Criminal Finances Bill

Debate between Baroness Williams of Trafford and Lord Empey

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Tuesday 28th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Empey (UUP)]

My Lords, Members may be familiar with this theme, to which I have returned on a number of occasions, including via a Private Member's Bill. It follows the principle that persons who have been engaged in criminal activity, persons who have been engaged in activities contrary to human rights and persons who have been involved in terrorism and who have attacked this country consistently over a long period should not have access to their assets without the opportunity for victims of the activities of those individuals, organisations or, in this case, the state to have those assets forfeited to the extent of the injuries inflicted.

The position is very simple: for many years, the state of Libya supplied terrorists with material, primarily in the form of Semtex. It provided training and logistical support. It provided boatloads—literally—of weapons. It provided the arms, training and logistics for a terrorist organisation. Many persons in the United Kingdom were injured and suffered great loss as a direct result of that activity. If we are contemplating a Bill which has a section in it dealing with terrorism, that seems the perfect opportunity for Her Majesty’s Government to deal with this matter.

I know that the Minister will say, “Oh, but there’s a United Nations resolution, and there are resolutions of the European Union”—I am sure I could read out her reply blindfold. However, the United Kingdom is a permanent member of the Security Council. We are a member of the European Union. At this point in time, after years and years, we have not even asked our European partners or the United Nations for any variation whatever on the asset-freezing resolutions to take account of the humanitarian needs of our own citizens. Other countries—the United States, France, Germany and Italy—have all had compensation paid to their citizens as a result of terrorist activity. We are the glaring exception, despite the fact that more people have suffered in this country than in any other—there is no argument about that.

I have been writing to government since 2002. My first letter was to Tony Blair; it was replied to by Mike O’Brien, at that time in the Home Office. I have had letters from Prime Minister Cameron. We had letters from the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, when she was at the Foreign Office, the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, and other Ministers in Administrations of all parties. The Minister may be aware that a group of us from all parties is pursuing this issue in both places. Even today, I know that efforts have been made by an all-party group of Back-Benchers in the other place to go to the Backbench Business Committee to see whether they can get support for a debate. I know that the honourable Member for Poplar and Limehouse, Jim Fitzpatrick, whose patch includes the site of the London Docklands bomb, is active in this and introduced a debate in Westminster Hall early last year.

There is a broad swathe of support for the measure in your Lordships’ House because it passed my Private Member's Bill, the Asset Freezing (Compensation) Bill, last year. That has unfortunately been stalled for three solid months in a row using the procedural device of objecting in the other place. It is now scheduled to come up on 12 May but I have no doubt that it will be blocked again. The reason is that last summer we went to see Treasury and Foreign Office officials and we challenged them. I also went to the Northern Ireland Affairs Select Committee to hear evidence from former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. That was very revealing. His reaction was, “These people were compensated”. That is technically true but they were compensated by the British taxpayer, not the people who perpetrated the acts or provided the material to attack them. That was a perverse position. It seems that there has been the most bizarre attitude over the last 15 to 20 years. Where would you get a situation in this day and age where another country would conduct a proxy war against you, injure your citizens, and you ignore it?

We happen to know that there are £9.5 billion of assets attributed to the Libyan regime headquartered in London. We should ask our colleagues in the United Nations and the European Union to see if we can even take a lean against part of those assets to help our own citizens who were injured as a result of this activity. The Bill is another vehicle where this is consistent with the principles behind it. It is consistent with justice and with the fact that the people who supplied that material were in severe breach of all human rights legislation that you could imagine. Some of the most terrible injuries were inflicted by these people. Part 2 of the Bill would extend the measures such as disclosure orders to apply to terrorism investigations. We see it talk about gross human rights violations, and seizure and forfeiture powers. The principles are all there in the Bill. We should use the scope of this legislation to deal with one of the most significant and long-running major injustices that has afflicted our people.

Also, Her Majesty’s Government should make some serious effort—I see no sign that it has been made heretofore—in the United Nations and European Union to get our partners to help us. I am all for asset-freezing and resolutions, and I understand that the Government cannot just act unilaterally. However, they have not even bothered to lift a finger for nearly 20 years. I find that unacceptable. The Bill provides a vehicle whereby we can seriously address and right a great wrong. I beg to move.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for highlighting this issue. I pay tribute to his many years of work on counterterrorism matters. I am very pleased to be able to respond.

As we heard, Amendment 156 would impose a duty on the Treasury to prevent the release of assets of an individual that have been frozen under various legislative regimes by using “all action necessary”, including considering the use of a designation under the Terrorist Asset-Freezing etc. Act 2010. The Terrorism Act 2000, or TACT, already includes a number of criminal offences under Sections 15 to 18 for terrorist financing, including the use, possession or funding of assets in support of terrorist activity. Specifically, Section 23 of TACT provides for the forfeiture of money and/or property following a conviction for these and other terrorism offences. This means that assets can be frozen by way of a restraint order during the investigation and prosecution of such offences, and subsequently forfeited upon a successful conviction, ensuring that they are not available to terrorist organisations.

The element of the noble Lord’s amendment relating to compensation is also covered by paragraph 4A of Schedule 4 to TACT, which allows for the proceeds of the forfeiture of property to be paid as compensation to the victims of terrorism.