Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism
(8 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Minister for Security (Mr John Hayes)
I beg to move,
That the draft Terrorism Act 2000 (Proscribed Organisations) (Amendment) Order 2016, which was laid before this House on 22 February, be approved.
I am extremely grateful to you, Mr Speaker. Alluring though the prospect might be, and as you know, it is not my habit to disappoint the House or to abbreviate my remarks when further articulation of an argument is necessary—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. I appreciate that Members are leaving the Chamber, but it would be appreciated if they could do so quickly and quietly. I am sure that the substantial numbers of Members who are staying will want to savour the speech by the Minister. At any rate, he deserves an attentive audience. Indeed, I am sure that he expects nothing less.
Mr Hayes
With your encouragement, Mr Speaker, I repeat that it is not my habit to disappoint the House or to be constrained by facts, believing as I do that it is a journey beyond the given in which men and women shine and soar. Nevertheless, I will be brief and factual tonight.
The International Sikh Youth Federation, a separatist movement committed to the creation of Khalistan, an independent Sikh state in the Punjab region of south Asia, was established in the 1980s. In the past, the ISYF’s attacks included assassinations, bombings and kidnappings, mainly directed against Indian officials and interests. The ISYF has been proscribed as a terrorist organisation in the UK since March 2001. The decision to proscribe the ISYF was taken after extensive consideration and in the light of a full assessment of available information and at that time, as is necessary, was approved by Parliament. It is clear that the ISYF was certainly concerned with terrorism at that time.
Having reviewed, with other countries, what information is available about the current activities of the ISYF and after careful and appropriate consideration, the Home Secretary concluded that there is not sufficient evidence to support a reasonable belief that the ISYF is currently concerned with terrorism, as defined by section 3(5) of the Terrorism Act 2000. Under section 3 of the Act, the Home Secretary has the power to remove an organisation from the list of proscribed organisations if she believes that it no longer meets the statutory test for proscription. Accordingly, the Home Secretary has brought forward this draft order, which, if approved, will mean that being a member of or providing support to this organisation will cease to be a criminal offence on the day on which the order comes into force. The decision to de-proscribe the ISYF was taken after extensive consideration and in the light of a full assessment of all the available information. The House will naturally understand that it would not be appropriate for me to discuss the specific intelligence that informed the decision-making process.
The House would also expect me to make it clear that the Government do not condone any terrorist activity or terrorism apologists. De-proscription of a proscribed group should not be interpreted as condoning the previous activities of the group. As I said, the decision to proscribe was taken on the basis of the information available then, and we take this decision on the basis of up-to-date information. Groups that do not meet the threshold for proscription are not free to spread hatred, fund terrorist activity or incite violence as they please.
Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way, but some of the things that he has said tonight will be disputed by some in the Sikh community. I do not want to get into a debate about the organisation’s history, but the strong feeling in the Sikh community is that some decisions were based on diplomatic pressure from the Indian Government, rather than on the direct evidence of terrorism that he describes. I am not proving the case one way or the other, but can the Minister say without any contradiction that diplomatic pressure did not lead to the ban being maintained for so long?
Mr Hayes
I can say without equivocation, hesitation or obfuscation that a ban can apply only if there is compelling evidence to support it. Indeed, were there to be continuing compelling evidence, the ban would remain in place. When matters were reconsidered, it was clear that we could not make such a ban stand up against the criteria, which are appropriately tough, so we brought forward the draft order that we are briefly debating tonight. Pressure was certainly not put on me. Indeed, I received no overtures of the kind that the right hon. Gentleman described. Had I done so, I can absolutely assure him that my decision-making would not have been affected in any way.
Andy Burnham
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way again and I appreciate that he wants to get through his speech, but these are matters of great concern to many in the British Sikh community, so they will want to hear further answers from the Minister. He says that the Government changed their mind when the evidence was reconsidered, but that was only after they were taken all the way to the High Court and had resisted representatives of the Sikh community at every single stage. The Minister needs to remove any suggestion that the ban has been maintained for so long because of pressure from the Indian Government.
