Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill

Apsana Begum Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 21st July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Apsana Begum (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this important debate.

It is our duty to reflect, calmly and seriously, on what we need to do to give people real security. This includes having the courage and strength to stand up as a matter of conscience and speak out when we see things around us that are wrong. That is why I must rise to say that the approach laid out in this Bill is fundamentally wrong. Terrorism suspects who have not been convicted of any offence now face expanded and potentially never-ending measures to control their lives. In the words of Rachel Logan, Amnesty International’s UK legal expert,

“It was never right to drastically curtail people’s liberty on the basis of secret, untested evidence using control orders or TPIMs—and we seem to be diving headlong into that territory where the standard of proof is extremely flimsy and people’s liberties can be curtailed on an indefinite basis.”

Indeed, there are real problems with the protection of human rights in the UK. In many areas, particularly in the spheres of immigration control, national security, counter-terrorism, freedom of association and speech, and the treatment of persons with disabilities and other vulnerable groups, UK law has been the frequent subject of criticism from experts in the UN Human Rights Committee and from the Council of Europe.

For some time, many have raised concerns that our approach to counter-terrorism is perceived by some to have been modelled on Islamophobic stereotypes, policies and political structures. That is why it is utterly extraordinary that the Bill removes the existing statutory deadline for the completion of the independent review of the Prevent programme. As people will know, Prevent is widely criticised for fostering discrimination against people of Muslim faith or background. It was developed without a firm evidence base and is rooted in a vague and expansive definition of extremism. It includes overt targeting of Muslim children in schools and has meant that our Muslim young people, in particular, are increasingly being viewed through the lens of security. Many, including some in this Chamber, have expressed how they have been moved and inspired by the Black Lives Matter protesters all around the world. It is an absolute insult that rather than listening and learning as people were calling out the state regarding racism, Islamophobia and discrimination, this Bill will further entrench discrimination against Muslims.

As someone who has first-hand experience of the rise in Islamophobia over the past decade, I know that every single day people of Muslim backgrounds like me face discrimination and prejudice. It is not just about enduring offensive remarks and presumptions, bad as those are, but about living with a real and serious constant threat to our faith group. At the same time, far too often, the foreign policy of successive Governments has fuelled, not reduced, the threat to us all. Yet recently we learned that the UK is to resume sales of arms to Saudi Arabia despite concerns that they could be used against civilians in Yemen in violation of international humanitarian law. That is why my constituents in Poplar and Limehouse know better than most that we must never again embark on illegal wars, imperialism and destruction but instead adopt a progressive, outward-looking global view driven by social justice, solidarity and human rights. The so-called war on terror has manifestly failed, despite the human cost being so devastating.

As has been pointed out by many, the covid-19 global pandemic has profoundly demonstrated that compassion becomes the tie that connects us to one another. Now, more than ever, we must come together and resist those that seek to divide us through violence, intolerance and hate. We cannot let this threat of terrorism take away our hard-fought-for rights and freedoms. We should not let our fundamental values be undermined.  Our values are about caring for the whole of society and all our people, not walking by on the other side of the street when they need our help and support, and loving our communities enough to make this a place where nobody is homeless, hungry, held back or left behind. On the international stage, we must stand up for the values we share—justice, human rights and democracy—and work with others to keep people safe by ending conflict and tackling the climate emergency.

I am humbled and inspired by how people continue to organise to protect our communities, and I want to take this opportunity to recognise the enormous contribution that Muslims across Britain make to our country, our communities and our way of life, from which the values of respect and understanding derive. Those values resonate with everyone as we strive to build a better society for us all. In the end, it is only that hope that can lead us out of despair.

[Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) (Lab)]

I rise to speak about issues relating to amendments 37, 38, 40 and 46. I was seven years old on 11 September 2011, and that awful day passed a long shadow over my childhood. As a young Muslim, I saw the effects of the war on terror at home and abroad. At home, it meant rising Islamophobia, the steady erosion of civil rights, and the installation of cameras on streets near my childhood home. We were told that they were for traffic control, but we soon learned that that was not true. It was an area with a significant Muslim community, and we were being watched. As I got older, I became far too familiar with that. My community were seen not as citizens worthy of equality and respect, but as a threat viewed with hostility and suspicion.

