the “new burdens” principle—that is, that new burdens will be funded—will apply to costs not covered by the Home Office, including costs that it expects to be revised upwards following consultation on the statutory guidance. They also make points about who can refer individuals to the panels, which is the sort of detail we can come to in Committee.
We are all aware of concerns in the education sector—not just in higher education—about whether the duties proposed are appropriate or practicable. My noble friend Lady Sharp wanted to speak on that. I will simply say that as a result of a crossed wire her name is not on the list, but she will make her points in Committee.
A number of different approaches have been developed across Europe to prevent potential foreign fighters leaving, to minimise the threat when they return, and to strengthen the knowledge and capacity of families and communities to play a proactive role. To give support to these approaches is not fluffy but hard-nosed and self-interested. The Hayat programme in Germany works at an ideological, pragmatic and effective level. It includes giving support to families who remain in touch with their children while they are in Syria and
Iraq. It is said that parents are, in effect, negotiating for their children’s lives. Returnees often need support, which in itself is a prevention measure, and programmes of deradicalisation and disengagement, provided by people trusted by the recipient and everybody else involved, are invaluable. There is also the Aarhus model in Denmark, which is very structured and centralised. All this is very nuanced; it needs attention and effort and, as I say, it is not secondary.
Finally, on the Privacy and Civil Liberties Board, the independent reviewer made what I thought were very modest and moderate points about resourcing and support, and his comments on the proposals have been masterly in their understatement. The independence that comes from the postholder being part-time is not to be undervalued, although I suspect that his and his predecessor’s “part-time” is the equivalent to the aggregate full-time of several other people. However, it seems that there is not yet complete agreement over the role of the board, and we need to consider its relationship to the independent reviewer; what work it undertakes; its role as a check and balance on—let me put it this way—a currently hypothetical future reviewer who might need to be balanced or checked; and its role as a voice that might challenge assumptions within the wider decision-making process regarding legislation where civil liberties issues are at stake.
It is frustrating not to have the time to refer to all the provisions of the Bill, but we will of course have Committee. The Bill has come to us at a moment of high tension, so the task of careful, calm scrutiny is all the more important. I do not dismiss being tough, but we should be tough where there is evidence, other than very exceptionally and without forgetting proper process. Effectiveness is not the inevitable outcome of talking tough. What is even tougher is protecting our freedoms and creating an effective narrative of our own.
3.48 pm
Lord Lloyd of Berwick (CB): My Lords, I hope that I may be forgiven if I start with a very brief personal explanation. I had an operation on my spine on Thursday of last week but I had already put down my name to take part in this debate because counterterrorism is a subject in which I have taken a very close interest over the past 40 years. I was the first ever Interception of Communications Commissioner, appointed in 1985, and I was the author of the report on counterterrorism legislation in 1995 on which the 2000 Act was based. I think I can say that I have taken part in every debate on counterterrorism from that day to this and I can probably also say that this will almost certainly be my swan song. But I did at least want to take part in the debate today. Of course, my views on the Bill may be right or wrong, but at least I am speaking from fairly long experience.
In my view, the powers to seize passports and to exclude British citizens from returning to the United Kingdom are so objectionable in principle that they should be resisted on that ground. I agree with everything that has been said by Liberty in its excellent report on this subject. I also agree with Liberty that these new powers, if exercised, would do absolutely nothing in practice to make us any safer. Why do I say that? The reason is quite simple. We are concerned with some
500 individuals of interest to the police who have travelled to Syria in recent years, of whom about half are said to have returned. So 250 of them are still there. We are told that these powers are essential to prevent these 250 from returning. But the figure of 250 must surely be put in context to see what, if any, harm or difference it would make if they did return, if they wanted to.
We know from what Dame Elizabeth Manningham-Buller told us in 2006 that we had about 20 terrorists in this country at the turn of this century. By 2006 that number had increased to about 1,500, of whom 1,000 had already attended—this is of great importance—terrorist training camps in Pakistan. Those known to be here must surely have presented exactly the same sort of threat over the years as would be presented if the 250 were now returned from Syria. Yet this risk has been successfully contained to a quite extraordinary extent over the years by the vigilance of our police and the Security Service. In the 15 years since 2000, there has been but a single atrocity—the London bombings on 7 July 2005 in which 52 people lost their lives. Whatever else can be said, the risk has been successfully contained over the years under the law as it currently exists, despite the fact that there are 1,500 suspected terrorists already present in this country. To what extent will that existing risk be increased by allowing a further small group of suspects to return from Syria? That surely is the crucial question which so far as I know has never been asked and certainly has not been answered. The only possible answer that one can give is that we obviously do not know for certain what extra risk they will cause, but the overwhelming probability must be that they will not increase the risk in any way, having regard to the suspected terrorists already present in this country. I suggest that the risk might well be negligible. It is certainly very small indeed. Unless it can be shown—it has not been shown—that by allowing in the extra 250 people, if they choose to come, we shall be increasing the risk to a significant extent, the need for this Bill has simply not been made out. The question then becomes a rather different one. Assuming that to be so, to what extent, if we pass this Bill, will it do us harm? That is the question to which I now come.
There are currently in this country about 2.5 million Muslims, of whom about 100,000 are thought to be potential sympathisers to the terrorist cause. Everybody agrees that we will find a long-term solution to the terrorist problem only by keeping the majority of Muslims in this country on our side and doing what we can to bring about an ideological shift of attitude among those 100,000 Muslims. That will take a long time—probably a generation or more. As the noble Lord, Lord Condon, once said, in a speech that I shall never forget, you do not bring about ideological changes of that kind by putting people behind iron bars. Surely the crucial question is whether the legislation as now proposed will help to bring about the change that we need or only serve to make matters worse. I am afraid that the answer to that is only too clear. The sort of legislation that we are now being asked to pass can only make matters worse. One can see that by looking at the past.
We will be making the same sort of mistake if we pass this legislation as we have made so often in the past. We made it first, as I remember very well, when we passed the notorious Part 4 of the 2001 Act. Under that provision, terrorists could be detained without trial. Eventually, too late—it should have happened much sooner—that legislation was struck down by the House of Lords. We made the same mistake again after that legislation had been struck down by bringing in the idea of control orders. There only ever were 48 of those orders, but they were thought to have been even more divisive than what had gone before. They too, in the end, bit the dust. The same applied to TPIMs and all the other repressive legislation with which we are familiar.
Nobody will ever know exactly how much harm all that repressive legislation has done, but it must surely be obvious that the damage to community relations has been very great indeed. The truth is that we have spent much too much time and energy in what is called the Pursue aspect of our so-called respect approach and nothing like enough time on the Prevent aspect. Of course, it is the Prevent aspect that is by far the more important if we are ever to find a long-term solution to the problem. That was the very point made recently by the Intelligence and Security Committee in its report on the Rigby murder—that we should spend much more time on Prevent and much less time on pursuing these matters. How much better it would have been if, after the London bombings, instead of passing the unnecessary legislation that we did, we had taken the same attitude that the French have so magnificently done to the recent atrocity in their country. But we did not take that approach, and we are now being asked to make exactly the same mistake as we have made so often in the past.
Given this history, one would have imagined that the Prime Minister would have hesitated a little longer before making his announcement on 2 September, within two days of the threat having been raised from substantial to severe. Sadly, that was not the case and we now have this Bill before us. On any view, so repressive a Bill should be subject to something more than the fast-track procedure. It will be undermining fundamental liberties in important respects and therefore deserves very careful scrutiny. But what does the Prime Minister do? He says that it will be subject to the fast-track procedure. I cannot think of any Bill less suitable for the fast-track procedure than this one. The reasons given in the Explanatory Notes seem to be wholly inadequate. I can think of no good reason why the Bill should not wait until after the next general election but that, apparently, is not to be. It makes one wonder what possible purpose the Prime Minister could have had in wanting to bring it forward so urgently. One can only think of reasons which one must instantly reject: that he needed to give the Commons something to do to fill the time up to the beginning of the election, or reasons even more cynical than that. I can think of no good reason for giving this Bill the fast-track procedure and, if we do nothing else, we must surely resist that.
That brings me to my last point. In some ways, it may seem a peripheral one, but it throws a good deal of light on the Government’s attitude to these matters.
The current Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation is, as we know, David Anderson QC. I held the same post myself many years ago and there have been many reviewers between then and now. The noble Lord, Lord Carlile, was one and I am glad to see him in his place. I think we would all agree that Mr Anderson has been an outstanding success. He spends about 15 days a month working as a reviewer when he could otherwise be working as a QC. He tells us that, in order to do the job, he needs to be solely responsible for the output; otherwise he would not feel he was being truly independent. As he says, it enables him to meet Ministers, parliamentarians and the media and give them the benefit of his views. Yet what do the Government now propose? They propose to replace this man, who is doing such an excellent job, with a committee called, I think, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Board.