Mr Hayes
I did say, “without equivocation, hesitation or obfuscation.” I do not know how I could put it more clearly that no such representations influenced any decision I made on these matters. Let me see whether I can create a synthesis between our positions, as I do appreciate that there are strong feelings about this matter.
When proscription is put in place, it is done with the utmost seriousness, as these are serious matters. Banning the membership of any organisation in a free society is a very serious business indeed. Consequently, lifting such a proscription is also a serious matter, and it warrants the kind of consideration that has been given. The fact that these matters have to be brought to this Chamber at both stages is indicative of that seriousness. As the right hon. Gentleman knows, the threshold for proscription is common to both stages and applied under Governments of different colours—this was in place under Labour. It has not changed, so it is not as though the goalposts have been shifted and the criteria have altered. I can also assure him that absolute consistency applies; it might be argued that there had been a change of not only approach, but of the way we measure such things, and I can assure him that that has not happened either.
Keith Vaz
I, of course, accept the Minister’s assurances that the Indian Government did not put pressure on Ministers—it would be wrong for them to have done so—as he has come to the House and said so. Will he just clarify something for me? The independent reviewer of terrorism legislation suggested that there should be an automatic trigger; once proscription is put in place, there should be a time specified that would enable the matter to be reviewed, so that organisations that are proscribed and do change would not have to wait an inordinate time—an indefinite length of time—before their proscription is reconsidered. Do the Government now support that position?
Mr Hayes
The right hon. Gentleman is right to say that the independent reviewer did make such an argument, and I was familiar with it. There has also been a continuing argument in favour of an annual check on these matters—I understand that argument and we are never a closed-minded Government, as I know he will appreciate. That is not the situation that pertains at the moment or in respect of this organisation, and one could not make the case that the shadow Home Secretary made if it were. There was no fixed time limit nor a predetermined idea that this ban would last for only a particular time and would then be lifted. This decision was therefore purely based on a re-examination of the facts, rather than on any consideration of how long the organisation had been banned or whether there should be an end point.
Keith Vaz
The shadow Home Secretary raised this point because there are members of the community who have suggested that there has been pressure put on, and that indicates the problem with an indefinite period. If it were not indefinite but was reviewable, as the independent reviewer has suggested, there would not be these suspicions that others had put pressure on Ministers. The Minister has made it clear that no pressure has been put on him, but that does not stop these rumours persisting, because we are talking about an indefinite period.
Mr Hayes
The right hon. Gentleman has a charming idealism, which I rather admire. It is idealistic to suppose that because something continues for some time there is likely to be the kind of pressure that he has described, whereas if something happened more suddenly, that pressure would not be applied. Rather, I think a fixed timetable might act as pressure valve, adding a greater degree of argument, debate and perhaps even lobbying of the kind that is being suggested. I am not sure that the length of time and the character of the overtures that might be made to Ministers can really be reconciled in the way he is describing, but, as he knows, I admire his idealism.
I say to the right hon. Gentleman and the shadow Home Secretary that the Government continue to exercise the proscription power in a proportionate manner. There has been a great deal of debate about proportionality this afternoon. In that spirit, it is important that we recognise that proscription has implications for the circumstances and entitlements of individuals and groups of individuals. It is very important that we act strictly in accordance with the law, according to those strict thresholds and proportionately.
In conclusion, we believe that it is appropriate in these circumstances to remove the ISYF from the list of proscribed organisations. I hear what the shadow Home Secretary says. These are never easy decisions, and such decisions never attract unanimity in any community, but this Government are not a Government who do what is easy—they are a Government who do what is right. We think it is right that we remove the ISYF from the list of proscribed organisations in schedule 2 to the Terrorism Act 2000. Subject to the agreement of this House and the other place, the order will come into force on 18 March.
Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)
We support the order. As I am sure everyone will agree, proscription is a weighty matter. National security is the foremost responsibility of any Government and, indeed, of any Opposition, and we must continue to ensure that we take national security matters very seriously indeed.
The Opposition recognise that proscription is a vital part of our national security powers, which enable us to tackle and disrupt terrorist groups, but we also have to accept that proscription is a draconian power, and with that power comes great responsibility.
Proscribing a group makes it illegal to belong to or support it any way. It is, in and of itself, a curtailment of freedom of association. It is also possible that those who have associated with a proscribed organisation will have their ability to travel or an application for citizenship disrupted. Given those civil liberties implications, any proscription order should be considered very carefully, and we also need to keep the status of proscribed groups under review.
The issue of de-proscription, however, has been fraught. It was first raised in the context of the People’s Mujahedin of Iran and a judicial review launched against its continued proscription. In 2008, the Court of Appeal found in its favour and ruled that
“an organisation that has no capacity to carry on terrorist activities and is taking no steps to acquire such capacity or otherwise to promote or encourage terrorist activities cannot be said to be ‘concerned in terrorism’”.
Although the People’s Mujahedin of Iran was subsequently de-proscribed, that has not been followed by the implementation of a proper procedure for considering other groups.
That issue was raised by the independent reviewer of terrorism, David Anderson QC, in his 2011 report and it has been highlighted repeatedly since. Indeed, it was subsequently part of the focus of an excellent Home Affairs Committee report in 2012. It has been raised by many hon. Members, particularly my predecessor in this post, my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson), and my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, who have both addressed it in several proscription debates over the past five years.
Unfortunately, the Government have not engaged with the issue. In 2012, the then Security Minister promised the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee a response “shortly”. In 2013—a year later—the response had still not appeared. In another proscription debate, my right hon. Friend the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee made some prescient remarks about the lack of a proper de-proscription procedure. He said:
“That means, I am afraid, that the matter ends up not in this House, which is responsible for proscription, but in the courts…A Minister came before the House and said, ‘We are de-proscribing the People’s Mujahedeen, because they’ve gone to court and won their judicial review.’”—[Official Report, 10 July 2013; Vol. 566, c. 464.]
In response to that pressure, the Government did concede that 14 groups no longer met the statutory test for proscription and so proposed annual reviews to assess the status of proscribed groups, but no de-proscription orders followed. In 2014, the Government announced that they were scrapping annual reviews and replacing them with a system whereby groups could be de-proscribed.
At the same time, the Opposition raised concerns about how the system worked, because some groups had ceased to exist and it was not clear how any group could make such an application given that it was illegal to be a member of the said group.
Three members of the Sikh community applied on 4 February 2015 for the organisation to be de-proscribed, because it has not existed in the UK since March 2001 and is not concerned in terrorism. That application should have been dealt with within 90 days, but the response was not received until 31 July 2015, and when it came, it asserted that the Secretary of State maintained a reasonable belief that the International Sikh Youth Federation is concerned in terrorism. That was July last year.
The Home Secretary said in a later communication that there had been extensive consideration and a full assessment of available information. No reasons were given for the continued proscription. The applicants filed an appeal and gave as grounds the failure of the Government to give any reason for the refusal to de-proscribe, which was contrary to the rule of law, and asserted that the ISYF is not concerned in terrorism.
The Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission directed the Home Secretary to provide reasons to support her position, but on the very day that the reasons and the evidence were due, the Home Secretary informed the commission that she would not defend the decision and would lay an order for de-proscription. The Home Secretary did not suggest that there was any change in the facts between 31 July and the day of the decision, which was just six months later.
The decision is particularly important given the special nature of proscription orders and the basis on which the Home Secretary makes her decision. Again, I want to go back to a contribution made to a previous proscription debate by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East, the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee. He said:
“I can say that it is clear that when Ministers with the security portfolio come before the House to make a statement—some of it based on intelligence that cannot be shared with the House—the House always defers to them and accepts what they say.”—[Official Report, 10 July 2013; Vol. 566, c. 462.]