At school and university, I encountered the effects of Prevent. It was said that it was targeting radicalisation, but when it resulted in Muslim university students being reported for reading terrorism-related textbooks as part of their degree, we knew that its effect was to target Muslims and erode the civil liberties of all. If we are worried about free speech on campuses, we need to look at the Prevent strategy.

In the past few years, terrorist atrocities have continued to rock communities across the world, from horrific antisemitic and white supremacist attacks, like that which hit the Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018 and the Christchurch mosque massacre in New Zealand last year, to the far-right extremist who assassinated a Member of this House in 2016 and the devastating attack that cruelly took 23 lives in Manchester in 2017. Everything must be done to combat such awful acts and keep our community safe. We must respect individual liberty and tackle the hate and fear that drives such horrific acts.

I have real concerns that the Bill falls short of those standards. First, it introduces control orders in all but name, which threaten all our civil liberties. Secondly, it removes the statutory deadline to review Prevent. Thirdly, it abandons any attempt to rehabilitate and reform, and instead keeps individuals trapped in a permanent web of surveillance and prisons.

On the first point, concerns and objections to changes to terrorism prevention and investigation measures have been raised by independent reviewers, including the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, and civil rights groups such as Liberty and Amnesty International. Liberty says that the change

“reintroduces Control Orders in all but name”.

Control orders have allowed people to be placed under indefinite house arrest, without ever having been convicted of a crime or even having known the evidence against them. The coalition Government rightly abolished them, but this Bill effectively brings them back. Liberty says that the changes pose

“a threat to fundamental pillars of our justice system.”

That should be a concern to us all, so I encourage Government Members to support amendments 37, 40, 46 and 47.

On the second point, the Bill removes the statutory deadline for an independent review of the Prevent programme. To say that the programme needs an independent review is a serious understatement. Again, human rights organisations have consistently raised concerns about it. In 2018, Amnesty International said that it was developed

“without a firm evidence base and rooted in a vague and expansive definition of ‘extremism’”.

Countless examples can be found of the programme’s discriminatory impact on Muslims. In addition to the ones I have already mentioned, I want to include that of an eight-year-old boy who was questioned by Prevent officials after his teacher mistook the writing on his T-shirt, as well as the labelling of countless Muslim individuals, charities and mosques as extreme by the Government. The flaws of the programme have reached such heights that the likes of Greenpeace, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and Extinction Rebellion were put on Prevent documents alongside proscribed neo-Nazi terror groups. The case for a statutory review of Prevent is clear, so I again urge Conservative Members to support amendments such as amendments 38 and 51.

On the final point, this Bill omits any effort to improve rehabilitation, which is an absolutely key measure to keeping our communities safe and preventing future attacks. Endlessly locking people up and interning them in underfunded, overcrowded, privately-run prisons is no way to protect the public. Instead, it is simply a recipe for creating more problems down the line.

I cannot support the approach of this Bill. We need to tackle terrorism, and we need to do that through prevention, but also by tackling the fear and hate upon which it thrives by bringing communities together and by never letting us be divided on the grounds of race and religion.

Domestic Abuse Bill

Apsana Begum Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading & Report stage: House of Commons
Monday 6th July 2020 Commons Chamber

New clause 15 and new clause 20 will protect children and partners in Rother Valley and across the country. The wide-ranging and detailed nature of this Bill is a clear reminder that the Government will pursue domestic abuse wherever it exists. I am pleased that so many from across this House have been working together to make sure that anything that can be ironed out in the Bill will be, to make sure that children are put at the heart of it. For that reason, I am proud to support these Government amendments to this transformative Bill.

[Apsana Begum (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

I rise to speak to amendment 35 in the absence of my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy), who could not be here to contribute to this debate in person as her childcare needs mean that she has a proxy vote. I would like to express my appreciation to her for her work in tabling amendment 35.

Amendment 35 goes to the heart of so many cases of domestic abuse in that it makes the link between domestic abuse and misogyny. Violence against women and girls does not occur in a vacuum. Hostility towards women and girls generates a culture in which violence and abuse is tolerated and excused. Changing that means challenging not only individual acts of abuse but the very source that enables them. The gathering of evidence about the extent, nature and prevalence of hostility towards women and girls, and how that interplays with the experience of domestic abuse, is crucial to recognising these connections.