We all know that Governments can do silly things from time to time, but I simply cannot imagine anything sillier than that. How can a committee do the sort of job that Mr Anderson has done so well? Fortunately, the Government have had second thoughts and it is now proposed that Mr Anderson should become the chairman of this grand-sounding board. However, that is not what Mr Anderson happens to want. He was asked what he wanted and he said that he needed some further straightforward support—that is, he wanted someone to help him in the same way as a junior helps a QC. In his view, that is the best way in which he can do his job. Why on earth do we not give Mr Anderson what he wants rather than what somebody else may think he wants? I hope that we shall see the back of Clause 36 very soon.
What is the way ahead? We should beg Mr Anderson on our knees to complete the job that he has already started, which he is not expected to complete until next May, and which covers many of the matters that are covered by the Bill. We should then make sure that the Government take the Bill away and bring it back in May, with all the improvements that I know—I think we all know this—Mr Anderson will have made to it in the mean time. To force the Bill through now under the fast-track procedure seems to me the height of folly.
4.06 pm
The Lord Bishop of Durham: My Lords, I share with every other reasonable person a horror of the evil actions and effects of terrorism, grief for the suffering caused by terrorist acts and a heartfelt concern for those whose lives are lost or wounded through it. Events in Paris last week clearly illustrated this to us all. However, those events also highlight the need to ensure that we keep a global awareness and perspective, as the fresh Boko Haram attacks in Baga and its surrounding villages last Friday show us. Here, around 2,000 were killed. As we consider counterterrorism and security here in our land, we must stay aware of the global nature of the issues.
In every true place of worship, among people of all faiths, the horror of evil and the grief at loss of life and suffering for friends, families and communities are felt and articulated in lament, confession and
intercession, day by day and week by week. As we consider the latest set of government moves to strengthen the laws which guard our people against terrorist acts, we have to hold our nerve in our convictions about liberty, equality and fraternity, and look steadily at the changes being proposed. These matters are too serious for us to polarise or politicise issues beyond what is justified in legitimate debate.
I shall not address the elements of the Bill in exhaustive detail. Others have far greater expertise in each of the areas concerned. However, I want to make some points about the Bill’s provisions in their own terms. As I do so, I believe that it is important to step back and see the proposed changes in the context of broader trends in how we live, govern ourselves and seek to ensure the security of our people.
I begin where local churches begin: trying, under God, to be agents of reconciliation; building communities marked by trust, mutual respect and care, and not by fear and suspicion. In many places, faith communities are coming together to build understanding and break down prejudice and stereotypes. Yesterday, in response to events in Paris, in my previous diocese of Southwell and Nottingham, faith leaders from Muslim, Jewish, Christian and other communities enacted a day of fasting as a sign of mutual commitment and dependence on God in seeking peace for all. They stood in solidarity with one another. In my current diocese of Durham, where the numbers of adherents to faiths other than Christianity are relatively small, work is continually done by the faith communities in places such as Sunderland, Gateshead, South Shields, Stockton and Darlington to build strong community relationships. The Near Neighbours programme nationally has had a significant impact on every place in which it is run.
This groundswell of community building is, and is seen by faith groups as, the most powerful force against radicalisation, especially among young people, on whom so much of the sense of risk tends to be focused. The Department for Communities and Local Government is doing some excellent work supporting local initiatives in this field. Groups with wider knowledge than local churches, such as the Quilliam Foundation, emphasise that this type of work in the community is vital to the Prevent Strategy.
I welcome therefore the increased resourcing of Home Office-driven work through the Channel programme to identify and intervene in the lives of people at particular risk of radicalisation. Nevertheless, the resources going in that direction seem to be much greater than those going towards the community work that is so fundamental to long-term prevention, and that does not carry the risks of fuelling narratives of persecution and heroic resistance. Countering radical terrorism is a long-term grass-roots matter. Long-term support for good community development will reap the best long-term rewards. This is not so much a matter of draining the swamp by immediate legislation as tilling the ground.
In this context, the placing of a statutory duty on a range of specified authorities to prevent people being drawn into terrorism is a significant step. Some have mocked the idea of nursery staff being obliged to report any signs of extremism in a family. I do not
share the mockery, as terrorist behaviour is abusive behaviour. Nevertheless, the placing of such an obligation adds to the risks of creating a culture of suspicion and the sense that every citizen is expected to be on the lookout to report on their neighbour rather than build good relationships with them. Great care needs to be taken not to overburden schools or erode their capacity to build diversity and trust among pupils, staff and parents. Some of us are already less than comfortable about the way in which a wider range of citizens is coming under analogous duties in relation, for example, to immigration status.
The Home Office has helpfully launched a consultation on the draft guidance, which it has published, and faith groups will be looking carefully at those proposed guidelines. Just as there must be concern for the young child in that context, so too there must be concern for those separated from a parent made to move under a TPIM. Breaking up a family, as could occur, could create longer-term harm even, at one extreme, sowing the seeds of the next generation of terrorists in young children. Great care needs to be taken with any form of what amounts to internal exile that leaves children wondering what has happened to their parent.
On the matter of temporary exclusion orders, I acknowledge the need to have some kind of handle on the return to this country of people who may have been fighting in other countries. I share with many others the concern that there is currently no check by any court or some other judicial means on the decisions made by the Home Secretary. These are grave decisions, as they come as near as the Government think international law will allow to rendering people temporarily stateless. I strongly believe that some form of judicial review and appeal is needed. I share the overall concern of the Law Society about the judiciary’s lack of ability to scrutinise decisions on a number of matters in the Bill. I hope that serious consideration will be given to correcting this omission in Committee.
Across a number of its clauses, including those which I have mentioned and the communications data provisions, the Bill engages the question of the balance between security and privacy. It contains a number of new safeguards to ensure that the balance does not tip too far in favour of security at all costs. I welcome this determination to keep the balance healthy. A senior police officer said recently:
“My job is obviously to help keep people safe. To get that balance between security and privacy is parliament’s job”.
I do not think that that is the whole story. Parliament, even in its most careful and precise formulations of law, cannot remove from any authority the need to strive for a mature and well informed understanding of how to draw appropriate boundaries between security and privacy based on the law as it stands. A member of the Church of England can speak only with humility about keeping people safe. It is a journey that we are making in other contexts.
In conclusion, I refer to part of the very helpful reflection of the Reverend Dr Sam Wells, rector of St Martin-in-the-Fields, on Radio 4 last Friday. He reflected on liberty, equality and fraternity. Having reflected on liberty and equality, he then said that fraternity,
“names the challenge of our times: what happens when our identities and opinions take us to very different places? Fraternity is the reconciled diversity that Christians call the kingdom of God … The issue isn’t straining to uphold liberty … The real challenge isn’t how to live: it’s how to live together”.
I offer these comments of general principle with the concern that we are not paying adequate attention to the issue of fraternity and community building, but I also offer them with the promise of the prayer and support of people of faith up and down the country as Parliament wrestles with what are deeply grave responsibilities.
4.17 pm
Lord Jopling (Con): My Lords, I welcome the Bill. Many of us agree that the tragic events in Paris over the last few days only underline the relevance of this Bill at this time.
I have been looking at the Explanatory Notes for the Bill. I understand, as we all do, that the Explanatory Notes are not part of the Bill, but explain the background thinking of the Government in this. Paragraph 5 says:
“The UK has a strategy for countering terrorism”.
It goes on to say that it is based around four main areas of work and that the provisions in this legislation work in particular to the first three: Pursue, Prevent and Protect. I want to talk about the fourth part of the strategy, Prepare, which is explained as,
“working to minimise the impact of an attack and to recover from it as quickly as possible”.
I hope that it may be possible to strengthen the Bill by finding ways to improve our preparedness for a terrorist attack and to deal with it after it has happened. Terrorist attacks, as we know, can come in many forms. The Paris outrages are strong in our memories at this time but we should understand that individual zealots intent on killing by the use of either the gun or a suicide bomb could be seen as comparatively limited outrages compared with what we could be faced with in the future—events that could even exceed the twin towers tragedy in New York.
My principal concern today is the potentially much more serious attacks that could cause far wider, long-term devastation. I am concerned about our preparations for CBRN attacks, which are not impossible. We must be better prepared for the use of chemical, biological, radioactive or nuclear devices and aware that attacks could happen. In most of these possibilities it is essential that the authorities are aware at the earliest possible moment after the attack of its nature and of what we are confronted with. In the case of a radioactive attack using a dirty bomb, it is essential that we know as soon as possible whether the terrorist bomb that has gone off has radioactive material attached to it, so that at the earliest moment the public can be warned what to do if there is radioactive contamination. I only hope that we are fully prepared countrywide to be able to identify the effects of a dirty bomb when it might happen.