My right hon. Friend was highlighting the wrong tradition of accepting security statements from Ministers in good faith.
If we are to take Ministers’ statements on proscription in good faith, the House also needs to trust Ministers to act in the same good faith when it comes to de-proscription. I say gently to the Minister—and I hope that he sums up and comes back to me with some kind of answer—that I genuinely do not understand how this could have happened. I really think that he needs to give this House some kind of explanation as to how, in July 2015, the organisation was still being proscribed, but in December of that same year it was not.
This de-proscription of the International Sikh Youth Federation raises questions about the continued proscription of other groups, particularly the 14 groups that the Home Office has conceded may no longer meet the statutory tests. It risks undermining the confidence in this vital part of our security system. Can the Minister now confirm that the ISYF was one of the 14 groups identified as not meeting the “concerned in terrorism” test? Will funds frozen for the last 15 years belonging to the International Sikh Youth Federation now be unfrozen, and will the Home Secretary ensure that the International Sikh Youth Federation name is removed as soon as possible from lists issued by the United Nations and the EU on financial restrictions imposed following 9/11?
While I support today’s order, I strongly urge the Minister to reflect on this case and the damage done, and to introduce a proper system for considering de-proscription that can restore confidence in the whole proscription process. In particular, I urge the Minister to reconsider the merits of the annual reviews of proscribed organisations, and reinstate them.
I want to highlight the argument made by the independent reviewer, David Anderson, QC, that annual reviews of proscription orders should mirror the requirements of the Terrorist Asset-Freezing etc. Act 2010—to review annually the necessity of continued asset freezes, which leads to the delisting of individuals on the initiative of the Treasury. Indeed, there is a strong argument that that is already a requirement of the Terrorism Act 2000. In a judgment from 2007, the Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission, headed by High Court Judge Sir Harry Ognall, ruled:
“It cannot have been Parliament’s intent that an organisation which the Secretary of State historically had reasonable grounds for believing was ‘concerned in terrorism’ but for which there are no reasonable grounds for believing that it is currently ‘concerned in terrorism’ should remain on Schedule 2 for any longer than absolutely necessary. As such, it is incumbent on the Secretary of State to consider at regular intervals whether or not the power under section 3(3)(b) should be exercised. We were told in the course of argument that the Secretary of State does in fact adopt this practice and that the period between such reviews was around twelve months. We have seen no documentary evidence of such reviews in this case, but it is certainly a practice that the Secretary of State should continue to adopt. It serves to underline our view that such practice is a proper reflection of the Secretary of State’s statutory duty.”
If the Minister does not agree with me that the Home Secretary’s duty requires annual reviews, I should be really grateful if he explained in his summing-up how else he intends to meet this duty.
I have met representatives of the UK Sikh Federation and they have told me about the real difficulties that have affected former members of the ISYF, such as difficulties around naturalisation and international travel. Now that the ISYF has finally been de-proscribed I hope that the Sikhs in our communities can look forward to a new relationship with Government. Sikhs celebrated new year yesterday. It is certainly time for a new beginning. I wish them all a happy new year.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown), who gave an excellent speech, not least because she quoted so extensively from previous speeches that I gave to the House on proscription. She reminded the House that the issues we have raised on previous occasions are still current in the proscription debate. The Minister may have changed, but the issues remain.
The Government should be commended for raising this proscription. They will find that they have the support of the whole House. These are difficult issues for Ministers, requiring careful judgments to be made, with a great deal of thought. It is right that Ministers should think carefully before they come to the House. It is also right that the House should debate these issues at length, because when the orders are placed on organisations, they have serious implications for them. At the time when the order was imposed, the House would have been unanimous, if it had come before the House, in expressing its concern about the events that led to the proscription.
