Baroness Brinton
Main Page: Baroness Brinton (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Baroness Brinton's debates with the Home Office
Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill
Baroness Brinton Excerpts(9 years, 3 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Brinton (LD)
My Lords, I want to make a couple of brief comments on Amendment 103A. I echo my noble friend Lady Warsi’s comments about a review of the Prevent strategy, for all the reasons that others have spoken about. We also need to look at where different approaches have been taken. I think I spoke at Second Reading about Watford, but what I did not say is that Watford took only the community money; it did not take the surveillance money. Actually, Watford was the one place in which, on the Sunday after the Paris shootings, the traditional march in honour of the birth of the Prophet became a march in honour of those who had died. Members of the community other than those of the Muslim faith joined in that march. That is where community work through Prevent is at its best. My worry is that we have not seen a proper survey of Prevent, although it has been in operation for the best part of a decade.
I return briefly to Amendment 103A. My noble friend Lady Sharp said that the reasoning behind this probing amendment might seem slightly contradictory, but it seeks to get to some word definitions. There is a further problem around definition: the Bill itself talks mainly about “terrorism” while the statutory guidance talks about “extremism”, but the balance between the duty on extremism versus terrorism is quite distinct. I certainly cannot marry up the clauses in the Bill with some of what is set out in the guidance. I would be grateful if my noble friend could help with this as well.
Lord Scriven (LD)
My Lords, I apologise to the Committee for not having taken part in the Second Reading of the Bill, but I was out of the country. I wish to speak to this amendment because I was the leader of Sheffield City Council at the time when the Prevent strategy came in. I think that we may be going down the road of repeating past mistakes. When Prevent was brought in, it was not statutory but it was driven by a lot of central guidelines. It became clear to me and many council leaders that these central guidelines were not appropriate to our communities. The community of Sheffield is very different to the community of Bradford just down the road. The complexity of dealing with something like radicalisation requires a deep and thorough understanding of the community and context within which people work. Statutory guidance will mean that flexibility will go and straitjackets will come in because someone at a top-down level will decide that they know, from Whitehall, what is best for every community in this country
The noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, made a very strong point. Until we know what actually works, how can anyone write evidence-based statutory guidance? Work has been done on this internationally. Rik Coolsaet, an expert at the University of Ghent, who used to be the adviser to the European Commission on Radicalisation, said very clearly that we do not yet know internationally what does or does not work on a deradicalisation strategy. Exactly what is going to be evidence-based in the statutory guidance? I asked a Written Question, which was responded to on 26 January:
“how many public bodies as defined in the Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill do not meet the provisions of the Prevent duty guidance consultation document, according to each category of public body”,
but the Minister was not able to answer. The Government do not know. This is a really important point: if we do not know exactly what is happening out there already, if we do not have an evidence base for what works, how can we say to public bodies, which understand the context of their locality far better than anybody else, “You have to do this to prevent people from radicalisation or extremism”?
Furthermore, it is important to understand that where the best international examples exist—noble Lords have already given two examples, particularly that of Hayat—it is not on a statutory basis nor via a statutory body but it is a community, bottom-up approach that is dealing with this, in not just a sensitive but an effective way. While I do not for one minute doubt the genuine and important reasons why the Government have started on this road, I believe that it will have unintended consequences that will not help the problem but could mean that statutory bodies at local level will have to deal with a greater and more difficult problem. I therefore ask the Minister: what evidence base will go into the statutory guidance which will help, and can he guarantee that it will be contextualised for the different and varied communities around this country?
Baroness Brinton
I would like to add to that last point and ask the Minister for an evidence base post-2009, because much has happened in the university and college sector since that date. It would be helpful to know this, given that his letter to those of us interested in this issue referred only to incidents before 2009.
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
My Lords, I will speak briefly to these amendments, because the main debate on guidance will take place under the fourth group, where we have nine amendments relating to guidance and direction on Prevent. I noted the comment of the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, that she did not intend it to be a perfect amendment. What she highlights—and what has come out of this debate—is the lack of clarity. I think that will come out through a number of debates today on the groups looking at the specified duties that the Government have placed on Prevent. There is a lack of clarity in how it works in practice and what the full implications are; that is where some of the confusion will lie. I think the Minister will respond to some comments now, but I think similar issues will be raised when we have the debate on guidance in the fourth group. I know it is difficult to arrange groupings, but I was sorry in many ways that the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, degrouped her amendment from that main one. I can understand that, because of the specifics of what is in effect a sunrise clause, although we have not perhaps discussed the reason for that in quite the same way.