Lord Judd (Lab): The noble Lord is making an extremely powerful point, which all of us must take very seriously, but does he agree that is not only radioactive threats with which we should be concerned? We need to be equally concerned about bacteriological and other forms of life-threatening content.
Lord Jopling: My noble friend Lord Judd must be a little patient because I am moving on to exactly those points—which cause me even greater concern—in a few moments, if he would be good enough to bear with me.
I welcome the provisions in the Bill that take further steps to strengthen border controls over the various transportation routes. Devices which are known and available can in many cases identify radioactive substances that might be hidden in lorries, trains or ships and could be used for a dirty bomb. I can only hope, and ask Ministers to ensure, that devices that can identify radioactive material are fully used wherever possible.
Now I turn to the point the noble Lord, Lord Judd, has just raised—biological attacks and the way in which a major attack on a city could be implemented by the use of aerosols. This is an area where I think there is the greatest and most urgent need for early warning systems so that we know the nature of the attacks at the first possible moment. As we know, these attacks could come in the form of various diseases, of which smallpox, anthrax or botulism are only examples. It is no good waiting days and maybe even a week or two after an attack of this sort for clinical symptoms to appear in people who are infected. By that time it is too late—a classic case of closing the stable door after the horse has bolted.
In many parts of the world—particularly, as I know, in parts of the United States and indeed in the United Kingdom—it has been the, to my mind, ludicrous and bewildering strategy to monitor sales of aspirin in chemists’ shops as an indication of whether a major biological attack has taken place. I am serious about that. Devices are now available to monitor the atmosphere on a daily basis. They can indicate very soon after a biological attack that there are, in the atmosphere, biological organisms which could have caused widespread diseases. When I last inquired about this in New York some months ago, I was told by the police department that it had 20 of these devices around the city. I can say to the Minister only that it is absolutely vital that we employ those automatic devices throughout our major cities, so that we know that a biological attack has happened within hours rather than maybe a week after it when people become ill.
There is another issue on preparedness which concerns me and I have asked a number of questions about it in your Lordships’ House over the years. The issue is how many front-line doctors and nurses are vaccinated for smallpox and other potential vehicles for biological attacks. In the past, the numbers have been seriously low. I have talked to Ministers about this, stressing how crucial it is to increase the number of front-line medical staff who are vaccinated so that they can deal with an outbreak.
I now come to one other point which I would like the Minister to look into. Again, it is an issue that I have raised before and which continues to cause me concern. It relates to a substance whose name will be familiar to most Members of your Lordships’ House. I refer to Botox, a well known cosmetic treatment for women. While Botox itself is not a danger, the substance from which it is created is absolutely lethal. Botox is created by sterilising botulinum toxins, which cause
the dreadful, horrible and deadly infection of botulism. I was told some time ago by researchers in the United States that they had evidence that botulinum toxins had been made available on the internet in certain countries in Asia. One can see the immediate danger of terrorists getting hold of those toxins. I hope that Ministers are aware of this situation and that they are doing everything they can to close down possible sources of botulinum toxins for potential terrorist activities.
I am trying to draw attention to possible shortcomings in our preparedness for devastating terrorist attacks. I hope that Ministers will take notice and apply themselves to addressing them. It is said—and I understand why—to be sometimes in the interests of national security that there is a reluctance to describe fully the structure and details of our preparedness. If the Minister is unable, for those reasons, to reply to the points I have tried to make, could he write to me and express the Government’s views on these anxieties? However, if we were to suffer a devastating attack of the kind that I have been describing, and it afterwards became clear that the warnings such as the ones I have been trying to put over today had not been heeded, I warn Ministers that their lives, in those circumstances, would be barely tolerable, to say nothing of their consciences.
4.31 pm
Lord Goldsmith (Lab): My Lords, this debate would be important whenever it was taking place. However, the unspeakable barbarity of what took place in Paris last week gives this added impetus. Noble Lords who have spoken and will speak today do so from great experience. I count at least two former Security Ministers—maybe there are more—police officers and, I think, two former heads of one of our security services. We look forward very much to hearing what the noble Lord, Lord Evans of Weardale, will say in his maiden speech.
My experience includes being in government at the time of 9/11 and having to work with others—including my noble friend Lord Rooker, who sits next to me—on how to deal with that threat, and what needs there were for legislation. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, has already referred—disparagingly, it has to be said, but I understand why—to some of the legislation that we passed. Having mentioned his name, I pay tribute to the commitment that he has shown to this question. I have not always agreed with him. I am not sure that I agree with him on all that he has said today. He has, however, always asked important questions, and I am as alarmed as many other noble Lords to have heard the noble and learned Lord talk about this perhaps being his swansong. I hope that that is not the case; if it is, we will all regret it but treasure what he has said today.
In the time that I spent on legislation, I was involved in supervising the prosecution of terrorists and looking at the Prevent strategy, to which the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, referred. I learnt five things from that. The first was that these are such difficult questions. There is nothing absolute about any of them except, I hope, our abhorrence of terrorism. They raise extremely difficult issues, which need to be considered carefully.
Secondly, we have to listen very carefully to the advice from the police and security services. I was concerned and unhappy, during an earlier debate, about whether the advice that we were getting from the police about the desirability of detaining terrorist suspects for extended periods was justified. If anything, that 90-day debate may have given the security services and the police a particular inhibition about putting forward recommendations and advice on terrorism legislation. That may be healthy but we need to listen very carefully to what they say, because they know what is taking place on the ground in a way that is difficult for us to know.
Thirdly, we have to test what they say by reference to evidence, to logic and to whether it can be shown that what is proposed is proportionate and necessary in all the circumstances. Fourthly, one of the things that we as parliamentarians need to do is not just scrutinise evidence and what is put forward, but consider what the safeguards are to protect us and the things that we care about. Fifthly, it is so easy for politicians to use these circumstances for political purposes. Like my noble friend Lady Smith, I was alarmed to hear the remarks today about snoopers’ charters. I worry that these are references to something in the light of the coming election and a need to see a differentiation between the junior and senior partners in the coalition. I hope that that is wrong and that it will not affect the debate in this House today in any way. I also hope that the debate in the country is not affected by that.
What about the substantive points? I want to make three. First, there is the question of process and fast tracking. I declare an interest as a member of your Lordships’ Constitution Committee. We produced a quick report—it had to be quick because the Bill came to us quickly from the Commons—that picked up on the fast-tracking question to which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, referred. I draw the attention of noble Lords to two significant points in what we said. One is that we welcomed the fact that the Explanatory Notes set out detailed reasons for fast tracking, if that is what it is—there is still some confusion on whether the Government think they are fast tracking this but it is plainly going through a fast process. However, we also respectfully encouraged this House to consider carefully whether the reasons put forward by the Government for the fast tracking of each element of the Bill offered sufficient justification.
It is important to look at each element of the Bill. It is relatively easy to see that with people potentially returning from theatres of operation, battlefields or terrorist operations in the Middle East, we need to do something now about whether they can return and under what conditions, but less easy to see why the proposed changes in relation to data retention have to be dealt with at this point, given that we touched on this in the previous legislation. At that stage, it was said that because it was being fast tracked, it was not possible to deal with the substance. Each element needs to be looked at. I, and no doubt others, will carefully consider what the Government and the Minister have to say about those elements as we go through.
The second substantive point is on the question of temporary exclusion orders. This seems to be the most controversial element in the Bill. The noble Baroness,
Lady Hamwee, may be right that this sort of order has not been used since the medieval ages when our kings used to banish people—it was then, I think, for political reasons rather than for protection from terrorism. However, it is a very large power to ban somebody from his home country. The arguments put forward have persuaded the independent reviewer. In my judgment I can see the force of the arguments, but that is why it is so critically important to consider the safeguards in relation to them.
Reference to judicial intervention has already been made and I should like to spend a moment or two on the reasons why it matters. First, I understand that the Government accept that the only judicial safeguard under the Bill as it stands would be judicial review of the decision of the Secretary of State to exclude somebody. Judicial review is hugely important. It is a very valuable tool, and important for the protection of all our liberties, but it is an imperfect tool. In this context, it is particularly imperfect. Judicial review is not generally a reconsideration of the evidence de novo. It is not an original decision; it is not even an appeal. It looks at whether there are defects in the decision-making process: was some irrelevant consideration taken into account or some relevant consideration not taken into account? It is very difficult to deal with in this sort of area. However, it is not a review of the merits of the decision, so it is a limited consideration.