But as my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham said from the Front Bench, when a proscription order is in place, surely there should be a decent, honourable and understandable way by which organisations may apply for de-proscription. As she correctly said, in previous debates, in all of which the orders have been accepted by the House without dissent, Ministers said that they would come back to the House and to the Home Affairs Committee and indicate how they would look again at those organisations that had been proscribed.
That has not happened, and the Minister said today that he still has an open mind. I believe him when he says that. If his mind is open, I hope he will go back to the Home Secretary and other colleagues and say that the House believes that the time has come for us to remove the indefinite period that applies to proscribed organisations. The implications not just for the organisations but for the wider diaspora community are quite severe. That is the point that we want to make today.
We welcome what the Government are doing after a very long time. It is a concession because of the success of the application, rather than the Minister or the Home Secretary deciding that it is time that the International Sikh Youth Federation had its proscription lifted. That was done because the organisation itself made the application and followed the process through. It appealed and the Home Secretary did not contest it.
There are implications wider than the particular organisation. There are colleagues here from Ealing, Wolverhampton, West Ham and other places, including Scotland and Northern Ireland, where the Sikh community is represented. At every meeting that I have attended to do with the Sikh community, members of the community ask about the issue and feel that they have been discriminated against. There are 450,000 Sikhs living in the United Kingdom, and about 150 gurdwaras in the UK. In Leicester East alone we have 12,000 members of the Sikh community, who play a full part in the way our city operates and in civic life as doctors, nurses and teachers. We even have our own Sikh school which was granted by the Education Minister. Last night I spotted members of the Sikh community at the King Power stadium when Leicester beat Newcastle 1-0. They play a full part in the life of our city. Sikhs will welcome what the Government have done. Even though it is one organisation, because it has the word “Sikh” in its name, it affects other parts of the diaspora.
Finally, why do we not accept after all these years the wise words of David Anderson, the Government’s own reviewer of counter-terrorism, who suggested that there ought to be a time limit on proscription? If there were a time limit, officials in the Minister’s Department would be able to look at these cases more carefully. Of course, we accept the Minister’s assurances that no outside force was able to influence him. He is a man of huge integrity and independence and nobody would be able to influence him from outside, but the rumours persist, and the best way to dispel them is to make sure that there is a robust, understandable and coherent method of dealing with de-proscription.
Some of the 7,000 members of the Tamil community in my constituency, for example, are concerned about the fact that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam is still proscribed. Even though that organisation was abolished and destroyed years ago, they still feel under a certain amount of pressure. It is time to review. I hope that when the Minister comes to reply, he will remind us how many organisations are currently proscribed and perhaps give us a timetable for when his open mind will deliver a result that the whole House can debate.
Rob Marris (Wolverhampton South West) (Lab)
There are dozens of Sikhs in the Public Gallery tonight. In honour of that, I will, if I may, say the Sikh incantation:
“Waheguru ji ka Khalsa, Waheguru ji ki Fateh”.
Roughly translated, and I hope hon. Members will forgive my translation, that means: “Glory to the Khalsa”—the Sikh brotherhood and sisterhood—“Glory to God. The Khalsa belongs to God. God always prevails.”
I am the chair of the all-party group for British Sikhs, but I must stress that I speak in a purely personal capacity to the House tonight. The issues we are discussing are very serious; they are taken very seriously by UK citizens, including hundreds of thousands of Sikhs. They are serious issues for our security, but proscription is also a serious issue for our liberty—for freedom of association and freedom of speech—which is curtailed by proscription, and, on occasions, that must be the right thing to do.
The ban on the International Sikh Youth Federation in the UK in March 2001 led to the organisation being banned in India in December that year and in Canada in July 2003. If the Minister is not going to wind up, I hope he can reply in writing later to some of the questions I will be firing at him—it is a slightly strange procedure we have tonight, with all due respect, Madam Deputy Speaker.