The amendment proposes to mandate police forces around the country to record misogyny as a hate crime where they are not ordinarily doing so. The mandatory collecting of data by police forces would help to assess how misogyny influences the experience of domestic abuse. Once we start to record the experiences of women victims by acknowledging, naming and recording the problem of male violence, male entitlement and gender bias together with women’s reported experiences, we not only start to track perpetrators but can seek to add to our understanding of the nature of violence against women in order to work on how to end it. As my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield) said, for many abusers the idea of a strong, independent, successful woman is just that—an idea—but

“they do not like the reality”.—[Official Report, 2 October 2019; Vol. 664, c. 1273.]

Misogyny in the context of domestic abuse can present itself in an abuser characterising women other than his partner with sexist stereotypes and admonishing his partner to be different. An abuser may want his partner to dress and groom attractively or even modestly but then label her for doing so. Despite evidence from a number of police forces around the country about the benefits of adopting such an approach, the Government have not yet commented on whether all police forces should do so. I would welcome the Minister’s views on that.

The Law Commission is about to launch a consultation on how to include misogyny in hate crime legislation. It is right to wait for the outcome of that work, but that should not prevent the Government from gathering data that would influence the prosecution of such a crime or recognise its place in understanding violence against women. I would welcome the Minister’s views on the Government’s understanding of the role of misogyny in causing violence against women and their assessment of the impact the policy has had to date in police forces where it has been enacted, such as in Nottingham. The amendment will no doubt allow women to name their experiences and let them know they will be believed when doing so.

Fire Safety Bill

Apsana Begum Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 29th April 2020 Commons Chamber

[Apsana Begum (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab) [V]]

Many of us simply cannot understand why tens of thousands of residents still live in blocks with Grenfell-style cladding. When we look beneath the rhetoric, the endless legal complexities and the passing of the proverbial buck, that is the truth of the situation and the reality of what so many people endure day to day. That is what is important here and what is at stake. Years have passed since the Grenfell catastrophe, and yet still no one has been called to account. When will we ever get answers? When will the victims ever get justice?

To be completely clear and frank, it is utterly unacceptable that residential blocks in my constituency of Poplar and Limehouse and elsewhere, covered in Grenfell-style ACM cladding, have still not had it removed. The remediation of unsafe buildings is a national issue, and supporting affected residents and leaseholders must be paramount, but it is not clear that the Fire Safety Bill will address the fact that a majority of the blocks remain covered almost three years after Grenfell, and that other types of cladding identified as dangerous and ordered to be removed have not yet been removed.

I am alarmed that residents and leaseholders are suffering from anxiety and stress, and that leaseholders in blocks with ACM and other types of cladding experience problems in selling or remortgaging their home. Most fundamentally, people are forced to continue to live in an unsafe building. It is not obvious what will be done for the hundreds of blocks that have either missed, or look set to miss, deadlines for cladding removal, or what assistance the Bill will give to residents who are trapped in buildings with Grenfell-style cladding but where work has stopped because of covid-19.

On top of that, there is much uncertainty regarding the sufficiency of the Government’s funding and assistance. The Government must acknowledge the difficulties that leaseholders face in particular, and the Government need to ensure with action, not simply words, that remediation work should not in any circumstances whatever fall on individual leaseholders in affected private blocks. Likewise, it would be helpful if the Government provided assurances today that support will be extended to all leaseholders, regardless of the type of unsafe cladding on their building, and that the coverage of the cladding replacement fund will extend to all types of blocks that the local fire service has identified as being unsafe.

As mentioned, the coronavirus has caused many contractors to cease work on cladding sites, while others have not even begun yet due to complex legal disputes. Such delays mean that residents in buildings continue to face extortionate fees for interim safety measures. The Government must ensure that leaseholders in blocks are not forced to shoulder the costs of such interim safety measures, especially those in blocks whose owners have been named and shamed by the Government for refusing to make their blocks safe.

The Bill is only a modest improvement to the fire safety regime. As I and many colleagues have said, it does not fundamentally solve the problems we face. That will require substantial investment in fire and rescue services, to ensure adequate staffing levels and appropriate levels of training. Yet existing policies continue to cut frontline services. In the meantime, firefighters take on new areas of work to keep their communities safe. On the frontline, they are helping us through this crisis, while still responding to fires and other emergencies.