The second problem, inevitable in the circumstances we are talking about, is that that judicial review would have to be brought from overseas. As I understand it—I am sure that the Minister will deal with this—the individual affected by an exclusion order would not be allowed back into the country to make the application. So the difficulties would be compounded by the applicant coming from overseas, wherever that might be, and finding legal assistance to ensure that the application was made.
Thirdly, there is a surprising contrast with the TPIM regime, where there is a judicial intervention which does not exist under the Bill as put forward. That needs to be justified, given that the order excluding someone from this country is every bit as serious, if not more so, than some of the measures that could happen under TPIM.
Fourthly, I wonder whether this is not in the interests of the Government or of the Minister. The concern for any Minister in dealing with a potential exclusion order is that they are told by the police or by the security services that someone is a potential risk. What happens if that person turns into an actual risk and the Minister has not excluded them? It is the day after a terrorist attack that fingers are pointed—inevitably and perhaps rightly so. The Minister is therefore put under great pressure and temptation to look at the evidence in a benevolent way. That would not be what a court did in those circumstances; it would need to look dispassionately and independently, as our judges are trained to do.
I understand why the Executive might be nervous about leaving these decisions to judges, but they would be wrong to be so. Our judges can be trusted to make these decisions. It was, therefore, good to hear what the Minister repeated about the Government’s intention
but we shall see the reality when the Government put forward their proposals. I know that there are lots of different gradients of judicial intervention and supervision; we want to see what the Government propose.
My final substantive point is on data retention; I have already touched on it. I am not one of those people who are so concerned about privacy as not to see that where there are advantages to the security services, it must be overridden. I would love to see a situation in which all our privacy was guaranteed, just as I would love to see a situation in which we did not have to take our shoes off—or have all the other security measures—when we travel by air. Those have necessarily been caused by what the terrorists have done. There must be safeguards. People must be satisfied that information will not be misused but, at the end of the day, if the security services and the police are of the view that they need this material—and I know why they think they do—then that is a power which we need to give them.
4.42 pm
Lord Paddick (LD): My Lords, I am very pleased to follow the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, and I broadly agree with what he said. I was a police officer for more than 30 years, but I was not directly involved in counterterrorist operations so I have no specialist knowledge of the subject. However, I was the police spokesman following the 7 July 2005 bombings in London and I was responsible for community issues for the police in the immediate aftermath of the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes on 22 July 2005.
I was a police officer during most of the IRA bombing campaign on the UK mainland and regularly attended briefings by the Anti-Terrorist Branch, as it was then. The IRA threat was very different in nature from that presented by Islamist extremists. The IRA was conventionally organised through an established hierarchical structure and, as such, it was capable of being infiltrated. Even so, the then head of the Anti-Terrorist Branch, John Grieve, said that the police and security services alone could not defeat terrorism; it was communities that would do this. I spoke to John Grieve this morning and he reiterated what he said in the 1990s: the role of communities is even more important in combating the sort of tragic and totally unjustifiable outrages that we saw in Paris last week.
Lone individuals or groups that come together to carry out acts of terrorism are very difficult to identify, intercept and thwart without intelligence from the communities they live among. What we understand from the Paris shootings is that, although the two brothers involved were known to the security services, they were among hundreds who had the potential to be a threat. It is those closest to those individuals who will notice changes in their behaviour that might highlight to the security services that these are the few from the many who may act on their perverted beliefs.
In an interview this weekend, the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, talked about how important it was, for example, for the parents of those preparing to leave to join the conflict in Syria and Iraq to tell the police and other agencies. We should consider how many parents would
want the authorities to prevent their children travelling to Syria and Iraq to engage in terrorist activity. He went on to say that he recalled how the 7/7 bombers accidentally bleached their hair and the vegetation outside the flat where they prepared their explosive devices with one of the components from their home-made bombs. Their friends, family and local people would have noticed and could potentially have prevented the atrocity by telling the authorities. They did not, and 52 innocent people died.
That is why increased powers for the security services and the police must be balanced against winning the confidence of communities which fear that powers may be used against their innocent members. We cannot have, do not want and cannot afford to have a police officer on every street corner and an intelligence officer in every community. Whatever surveillance powers we might agree, if we have learnt one thing from the recent tragedies it is that there are too many people who could potentially pose a threat to be able to monitor all of them. Community intelligence is as important as any powers we give to the intelligence agencies.
There is also the wider civil liberties issue. This country has a liberal tradition that citizens should be allowed to do what they will, provided it does not harm others, free from interference from the state. This freedom is anathema to the Islamist extremists who carry out terrorist attacks against the West. They want a society where every aspect of people’s lives is controlled. If we curtail people’s liberties, we are taking society in exactly the direction the terrorists want us to go.
Of course the police and security services will always ask for more draconian powers in order to carry out surveillance of those suspected of criminality. The Liberal Democrats have been criticised for scuppering the Communications Data Bill—the so-called snoopers’ charter—but we must always seek to find the right balance between security and civil liberties.
Lord West of Spithead (Lab): Does the noble Lord agree that the term “snoopers’ charter” is emotive claptrap? I have worked with GCHQ over a period of 30 years, on and off, and I am not aware of a single case where people working in that agency have “snooped”, which is the word used, on any ordinary member of our society in any way at all. Yes, it has used due and proper process and looked at and found people who wish to damage us. Indeed, in all the plots that we managed to stop during my time as a Minister and since, nearly everyone got their heads-up from that type of intercept information. Using the words “snoopers’ charter” is emotive and gives completely the wrong impression of what it is.
Lord Paddick (LD): I acknowledge what the noble Lord has said and that there are differences of opinion on both sides of the argument. It is a pejorative, probably unhelpful, term that has come into popular use. I added that description for the benefit of those reading the proceedings of this House who may not be familiar with the Communications Data Bill. I agree with the noble Lord that it is not a particularly helpful term to use.
Noble Lords will understand that my main interests in the Bill concern the new powers it confers on the police and security services and, as far as those aspects are concerned, I substantially welcome its provisions. To that extent, and with some trepidation, I disagree with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick. As my noble friend the Minister said, the nature of the threat has changed. There are many British citizens—mainly young and impressionable—who are being persuaded to travel abroad to participate in terrorist activity. If prevented and provided with the right intervention, they could be diverted from radicalisation. We need to examine in detail the powers given to the police to seize passports and travel documents. Sadly, we have seen well intentioned legislation being misused in practice in the past, and we must do all we can to minimise the potential for misuse of these new powers.
“Temporary exclusion orders” is an unfortunate term for what is intended to be a mechanism to ensure the managed return of those suspected of having been involved in terrorism-related activity and who pose a threat. It is clearly necessary to control the return of those who have either been trained in terrorist training camps or been engaged in acts of terrorism to ensure that they do not pose a threat to the safety not just of members of the public, as the legislation says, but of the police, the Armed Forces and the security services. Again, it is important that these individuals are properly assessed and that appropriate interventions are provided, including prosecution and imprisonment if necessary. As my noble friend Lady Hamwee has said, we must ensure that there is proper scrutiny of such decision-making above and beyond the very limited ability of a young man or woman abroad to challenge the decision of the Secretary of State by means of judicial review. Many of those young people will have been exposed to one of the most brutal regimes that we have seen. It is unlikely that they will not be changed by that experience and potentially pose a more serious threat as a result.
The Bill purports to allow the security services to link a particular IP address with a particular device and therefore to make it easier to identify individuals who are communicating using the internet, in a way similar to what can be done at present with landline and cellular telephone communications. I seek reassurance from the Minister that the data that the Bill requires internet service providers to retain are only those that are necessary to link communications to devices and hence individuals, and that the Bill would not allow the trawling of data in a way that would be a considerable infringement of innocent people’s civil liberties. As for whether this provision needs to be fast-tracked, if it has been identified as a gap in the ability of the police or the security services to prove communication between individuals, surely it is best if that gap is filled as quickly as possible.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, is also concerned about TPIMs. However, my understanding is that the changes to TPIMs in this legislation have been recommended by the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation—someone for whom the noble and learned Lord has the highest regard.
I have other concerns about other parts of the Bill that others will cover in more detail, particularly the banning of radical preachers, which could lead to their perverted messages of hate being preached in secret where they cannot be challenged by those who oppose their views.
We saw unintended consequences of the actions taken following 7/7 under the Prevent strand of the then Government’s counterterrorism plan, with councils forced to spend money where none was needed and some minority ethnic communities feeling that they were being penalised for not harbouring terrorists. Prevent deals with all types of terrorism and I have no issue with a statutory requirement for local authorities to carry out an assessment as to the nature and extent of the danger of local people being drawn into terrorism. I have no issue with a statutory requirement to address the dangers identified, but what action is taken should be a matter for the local authority concerned.