The first question I would like to ask is: will the Government—assuming this statutory instrument goes through, as I am sure it will—formally notify the Governments of Canada and India of the UK’s decision to de-proscribe and of the reasons for it? To repeat a question that was asked earlier—it is an important question, and the Minister did answer it, but I am coming at it from a slightly different angle—have the Government had any communications with the Indian authorities on lifting the ban on the ISYF since the application to de-proscribe was made in February 2015? If there have been communications, when did they take place?
This issue touches on our freedoms, so I would like to ask the Minister how many organisations such as the ISYF, which are proscribed, do not currently meet the statutory definition of being concerned in terrorism, which is the core part of the test. In 2013, the Home Office identified 14 proscribed organisations that in its assessment did not meet the statutory test of being concerned in terrorism. I do not know whether the ISYF was one of those 14, but if it was, I hope the Minister can explain why the ban—the proscription—was not lifted, at the latest, when the application for de-proscription was made in February 2015. If the ISYF was one of the 14 organisations the Government were saying did not meet the test any more, the Government should have given in immediately in February 2015, when three applicants made the application to de-proscribe.
What about the other 13 organisations? If the Home Office decided nearly three years ago that 14 proscribed organisations should no longer be proscribed, that further underlines the case, made so ably by my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham, for annual reviews of these proscriptions, because they are very serious—they are serious for our security, but they are also a serious infringement of our liberties.
It is for that reason that I am concerned that the statutory time limit for the Home Secretary to respond formally and legally to the application to de-proscribe is 90 days. It is regrettable that she appears to have taken almost twice as long to respond. That is not a technical point, because these statutory provisions exist to protect our hard-won liberties, yet the statutory provisions on the time limits, which I am sure would have been enforced had the applicants not met their 42-day time limit, appear to have been ignored with impunity by the Home Secretary. That is not just a technical matter because it relates to our freedoms.
To reinforce the point made very ably by my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham, I ask the Minister to explain what troubles many hon. Members and many of the large Sikh community: that is, why the Home Secretary thinks on 31 July 2015 that the ISYF did meet the criteria—as the Minister said, they are tough criteria, and that is good, because this is about our security—and should continue to be proscribed, but four and a half months later throws her hand in. In the first instance, she succeeds. She says, “This organisation should continue to be proscribed”, and she wins. The three applicants then put in an appeal. Leaving aside the fact that the Home Office took longer than it should have done to respond to that appeal, in mid-December—I think it was 14 December—the Home Secretary said, “I’m not going to fight this appeal any more—I’m offering no evidence.” Hence the measure before us tonight, because in the four-and-a-half month period between 31 July 2015 and 14 December 2015 the Home Secretary changed her mind.
In terms of our liberties and of respect for the large Sikh community, I think there should be an explanation for this. I appreciate that there are security concerns. If the Minister said, “I’m going to lay it all out before the House”, I would be the first in a queue with 649 other MPs saying, “No, don’t do that—this is about our security.” However, there is room for him to give a little more explanation to the three applicants, on the grounds of civility, if nothing else. As far as I know, they are all here tonight in the Public Gallery—Amrik Singh Gill, Narinderjit Singh Thandi, and Dabinderjit Singh Sidhu. They deserve the civility of that explanation, because this proscription has directly and indirectly affected them.
What concerns me is that the Home Office’s lifting of the proscription was awfully grudging. Somehow the balance tipped during the four-and-a-half year period in the second half of last year. This month the Home Office put out a press statement saying: “The British Government has always been clear that the ISYF was a brutal terrorist organisation.” That may be the case, but things seem to have changed very quickly in a short period. The explanatory memorandum on the statutory instrument says at paragraph 7.4:
“An application was made to the Secretary of State for the deproscription of the International Sikh Youth Federation. The Secretary of State has now decided that there is insufficient information to conclude that the group remains concerned in terrorism.”
It may have been involved in terrorism—I do not know. There are serious questions to be asked, and serious questions were asked in March 2001 when the proscription order went through this House. However, it was awfully grudging of the Home Office to say in December, “We’re not going to provide any more evidence. We’re just going to throw our hand in and not even fight it through the legal procedures any more.”