It is time for the Government to step up, to take responsibility and ownership of the issue, and to ensure that the Grenfell Tower fire never ever happens again. The truth is that the decisions of central Government, stretching back for years, have led to the gutting of the UK’s fire safety regime and the failure to regulate high-rise residential buildings properly for fire safety.

Policies relating to housing, local government, the fire and rescue services, research and other areas have been driven by the agenda of cuts, deregulation and privatisation, fostered by the direct lobbying of private business interests. What is certainly without any doubt is that it is not the fault of individual residents that they are now subjected to the awful situation of living in an unsafe building. They most certainly should not have to pay the price accordingly.

Windrush Compensation Scheme (Expenditure) Bill

Apsana Begum Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons & Money resolution & Programme motion
Monday 10th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

My mother, like that of a number of Members, was a member of the Windrush generation, so I know as well as anybody in the House the patriotism of the Windrush cohort, their commitment to this country, and their deep sense of hurt about the Windrush scandal. It is a scandal that continues to cast a shadow over our country’s reputation for fairness and for just public administration. Ministers may believe that the Bill will draw a line under the Windrush scandal, but I have got news for them: the Bill will not do that, and I will explain why.

First, though, let me say that the Opposition will not oppose the Bill. It is a money Bill, and it is necessary that some legislation be passed so that the Windrush victims, or at least some proportion of them, can finally receive some long-overdue compensation, however inadequate. We obviously do not oppose the payment of compensation, but through our experiences with our own constituents we are completely opposed to the way the Government are going about this. It is shoddy and inefficient and it adds insult to injury.

The Windrush compensation Bill will not end the Windrush scandal, as the scandal itself arises because British citizens—people who came here believing that they were British—were treated so appallingly by this Government and their predecessors. It is fair to say that treating migrants shoddily did not start in 2010. On the contrary, there has been discrimination and a denial of rights over the decades, but something new and far worse was set in train by the Immigration Act 2014, which many of those on the Government Benches personally voted for. In fact, there are very few of us still remaining as Members of Parliament who voted against that piece of legislation.

The 2014 Act encouraged the presumption of illegality directed at migrants and, just as some of us warned at the time, that presumption was very frequently and incorrectly directed against those with black and brown skins. It also obliged doctors, nurses, teachers, bank clerks and employers to act as internal border guards—to inform the authorities if they believed that someone was in this country illegally.

Ministers knew that that would lead to a huge wave of false allegations because we told them so at the time, but they pressed ahead regardless. The Government have signalled no intention of repealing the 2014 Act, so it gives me no pleasure to predict that this scandal will not go away. Unless and until that Act is repealed and the Government end their hostile environment, this scandal will grow.

[Apsana Begum (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

I thank my right hon. Friend for giving way and for all her brave and principled hard work in this area. As has been pointed out in this place and beyond, the Government’s divisive, draconian and oppressive hostile environment for migrants is at the core of the treatment of the Windrush generation. Does she agree that although this scandal has disproportionately affected people from the Caribbean, it potentially impacts on all people from across the Commonwealth, including migrants from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh?

[Ms Abbott]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her intervention. I was going to come to the point that although people talk about the Windrush scandal in terms of migrants from the Caribbean, it actually affects people from Africa, from south Asia and anyone from a then Commonwealth country who came in at the time. I point out to the House that there is also another, perhaps larger, scandal waiting in the wings. This, too, arises because of the 2014 Act and the hostile environment. I am speaking, of course, about this Government’s treatment of the EU 3 million. The EU settlement scheme does not confer new rights, but instead removes them. EU citizens will then potentially risk being charged that they are here illegally, and will face the burden of proof to show otherwise, and the legal status of British citizens now abroad is also bound up with how fairly this Government treat EU citizens here.

I previously stated that the Opposition will not vote against the compensation Bill, because otherwise there will be no compensation paid at all, but we on the Opposition Benches must insist that the Home Secretary look again at the introduction of a special hardship scheme. There are people who have died. There are people who are still in debt, because of the slowness in dealing with their claims for compensation.