I will make a brief comment on Prevent rather than speak in detail, because I want to speak about it in the later group, as I said. Criticisms have been raised of Prevent, but we need to be positive, see what works and ensure that we can make it better in the future. As the noble Baroness, Lady Uddin, said, in the point that I did agree with her on, it was a Labour Government who set up Prevent and we are committed to it. However, we are committed to making it successful and effective; there is no point in something that causes alienation in communities when the whole purpose of it is to have engagement with communities and cohesion across communities. I look forward to what the Minister has to say on these specific amendments. I am sure that our debate today, on a range of issues, will tease out a lot of the detail that is missing from the legislation and the Government’s explanations so far.
Baroness Brinton
If universities are already implementing much of what the Government rightly think needs to happen and even if some of us are not stepping fully up to the plate, where does that place the absolute need that the Government identify for a duty on universities, which is much harder on every single institution and every member of staff, not just in universities but in colleges and schools? Would it not be better to arrange for it to be one of the things that HEFCE or OFFA looked at as part of a universities contribution each year?
Lord Bates
The point that the noble Baroness makes about HEFCE is a very good one. Depending on the outcome of the consultation, it may well be the body which reviews this matter. It is important at this point that we get the terminology correct. It is a duty to have regard to the guidance available. That is quite distinct from being as prescriptive as some people have suggested we are being.
The noble Baroness, Lady Uddin, to whose work on the Prevent programme I pay tribute, and my noble friend Lady Hussein-Ece talked about the lack of work with local communities to target radicalisation. Challenging and tackling extremism is a shared effort. The Government have a role in leading this and ensuring that communities where extremists operate and organisations working against extremists have the capability to confront it themselves. Through Prevent, we are supporting community-based projects in 30 local authority priority areas where we fund a dedicated Prevent co-ordinator, alongside work with communities and partners in a further 14 supported areas where we support projects only. More than 180 projects have been approved since 2011, reaching more than 55,000 people. This year, we are supporting more than 80 projects. That is an example of what we are doing at the moment.
A number of noble Lords have referred to nurseries, which I acknowledge is an issue. My noble friend Lady Hussein-Ece and others were concerned about the message being sent. I understand that the Government have a job to do in getting the message across in a balanced way. Nurseries, schools, universities, FE colleges and prisons all have guidance in place to safeguard those in their care—that is a given. Such protection might be from child sexual exploitation; for example, in a nursery, something may give rise to a belief that some abuse is happening. Most people will have in place some system of guidance and say, “What do we actually do with that bit of information when it comes to our attention. Who do we pass it on to and how do we act upon it?”.
Lord Macdonald of River Glaven
If that is the case, no doubt my noble friend the Minister will make that clear.
The greater point is that universities are not places of surveillance in the sense intended in this Bill, and they cannot become so without fracturing what is best about them. As far as I can tell, no concern at all appears to be expressed in the legislation or in the guidance that what is being proposed is a form of institutionalised censorship with academics at its heart.
If the guidance means what it says, and we must assume that it does, it calls into question a situation in which people in British universities would not be allowed to argue, with Plato perhaps, that democracy is flawed. It is not a crime to argue that democracy is flawed. No one in a British university could deliver a lecture that evinced a lack of respect for someone else’s religion. It is not, thank goodness, a crime in this country to demonstrate a lack of respect for someone else’s religion. Perhaps no one in a British university would be allowed to decry individual liberty in favour of, say, collective empowerment—a notion with a long intellectual pedigree. Again, it is not a crime to express that view in the United Kingdom. Obviously, the point is not whether noble Lords agree or disagree with any of these propositions, or whether any noble Lord would wish to advance any of them—for my part, I would not particularly. The question is rather whether we have really reached a state of affairs in this country in which it is now necessary for a senior politician, even a politician as senior as the Home Secretary, to be granted the power to influence, by power of direction if necessary, what can and what cannot be said in a university in the absence of any crime being committed. That is the point. This legislation seeks to control not only violent extremism but also speech in universities even where that speech is not otherwise a crime. This is its central failing and it is the reason I have put my name to the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick.