The three applicants from the leadership of the Sikh Federation UK legally challenged the Home Secretary, risking a whole load of costs, which, I have to say to the Minister, I understand that they may not get back even though they have won their case. They persuaded the Home Secretary by the force of their argument to withdraw her appeal, because apparently the evidence she had in July was no longer there in December. That is very strange for an organisation which, by then, had not existed for over 14 years—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. I appreciate that the hon. Gentleman is making a passionate speech and putting his points very well, but I urge him to be careful not to be repetitive.
Rob Marris
I thank you for that admonition, Madam Deputy Speaker.
As I was saying, the leadership of the Sikh Federation UK legally challenged the Home Secretary and persuaded her to withdraw the appeal. The federation is widely recognised as a large and prominent Sikh organisation the UK, building democratic political engagement for the UK Sikh community. Many of its members would like a bit more information as to what suddenly changed, because it mystifies us.
When I talked to the federation again today, as I often do, it told me that it had written to, I think, every MP—certainly to many MPs—saying that the key outcome that it wanted was not only the additional information and explanation that I urged the Minister to provide, within the bounds of our national security, but a renewed and open relationship with the community, based on issues of particular importance to Sikhs living in the United Kingdom, so that we can all move forward. I hope that on behalf of the Home Secretary, the Minister will tonight make a commitment to the Sikh community and promise a fresh start for this fresh new year for Sikhs.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Minister for his opening statement. The Democratic Unionist party supports the order. It is important to put on record our thanks to those in the police, the security services and the intelligence services who have done sterling and tireless work to keep us safe. We hope that that will continue.
I want to ask the Minister a couple of questions about proscription. As he knows, because our newspapers and other media are full of such stories, people use websites and social media, such as Twitter, to try to attract vulnerable young men, young women and young girls from all over the UK. In a speech that the then Minister for Security and Immigration, the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire), made on 25 March last year, he outlined clearly the steps that had been taken to address the issue of social media being used to attract young people. Unfortunately, during the past year, we have seen a continuation of that attraction, and 700 people from the UK have travelled to support or fight for jihadist organisations in Syria and Iraq. Most of them have made the journey to join a proscribed organisation such as IS or Daesh. Around half of those who left the UK have since returned, according to the BBC.
The Minister indicated at that time that
“80,000 pieces of unlawful terrorist-related content that encourages or glorifies acts of terrorism”—[Official Report, 25 March 2015; Vol. 594, c. 1540.]
had been removed from social media, and that nine Twitter accounts and one Facebook account had been closed. We regularly see that. I ask this question genuinely and sincerely. I would love Facebook and Twitter accounts and other social media to be closed down so that we do not see stories in the Sunday papers about someone saying: “Be a bride to a Daesh killer and monster.” The fact is that they try to glamorise the situation and make it attractive. Today we had occasion to speak to, and hear the accounts of, some of the Yazidi ethnic religious minorities and hear about the abuse that they went through at the hands of Daesh. There is no attraction in that. How do we stop that?
Although steps have been taken, people are still leaving, so more has to be done, particularly in tackling the lure of social media campaign videos. What are we doing to stop that? What has been done to address the problem directly? What has been done to tackle online groomers who are planted in the UK to encourage young men, and young women and girls in particular, to make the journey to Syria and Iraq? How do we protect vulnerable and impressionable young people from being targeted?
Mr John Hayes
This short but exciting debate has fallen into three parts. First, we have had a wider debate about proscription more generally, and in particular about the process for proscribing and de-proscribing organisations. The current arrangement is, as has been said by the shadow Minister, a process of application. In this case, such an application was made and considered in the way in which I have described, which has led us to this outcome.