On Saturday, George Churchill-Coleman sadly died. He was head of the Metropolitan Police Anti-Terrorist Branch for seven years, from 1985 to 1992, longer than any other postholder. John Grieve worked closely with Mr Churchill-Coleman and the one message that Churchill-Coleman delivered over and over again during his time at the peak of the IRA bombing campaign was, “Don’t overreact”.
The Bill, properly amended, as I am sure it will be by this House, is a measured and appropriate response to the dangers that we face, and I believe that we should, in principle, support it.
4.55 pm
Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood (CB): My Lords, this is a complex Bill, not least because it amends and interacts with a number of other difficult statutes in the field and presupposes a full understanding of them. Although I have done quite a lot of reading in this area, I confess at once that I have not as yet formed any clear and final view on some—perhaps most—of the many difficult issues that it raises. Today, I propose to confine myself to one or two general, perhaps rather bland remarks and then focus more particularly on Part 2, which deals with changes to the TPIMs scheme.
My preliminary comments are these. Like my noble and learned friend Lord Lloyd of Berwick, although not for as long as him, I have been concerned with the legal aspects of national security over many years, first as Treasury counsel acting in such cases for the Government. Indeed, my very last case at the Bar was in 1984, the de-unionisation on security grounds of GCHQ. The noble Lord, Lord Armstrong of Ilminster, who I am delighted will be speaking in this debate, was our chief witness. Then, overlapping with many—perhaps too many—long years on the Bench, I was, also successively from the mid-1980s chairman of two tribunals which investigated complaints into our various intelligence agencies. Then for six years up to 2006 I was the Intelligence Services Commissioner with, effectively, retrospective judicial oversight into the operation of the various intelligence agencies, most particularly compliance with the requirements of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, which
was introduced to secure Article 8 privacy rights conferred by the Human Rights Act. In those days, I was able to give only a month a year to that task. As I understand it, my successors as both the Intelligence Services Commissioner and the Interception of Communications Commissioner have to deal with that on an almost full-time basis.
Over all the years that I have had those various forms of contact with the agencies, I have formed a clear view that they consist—save for the tiniest minority, who are speedily weeded out—of the highest quality men and women, dedicated and disciplined public servants, generally of considerable intelligence and great integrity. Many have come from academe, banking or skilled professions specifically because they wanted to make what they regarded—and which I certainly regard—as the greater contribution to national life that comes from working in those agencies, often at substantially lower salaries than they could have expected in the private sector, and always on the understanding that their particular value would never be recognised publicly. I say never; happily there are in the House this afternoon two exceptions to that non-recognition, both of whom are to speak in this debate, and we look forward to hearing them. The noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, is to speak later and very shortly we shall welcome enormously the maiden speech from the noble Lord, Lord Evans of Weardale. We shall listen with particular attentiveness to what they have to say.
Of course it does not follow from the undoubted excellence of our intelligence officers that we in Parliament should uncritically grant them ever wider powers. Far from it, but it certainly follows that I, for my part—like the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith—am readily inclined to listen to their views and to treat with particular respect any arguments and evidence that they advance as to the existence of gaps in the capabilities of the agencies that need to be filled. I would also value their judgment on—for example—the damage caused by people such as Mr Snowden.
In the light of last week’s ghastly events in Paris, it may be thought that the need for this Bill in all its various aspects is more obvious than ever, but there is perhaps a risk on that account that we may be inclined to give it a fairer wind than it—or certain parts of it—strictly merit. I am quite sure that on reflection all Members of this House agree that holding the difficult balance appropriately between freedom on the one hand and security on the other remains just as important as it always has.
So much for preliminary comments—perhaps they were rather tiresomely platitudinous; there it is. I come to the second part of this Bill, which deals with TPIMs. I begin by briefly reminding the House of the gradual evolution of this system of control over those we suspect of terror-related activities but do not have the evidence to actually put through court for prosecution. After 9/11 we began, as we can all too easily remember, with the Belmarsh detention scheme, which in retrospect can be seen as a really shocking form of open-ended preventive detention of foreign suspects. It was ultimately struck down in a seminal judgment of the Appeal Committee of this House, chaired by the late and
much respected Lord Bingham of Cornhill, in the famous case of A. Of course, shortly after that this House rightly determined that that scheme should be given its quietus. It was immediately then replaced—and there was, one recalls, a heady night of toing and froing between the Houses—by the control order regime under the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005, which lasted for six years until its repeal by the TPIM Act in 2011. Control orders were of course highly contentious and much litigated. I myself heard a number of appeals against various aspects of such orders, both in the Appeal Committee of this House and then, after October 2009 when we were banished across the square, in the Supreme Court.
The TPIM Act represents, if you like, stage 3 of this evolving picture, and introduced major changes from the altogether more draconian control order regime which it replaced. It is no longer possible to make TPIMs on an indefinite basis—they are now limited to two years; curfews, which were originally permissible up to 16 or perhaps even 18 hours under TPIMs, are now down to 10 hours; there is now the right to a computer and a mobile phone; the test for imposing these orders was sharpened and raised: “reasonable suspicion” has given way to “reasonable belief”. Most importantly for present purposes, there is no scope under TPIMs for relocation, for what the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham called—as it has been called by others—“internal exile” and the many problems associated with all that. The courts long ago acknowledged that—we discussed it at length in 2010 in our Supreme Court judgments in the Home Secretary v AP.
Clause 12 would amend the TPIM Act to reintroduce the possibility of relocation. As has already been remarked by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, the independent reviewer, Mr Anderson QC—truly a most estimable and able man—recommended that himself, although, as he put it in his evidence to the Joint Committee on Human Rights on 26 November last, he did so,
“with a heavy heart, but none the less with decisiveness”.
Despite the fearsome disruption to family life and the resentment it causes and the disaffection of the families—which again, the right reverend Prelate spoke of—I, too, support it. Frankly, it is the only effective way to prevent people meeting up with their associates and from absconding. However, it must be recognised that it is a hugely invasive, disruptive power; infinitely more so, for example, than telephone tapping, data recording, or any of the several other such powers available or proposed to be available to the agencies. Those powers merely—I use that word advisedly and rather in the same sense as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, would—interfere with people’s right to privacy, which is a valuable right, but nothing like the right that is removed by relocation.
That consideration takes one—or at any rate takes me—to Clause 16(1), which provides that:
“In section 3 of the Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Act 2011 … in subsection (1), for ‘reasonably believes’ substitute ‘is satisfied, on the balance of probabilities,’”.
The result of that is that in the TPIM Act itself, which provides by Section 2(1) that:
“The Secretary of State may by … a ‘TPIM notice’ … impose specified terrorism prevention and investigation measures on an individual if conditions A to E in section 3 are met”,
the relevant condition A, which is in Section 3(1), is,
“that the Secretary of State reasonably believes that the individual is, or has been, involved in terrorism-related activity (the ‘relevant activity’)”.
That would become, “that the Secretary of State is satisfied, on the balance of probabilities”, that the person concerned has been involved in terrorism-related activity.
In his evidence both to the Joint Committee on Human Rights, and later, on 3 December, to the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee, Mr Anderson explained that Clause 16 did not give full effect to one of the recommendations he made to the Government about TPIMs. His third recommendation was essentially that the Home Secretary would have to persuade a court on the balance of probabilities that the person in question was or had been involved in terrorism. As now proposed by Clause 16(1), the question will be merely whether the Home Secretary herself is satisfied on the balance of probabilities. Frankly, as a matter of language and logic, I find it difficult to see that there is any material distinction whatever between the present position of the Home Secretary reasonably believing something, and—as now proposed—of her being satisfied of something on the balance of probabilities.
There is, of course, a real difference between reasonably suspecting something—which was the old test for imposing control orders—and reasonably believing something, which is the existing TPIM test. As I said in another criminal context in some earlier reported case, “to suspect something to be so is by no means to believe it to be so; it is to believe only that it may be so.” I am sure everybody here readily sees the logic of that. Belief necessarily denotes that the person thinks the fact in question has been established. I therefore question whether Clause 16(1) as it stands in practice does what it purports to do; namely. to raise the standard of proof required in these cases. I note that there was a Court of Appeal case in 2012 when, in the course of some lengthy judgments, somebody was able to suggest that they found some distinction between the two, but I confess it eludes me. Either way, Mr Anderson’s original recommendation for the court to be satisfied on the balance of probabilities was the correct one, certainly with regard to any future TPIM which is to deploy this new power of ordering relocation, significantly the most burdensome and invasive of the obligations which it will now be possible to impose. I strongly urge the Minister to re-examine this question, and to ask himself whether—after all—Mr Anderson’s recommendation should not be properly accepted rather than fudged and diluted to the point of negligibility in the existing draft. That may have been actually what the noble Marquess, Lord Lothian, was referring to in that early intervention he made during the Minister’s speech, although it was understood—and understandably understood—to be an intervention relating to Part 1 of the Bill.