I am familiar with the argument that the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, made about the possibility of annual reviews. That does not pertain at the moment, but I am aware that that was precisely the argument used by David Anderson, the independent reviewer. I can see the point that the right hon. Gentleman made. It is not where we are now, but I think a wider discussion about proscription might facilitate just such a conversation. That is a conversation that I am always prepared to have with him and with other hon. Members. He is right, as is the shadow Minister, to say that the seriousness of these matters means that they must be dealt with in a consistent and reasonably speedy way, as I said in my opening remarks.
To that end, I come to the second part of the trilogy, which concerns the issues raised by the hon. Member for Wolverhampton South West (Rob Marris). He dealt more particularly with the circumstances of the organisation. I am glad that he welcomed the de- proscription, as have other Members, and I know that it will be welcomed in the community. By the process I have set out, the de-proscription was completed in the timeframe he described. The application was received on 6 February 2015, as he said, but as he suggested, it was identified rather later, on 14 May, than might have been ideal. Following careful consideration by the Home Secretary, a decision to maintain the group’s proscription was made in July. However, as the shadow Minister said, a subsequent appeal was lodged with the Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission.
In December 2015, having undertaken a further review, with all the information available—including from other countries in which the International Sikh Youth Federation is present, and about the organisation’s current activities—the Home Secretary concluded that there was not sufficient evidence reasonably to suppose that the ISYF was currently concerned in terrorism as defined by the Terrorism Act. I will not delay the House unduly, but if you will allow me to do so, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will place in the Library of the House the Act’s precise definition of terrorism. I have that definition in front of me, but it goes on at some length.
Rob Marris
Will the Minister tell the House not the content of any such new information, but whether any new information bearing on the decision in relation to proscription or de-proscription came to light between 31 July and 14 December 2015?
Mr Hayes
There was certainly further consideration, as I have made very clear, and a further up-to-date review of the organisation’s activities. Such matters are highly dynamic, as the hon. Gentleman will understand. As he says, I cannot go into the fine detail of the strategy. It is not our habit to give a running commentary on such matters, and I know he will respect that, as he said he would. It is certainly true that there was sufficient further consideration for us to conclude that we could not maintain the proscription. The Home Secretary has to consider various things—bits of information, pieces of intelligence and open source material—when determining whether a group is engaged in terrorism, as the hon. Gentleman will know. It would not be appropriate to discuss the specific material, but when I describe that variety of information, he will understand what happens when consideration is given to such matters.
The third part of our debate concerns the points made by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). He spoke more widely about the way in which terrorist organisations, including proscribed ones, continue to proselytise using social media. He drew attention to the information that was made available to the House. Rather than delay the House tonight, I will go the extra mile and set out, in a further note for the House, exactly what we are doing about what he described. Again, this matter is highly dynamic—it changes almost daily—and the House is warranted in asking for up-to-date information on precisely what steps we are taking to counter the activities that the hon. Gentleman set out. They are damaging and worrying, and they are very plainly part of what those who seek to do us harm are about these days: they are using every kind of method and means to proselytise their message and to radicalise people, and to do damage accordingly. I will set that out in a further note, which I will make available to the House.
Mr Hayes
By way of variety and excitement I will deal with those points in reverse order. Those organisations will be notified, and we have obviously consulted member states that have a direct interest in this group. We will inform them of the de-proscription if parliamentary agreement is secured in this House and the other place, and we will formally notify the European Council if a decision to de-proscribe the ISYF is agreed by Parliament. I will look again at the asset freeze—the hon. Lady did not use that term, but that is what it is—and return to her with a specific answer. It is a complex matter, as she implied, so I will come back to her, rather than delay the House tonight.
Rob Marris
I asked the Minister a series of questions, and I hope that he will write to me about them afterwards.
Mr Hayes
Having known me for such a long time, the hon. Gentleman will know that I would not neglect to reply to him, given that he has invited me to. I will certainly write to him with those details. Moving ahead with appropriate speed, I commend this order to the House.
Question put and agreed to,
Resolved,
That the draft Terrorism Act 2000 (Proscribed Organisations) (Amendment) Order 2016, which was laid before this House on 22 February, be approved.