That is my main present concern with Part 2. I welcome the other proposed changes to the existing TPIM regime, subject always to some persuasive contrary argument that may later emerge from others. Before I
sit down I should mention that there are plainly problems with other provisions, most notably both provisions in Part 1. We will see what the Government propose hereafter by way of allowing judicial control of these proposed new powers. Today I merely reserve my position on all these other matters. But overall I am optimistic that we can reshape this Bill to improve national security without significantly compromising our civil liberties. I would certainly give it a Second Reading.
5.14 pm
Baroness Neville-Jones (Con): My noble friend the Minister has set out the background to this, sadly, justified Bill, which relates to the change in the increased terrorist threat to this country. One of the main features of the threat that we now face is the geographical proximity of the conflict that it has generated and the ease with which jihadis leave the United Kingdom and travel by many routes to participate in fighting, and then return.
I am distressed to find myself in such strong disagreement with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, first in his aspersions on the motives of the Prime Minister but also in his assessment of the situation. There is nil indication at the moment that the conflict that we now see raging in Syria and Iraq, which inspires jihadi terrorism and enables jihadis to be trained in military technique, is going to end soon. On the contrary, the real danger is that it will both spread and intensify before ending. The threat has increased and is in great danger of increasing still further. So it is illusory to imagine that we are simply dealing with 250 people who may yet return; there is constant traffic backwards and forwards and, if we do not seek to disrupt it and do so with effect, that number will increase. The situation is not static, or one that lacks extreme danger.
What is being proposed in these powers to intercept people’s travel? The police will be authorised to act, on the basis of reasonable suspicion of an intention on the part of an individual to participate in terrorism abroad, to retain the passport concerned, initially for no more than 14 days without judicial sanction, until the purpose of the journey has been established. It will not permit the detention of these individuals. It will also give power to bar foreign nationals who are reasonably suspected of participation in terrorism from re-entering, and it will enable the control, through a temporary exclusion order, of re-entry of nationals, permitting a decision to be taken on whether they should be prosecuted if sufficient evidence exists or put into some kind of monitored programme if that evidence does not.
A lot will depend on the skill with which the power is used and its terms, and I join those who wish to see sufficient safeguards. The devil in much counterterrorism legislation lies in the detail, and I hope that the Minister will be able to give us more detail on how these processes should eventuate. What will actually happen when these interceptions are made? Then we can understand in human terms what is likely to happen. On the decision arrived at as to whether these are people who have to face some kind of criminal charge or can and should be put into a programme, and
which of those verdicts it is—I think that there will be many more who fall into the second category—those involved, and the Muslim community in this country that it will affect, must feel that it is a route to fair treatment and reasonable justice.
We should always be cautious about legislating in a heightened atmosphere generated by a major outrage, although the tone of the debate in this House this afternoon has been singularly sober and not excited. Paris did show us one thing, of which we should take note—that the individuals concerned used military training acquired in the Yemen to kill people on the streets of France. The people of this country will not be very forgiving if effective ways in which to disrupt terrorists who have been trained to kill should be available but are denied to the authorities and this country then suffers some kind of jihadi outrage.
I am aware of the apprehensions of noble Lords about the exercise of these powers and I look forward to what the Minister is going to say in Committee about safeguards. Adequate safeguards will greatly help the swift passage of this legislation through the House. I do not personally think that permanent exclusion orders are sustainable. On the other hand, I do not accept the notion, which is contained, I think, in a Liberty document, that we can somehow rely on jihadis to self-notify their intention to return. Nor do I entirely understand why—I think I am right in saying this—the Joint Committee on Human Rights has suggested that passports should not be removed, even temporarily. An international travel document is not a right and certainly not an absolute one. Those who plead for balance in our legislation must also bear in mind the right to security of the community at large.
The Bill deals with a number of other powers and, given the way the evening is moving on, I am going to be selective about them. I regret that the relocation power is necessary. I was part of the Government which modified the control regime and instituted TPIMs. I regarded that as an advance in our civil liberties, but it obviously has to be consistent with the safety of us all together. I regret that it is necessary to reinstate the relocation powers now, but I accept the judgment of the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, Mr Anderson, and I note the points that have just been made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown.
What has not attracted attention in the debate so far are the provisions relating to airline and other forms of transport “authority to carry”. These proposed powers are also important and, I fear, necessary. Al-Qaeda has a known obsession with spectacular massacres and one of their favourites is bringing down aircraft through the terrorist activity of people who are on board. They have attempted this a number of times, fortunately only once successfully, and that is why we take our shoes off. However, it remains an aim of a revived AQ. Our services being in a position to inspect the detail of a passenger list in advance of the take-off of an aircraft is, frankly, a small price to pay in terms of the intrusion into individual privacy. What price privacy if the whole plane-load of several hundred people goes down? I hope that the European Court of Justice, which is not helpful on this issue, will have the
sense not to strike down such a provision. One of the points made by Turkish authorities in relation to the massacre in Paris was that they were given no advance warning of the presence on the flight to Istanbul of the wanted woman accomplice and so they let her through. Such a provision on authority to carry would, if widely accepted, materially increase the safety of international airline travel. The least we can do is ensure an increase in safety of travel to the UK.
There are other powers in the Bill which touch on data retention and Prevent policies, which this House is going to examine in detail in Committee. That is the right thing for us to do and, as I said a moment ago, the provision of detail from the Minister will be very helpful. The creation of a Privacy and Civil Liberties Board is an important innovation which I hope will increase confidence in our ability to strike the balance between privacy, civil rights and security. I had not heard, and do not believe, that this is designed to displace the independent reviewer. I would certainly be distressed if that were the case but I do not think it is, because the contribution he makes is extraordinarily invaluable. I hope that it will be a mechanism which strengthens his hand and which enables us at all times, not only when we are legislating but in the subsequent implementation of legislation, to ensure that a balance continues to be struck.
I look forward to the following maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Evans of Weardale, and to the later maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Green of Deddington. I hope that at the conclusion of this debate the House will signify its support for the Bill’s objectives and principles, and that it will achieve a rapid passage through this House.
5.25 pm
Lord Evans of Weardale (CB) (Maiden Speech): My Lords, it is an honour to join your Lordships’ House. It was also a considerable surprise to be invited to do so, but it has turned out to be a very agreeable surprise. I am very grateful for the welcome and good wishes that I have received from your Lordships and the staff. I am also grateful to my two sponsors, the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, in whose footsteps I have found myself treading on several occasions over the years, and the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield, whose knowledge of the ways of government—even its secret ways—is unparalleled.
I had thought that I might make my maiden speech on a subject other than security in order not to play to type. Since leaving MI5, I have built a portfolio of interests spanning banking, education, the church and even motoring journalism, and I thought that I might look for an opportunity to speak on one of those. However, circumstances have presented this Bill before your Lordships’ House. Unfortunately, I will not be able to be present for the Committee stage as a result of travel commitments that I had taken on before joining your Lordships’ House, so it would seem perverse not to use this debate as an opportunity to make a maiden speech.
When I left MI5 in 2013, I felt cautiously optimistic that we were over the worst as far as al-Qaeda and Islamist terrorist attacks in this country were concerned.
It seemed to me that we were making significant progress. Regrettably, subsequent events have proved that judgment to be wrong. The atrocious killing of Fusilier Rigby in May 2013 demonstrated the reality of the threat that we face in this country, and the brutal murders in Paris last week demonstrate that this is a European and international problem and not one that we face alone.
It is, of course, developments principally in Syria and Iraq that have led to the jolt of energy that has gone through the extremist networks in this country. That was becoming evident before I left MI5. We have now seen at least 600 people from this country going as would-be jihadists to fight in Syria and Iraq. That is, of course, a dynamic number. I have no doubt at all that if we were to revisit this in a few months’ time, we would find that that number had significantly increased. When they arrive, they will join many hundreds of other jihadists travelling from other western countries and the Arab world. This puts me in mind of the circumstances that we saw in the period before 9/11 in Afghanistan, where there were many al-Qaeda training camps which drew would-be jihadists from across the globe. On their return, many of them were even more radical than they had been when they departed. They had experience of combat, had been trained in violence and had an international network of support on which they could draw. Those circumstances led to a series of international attacks over a long period. I fear that we may be facing the same situation as we go forward from today. Indeed, we are starting to see that, as the comments made by Andrew Parker, the current director-general of the Security Service, made clear last week.
At the same time the revelations made by Edward Snowden, whatever you think of what he did, have clearly led to a reduction in the ability of the security agencies here and overseas to access and read the communications of terrorists internationally, with the result that as the threat from terrorism has gone up in the past two years the ability of the security agencies to counter those threats has gone down. The result of this can be only that the overall risk of a successful terrorist attack in this country has risen.
Before I turn to the Bill, I would like to make some more general comments on the development of counterterrorism measures in the country over the past 15 years. It is sometimes suggested that there is a zero-sum game between security on the one hand, and civil liberties and human rights on the other—that this is some kind of see-saw and that if one end goes up the other will inevitably go down. That seems to me to be fundamentally mistaken. I believe that a country that has a strong basis of civil liberties and human rights is likely then to be able to draw on that as a form of resilience in the face of extremism and violence; in that sense our civil liberties and human rights are a very important moral component in the struggle against extremism. Conversely, inadequate security will breed vulnerability and fear, and that in turn will tend to limit people’s ability to contribute to civil society, will provoke vigilantism and will diminish people’s ability to exercise the very civil liberties and human rights that we wish to sustain. It is true to state that, when rightly created, appropriate security and civil liberties and human rights are mutually supportive.
The Bill provides in general for some fairly modest, practical and useful measures that will help the security agencies and the police to keep us safer, without unduly undermining civil liberties. That is particularly the case if we see additional safeguards introduced in respect of the temporary exclusion orders. For example, we currently lack any power to seize travel documents temporarily in order to stop a terrorist or would-be jihadist travelling overseas at short notice. One of the strategies that we have employed over many years is to try to break that cycle of movement between the domestic space and areas of jihad, which tends to breed extremism and violence. The Bill plugs the gap, but only permits the passport to be held for a limited period and subject to proper review. This means that the security authorities will have the time to consider whether more permanent steps, such as the cancellation of the passport, are needed. Given that it is often impossible to know in advance that an actual or would-be terrorist might be intending to travel overseas until they turn up at the port, it is a necessary and proportionate power.
Equally, the proposal to introduce temporary exclusion orders—I have considerable sympathy for those who suggest they would be better called “managed return orders”—requires the returnee to meet obligations such as returning at a specified time, attendance at appointments and notifying the police of their place of residence. That does not seem particularly draconian and is certainly very much less than would be the case under many TPIMs. Similarly, the power to require the subject of a TPIM to relocate is, from my perspective, a useful reintroduction of a power that was used to good effect with control orders. Control orders were used only in a sparing and careful way—the same is clearly evident with the number of TPIMs that have been used—but relocation was certainly valuable. I can recall one or two cases where an individual, relocated and taken out of the extremist milieu in which he was living, started to realise that perhaps he had made a mistake in adopting extremism and readopted a more moderate view of his religion. There was a deradicalising effect after taking people out of particular extremist environments, which is surely a positive outcome for all concerned.
In my experience, the part of the UK’s counterterrorist strategy that is at the same time the most important in the long term, and the most difficult to design and implement, is the Prevent programme, which aims to prevent and counter the radicalisation that may lead to terrorism. In my view, this is made all the harder by the hesitancy of many in government, the media and wider secular society to acknowledge or engage with the religious dimension of the threat that we face. The measures in the Bill require any public authorities that have been slow to get involved in this process to step up to the plate, but I have some uncertainty first as to whether going down a legislative path to require this is necessary; it is not yet clear to me that that is the case. Secondly, until we have seen the guidance in its final version it is quite difficult to decide how effective this would be. I therefore have to declare myself an agnostic when it comes to Part 5 of the Bill.
After the recent events in France there is no need to persuade anyone of the reality of the threat that we
face from Islamist terrorism. The struggle to protect our country against this threat is likely to last for many years, and involves both long-term and short-term measures. The current Bill appears to propose some practical steps that will help those who protect us from those threats and in general therefore I support it. It does, however, leave a considerable amount of unfinished business, in respect of access to communications data and the interception of communications that are absolutely central to our counterterrorism efforts. No doubt we will return to that here in due course.
I look forward to contributing to your Lordships’ consideration of these issues in future debates and also, I hope, to other matters that come before the House.
5.36 pm
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab): My Lords, I, too, admit to being delighted to follow the noble Lord, Lord Evans of Weardale, and his insightful maiden speech. He has served with distinction for 33 years in the Security Service and was until just over a year ago its director-general. His early years in MI5 are shrouded in the appropriate cloud of mystery. It is said that he served in Northern Ireland, where he went under the soubriquet “Bob”. If he sidled up to you in a bar in Belfast, his code phrase was allegedly “Call me Bob”. I do not know if that was true and I do not suppose that he will tell us. I first met him when I had some responsibility for overseeing the police counterterrorism network and he was deputy director-general. Indeed, I once encountered him on a bus—yes, deputy director-generals do travel by bus—and inadvertently I broke his cover. I think that his mission was in fact Christmas shopping. I greeted him by name. I realise now that perhaps I should have called him Bob. However, he will bring much to this House’s deliberations and we all look forward to hearing many more contributions from him in the years to come.
I declare my interest as an adviser to Lockheed Martin and UKBN, who have some involvement or potential involvement in underpinning our national security.
This debate follows the events of the past few days in Paris, which make it particularly timely. But it would have been timely anyway because of other recent events, such as what happened in the Canadian Parliament only a few weeks ago, the murder of Lee Rigby and the recent arrest carried out by the police counterterrorist network. Andrew Parker, the current director-general of MI5, talked in his lecture last Thursday about 20 terrorist plots directed or provoked by extremist groups in Syria since October 2013 in Europe, Canada and Australia. He said explicitly that the same intentions are being displayed towards the UK. There are 600 extremists among the many Britons who have travelled there. Many have joined ISIL, some—we do not really know how many—have already returned. He also spoke about three terrorist plots in the United Kingdom being stopped in recent months.
It is worth considering how, over the past 20 years, there has been a significant change in the nature of terrorist attack. Those who recall, as most of us do,
the IRA atrocities of 30 years ago remember that there were usually warnings. There was usually the desire by those perpetrating the atrocities to live and continue their activities. There was also an explicit political agenda and a recognition that too many casualties might be counterproductive to that agenda—a recognition that was not always accepted and followed.
Subsequently, we have had the al-Qaeda spectaculars: 9/11, Bali, 7/7 and the airline plot, which, thankfully, failed. There, the objectives were clearly mass casualties and involved martyrdom. The target was to cut off the head of the snake, by which they meant western civilisation. That remains an aspiration for some groups around the world. The difficulty with those plots was that, because they involved the intention to create enormous numbers of casualties, there was a need to intervene very early to disrupt them, due to the risks of those casualties taking effect—perhaps before a full evidential picture had been built up. That explains some of the debates that we had a decade or so back not only on control orders but on the length of detention while investigations took place.
More recently, we have seen a growth in the activities of lone wolves, most notably Anders Breivik in Norway in 2011 or, closer to home, Roshonara Choudhry’s attack on my right honourable friend Stephen Timms in 2010. Often these attacks were quite low-tech, with an expectation of capture and/or martyrdom. We have then seen the IS-inspired attacks of the last few months. Again, these are quite often low-tech and do not require a great deal of advanced planning and organisation. They may involve hostages. Certainly one of the objectives is publicity and the use of social media—YouTube, perhaps—to spread the atrocity that they have committed. It is important that our capacity, and the legal framework to respond, can change with those changes—indeed, to reflect the changing nature of technology itself.
If I was a cynical person—those who know me know that that is the last thing I ever am—I might be cynical about the fact that it has taken this coalition Government five years gradually to come to understand the threat. I resist the temptation to say that those on these Benches warned the Government, but the Government do now accept, in this Bill, that there needs to be the restoration of the power to relocate those subject to controls. Undesirable though that is and however difficult the individual circumstances, it is something that is, on occasion, necessary. Within government there is also now, at last, despite the extraordinary statements of the Deputy Prime Minister this morning, increasing recognition of the importance of communications data and the fact that our capacity to deal with that needs to reflect the way that communications data has changed.
The other lesson that we need to learn from the last few years is that there are no simple magic answers: they are not contained in the Bill and they have never been contained in any previous piece of anti-terrorism legislation. Each measure that such legislation contains must be assessed against a number of tests. The first is of effectiveness and necessity: does the measure proposed actually work and does it do what is necessary?
The second test is about proportionality in our framework of human rights and values. That includes who takes the decision and whether it is subject to review or appeal by an appropriate judicial authority. In my view, it remains right that the decision is taken by the Home Secretary, who is accountable to Parliament. However, for transparency, that decision should be—indeed, must be—subject to review and be seen to be subject to review by some independent judicial authority.
The third test—one which is very difficult to determine and measure—is the extent to which the measures being brought forward are likely to lead to potential alienation within individual communities and the likelihood that the measures may aid the narratives that lead to radicalisation. Will it reinforce the myth or story that is told that the West and western society are somehow out to get people with a particular religion or something else? Are the measures contained in this Bill or any other piece of legislation going to produce blow-back? Do the benefits outweigh the risks and can the measures be used sufficiently sparingly to remain proportionate?
The final test is not quite of the legislation but of the Government’s intent: crucially, is the infrastructure in place to use the measures effectively? Are MI5, MI6, GCHQ and the police service resourced adequately to do what is necessary to make use of these measures?
The question that your Lordships’ House has to consider is: how does the Bill meet these tests? Obviously we will look at the various elements in the Bill over the next few weeks. There certainly is not time in my contribution—noble Lords will be relieved to know—to consider all the measures in the Bill; I understand and fully support most of their objectives. I want to pick out just one to indicate how these tests should be used.
Clause 2 gives the Home Secretary the power to impose a temporary exclusion order on an individual where there is a reasonable suspicion that the person has been engaged in terrorist activity outside the UK and that the exclusion is reasonably considered necessary for protecting the public from the risk of terrorism. I am very clear that the Home Secretary needs to have suitable measures available to deal with returning individuals who are reasonably believed to be a threat to the public’s safety. The question is: will these measures work? As a non-lawyer, it seems to me that the measures have the effect of rendering the individual stateless, certainly for a period and potentially indefinitely, as the temporary exclusion order can be renewed time and time again. I leave it to others—I am sure that there will be others—to argue the international legitimacy of this and its relationship to the clause of Magna Carta that says:
“No free man shall be … outlawed or exiled”,
or otherwise destroyed. Instead, I want to focus on what it means and the practicalities.
So, an individual arrives at a point of entry and is served with a TEO. What happens then? Are they returned to the country from whence they came? What if that country says, “Her Britannic Majesty does not recognise these people as safe and does not see them as currently under her protection”, and sends them back to the UK? What happens then? Are they going to
shuffle backwards and forwards? Incidentally—this is just pure curiosity—who pays for the air flights? I am sure that that is a minor detail.
Alternatively, the country from which they come takes them back in, but they are immediately arrested. They are clearly a threat because the United Kingdom Government say that they are a threat. Do those individuals then have consular protection? If they are tortured, does this make our Government complicit? We will not deport other countries’ nationals to their home countries if we think that there is such a risk, yet we are happy to do so if it is one of our nationals to whom a TEO applies. Maybe I have misunderstood how this proposal will work, but I would like that question answered.
What is their status in the country that they are in when the TEO takes effect? Do they have UK consular protection? This is in circumstances when they are stopped from boarding the plane. Is it not a reasonable assumption by the country concerned—which may not have our own respect for human rights, or whose understanding of what human rights amount to is subtly changed by the way that we treat our citizen in this particular case—to say that this person is now a threat to their national security? Can they take whatever measures they feel appropriate?
If that person does go somewhere else and is not arrested by that country, what happens then? Is it not more likely that the security agencies will lose track of them, enabling them to re-enter the UK by another route, perhaps under a false name? So, how well will these arrangements work in practice? Presumably the real problem is that we are admitting that we do not have the resources to manage them adequately.
That brings me to final point: are the resources adequate? On 25 November, the Prime Minister announced that an extra £130 million would be available to combat terrorist activity. This money is to be spread over two years, so £65 million per year. However, it was reported at the same time that the Metropolitan Police, for example, assessed that an additional £30 million was needed for the police counterterrorism network. I understand that the bulk of that £65 million is, in fact, going to the agencies and I do not begrudge that, but I am concerned that the police service needs to be adequately resourced for what it will need to do, particularly at a time when policing is generally being cut—affecting, for example, the policing presence in local neighbourhoods. My specific question to the Minister is: how much additional funding is being made available to the police counterterrorism network during 2014-15, and is that still regarded as adequate in the light of recent events? Incidentally, this figure is not secret because the accounts of police bodies have to be in the public domain.
I have a separate question about policing. Is the Minister satisfied that the level of police firearms capability is sufficient in terms of the current threats? Other areas, too, need to be adequately resourced. London Councils tells me—as it did the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee—that there is a shortfall in the money being made available to set up the systems required under Clause 21. Are all the overall costs necessary to underpin this Bill really being met?
These measures will fall or amount to nothing unless they are appropriately resourced. This Bill seeks to address important questions and I am under no illusions about the scale of the terrorist threat, but if the measures it contains are to be effective and effective without further alienating that small minority who are already so far alienated from our society that they may contemplate taking part in terrorist activity, the tests of effectiveness, proportionality and consequence must be considered carefully. I am confident that that is what your Lordships’ House will do over the next few weeks.
5.51 pm
Baroness Ludford (LD): My Lords, this debate takes place in the sombre wake of the Paris atrocities but also in the wake of Sunday’s inspiring marches. We must keep our heads—I think that is the broad intention of everybody—and not repeat the ominous claim in August 2005 by the then Prime Minister that “The rules of the game have changed”. I was impressed by the statement in the excellent speech of the noble Lord, Lord Evans of Weardale, about how our security response is more resilient if it draws on a strong framework of civil liberties and human rights.
Throughout the past two decades, as a Liberal I have been guided in my work, which was mainly in the European Parliament and to a much lesser extent in this House, by a strong preference for judicial over executive powers and for targeted investigation and data collection rather than blanket surveillance. I bring those attitudes and preferences to this Bill together with a concern that the relative speed with which we are proceeding should not be at the expense of our critical faculties.
Like other noble Lords, I have to be selective in my remarks today. The first issue I shall address is that of executive or administrative powers for restrictions on liberty of travel, movement and residence in the operation of document seizures, TEOs and TPIMs under Parts 1 and 2. A lot of good reform has taken place recently in narrowing the scope of stop and search, especially stop and search without suspicion, and I have great regard for the Home Secretary in her leadership on this issue, worried that it would create resentment and alienation among those who felt they were open to discrimination, racial or religious profiling or stereotyping. Obviously, we do not want to recreate that problem, so the first question to ask about Part 1 of the Bill is whether there are alternatives and if genuinely not, are there sufficient safeguards?
On the alternatives, in regard to Clause 1 on removal of passports, I read the briefing from Liberty and then yesterday the report from the Joint Committee on Human Rights. I find persuasive the JCHR acceptance that arrest under Section 41 of the Terrorism Act and police bail with conditions, such as passport surrender, is not a complete answer to the capability gap. However, I ask the Minister why the powers in Schedule 7 to the Terrorism Act to seize travel documents and hold them for seven days cannot be used in this scenario of outward travel. He may not be able to answer today.
In regard to terrorism exclusion orders, I strongly welcome the change of heart in the Bill compared to the Prime Minister’s originally declared intention permanently to exclude people or make them stateless. I am glad that, thanks to the working of the coalition Government, wiser counsel prevailed so that Clause 2 envisages temporary not permanent exclusion and managed return. I, too, would look favourably on the possibility of a change of name. I asked myself whether a measure that the JCHR calls “notification of return” could be an alternative. However, I concluded that this is probably unrealistic as someone could cause a threat en route back to the UK; for instance, of hijack or indeed bombing.
On safeguards, we will have to give great attention to whether judicial supervision and procedural and other safeguards are sufficient. There has to be considerable doubt. As regards the seizure of documents, the Bill includes only the possibility for judicial review not the possibility to challenge the merits of a decision or the existence of reasonable grounds for suspicion. We will need to look at that. There is also the question which other noble Lords have raised of how judicial review can be exercised from abroad. Schedule 8 to the Terrorism Act on the detention of suspects has stronger safeguards and even that has been criticised as being too weak. We would do well to examine carefully the list of about six reforms that the report from the Joint Committee on Human Rights has suggested.
On terrorism exclusion orders, as the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation famously asked, “Where are the courts in all this?”. I am glad that the Government are committed to looking very carefully at this and I hope they will reflect David Anderson’s suggestions for prior permission and subsequent review, not only on the making of the TEO but also the conditions. There are quite a few other detailed issues that will need scrutiny at subsequent stages of the Bill. In Schedule 1 there is a paragraph entitled:
“Restriction on repeated use of powers”.
However, there does not seem to be any limitation on the frequency or number of occasions as opposed to the duration of each period of detention. How do you stop repeated seizures on a rolling renewal basis in the way that happened in declaring the whole of London a terrorism exclusion zone? It was just permanently renewed, so we never got out of that.