The role of surveillance and control is one that is entirely inimical to the purpose of a university as we have understood it, which is to analyse, to explain and to discover. In that sense, open debate is the lifeblood of an institution of higher learning. Of course, as noble Lords have recognised, universities do not have immunity in the face of the criminal law—and they should not be immune to it. Indeed, like everyone else and every other body, they have existing obligations under anti-terrorism legislation, including the obligation to disclose to the authorities information they have about terrorism activities. But no one is suggesting that they are failing to discharge those obligations, and this Bill neither defines nor seeks to address any such failing. That is because there is none.
Let me conclude by pointing out one striking omission from the proposed guidance that is to accompany the Bill. Nowhere within it is there any attempt to explain how its terms are consistent with the entirely appropriate and laudable legal obligation placed upon universities to secure freedom of speech. There is no attempt to square that circle. This may be because no one in the Home Office considered the Education Act properly before deciding to legislate for our universities in this way, or it may be because it is simply obvious that the freedom of speech duty mandated in the Education Act is in conflict with the Bill, so any attempt to argue that they can coexist is doomed to failure.
These proposals may spring from the best of intentions. They doubtless spring from a desire to do something, perhaps anything, about the real problems we face around radicalisation. However, in practice they will inevitably undermine the place of freedom of speech in our universities. They are wrong in principle and they are unworkable in practice.
Baroness Brinton
My Lords, I have added my name to Amendments 112A, 112B and 112D. I shall start by speaking to those amendments and then to the others in the group. It is a matter of serendipity that I follow my noble friend Lord Macdonald because Amendments 112A, 112B and 112D try to address the exact points that he has raised and insist that the two duties must be examined together in order to balance the right to freedom of speech. I defy officers of universities and colleges to achieve that and I think that it would be a tall task for civil servants. One of the reasons I have been keen to table these amendments is that, as a senior university administrator, I have sat with two codes of practice and two different sets of statutory guidance which are completely in conflict with one another. We have to make it clear to those who will try to deliver the legislation on the front line exactly how it would happen. That is why the first part of the amendment talks about the recognition of the duty on free speech and the second part makes it clear that any guidance must be produced in the form of a single document so that staff do not have to trawl through parallel sets of guidance and codes of practice to try to find out which trumps the other.
I hope that the amendment is straightforward and simple, but it is included in a group which seeks to tackle the absolute, fundamental problems around the duty and how it conflicts with the duty on freedom of speech. I want to make two points. The first goes back to the Education (No. 2) Act 1986, which many noble Lords have quoted. Clause 43(4) states,
“(including where appropriate the initiation of disciplinary measures) to secure”,
those rights, but that is a two-way right, and universities have certainly used it where there might be either radicalisation or something close to the infringement of personal liberties or, worse than that, the possible incitement of a crime. On 20 September 2013, the Guardian reported that a number of our universities and students unions across the UK had banned the song “Blurred Lines”, a song that is degrading to women and which encourages rape. That demonstrates that the current boundaries for freedom of speech are well understood in our universities and are applied by them and by the student bodies. I come back to this. I do not understand why we need a duty when it is absolutely evident that this is already working in practice. I repeat my request for specific recent examples of where this has not succeeded and has not been followed through.
The other point I want to make on academic freedom moves away from the purist freedom-of-speech argument. Much of our debate has been about societies, students and academies talking outside the normal framework. Recently I was talking to a postgraduate student who is working on Middle East peace studies. He and his colleagues have just completed a module in a Masters course on suicide bombers. How free will they be to access information on that issue and thus actually help this country and the wider world to understand what motivates these people to become so radicalised that they are prepared to give up their lives? Would accessing videos online to try and understand the linguistic and pedagogic emotions behind those decisions be caught as radicalisation, would it require a special exemption in order to have that debate, or would it just be banned completely? We need to understand how the pure academic freedom to research would be affected by this duty.
Lord Bates
I accept that my noble friend had lead responsibility for that, and she has far more experience in this area in formulating and delivering policy than I have. However, I am simply responding to the question which addressed where this code of practice is going as regards higher education institutions. I was simply making the point that in a sense it relates to the organisation and preparedness of institutions to deal with the safeguarding of organisations, the security of students, and just being aware. I was asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, to give some examples of the relationship the inspectors who currently engage on the Prevent programme—the regional co-ordinators —have with higher education institutions. They are often contacted and asked about particular speakers. Most institutions found it very helpful to have someone they could go to and ask for guidance on whether special procedures needed to be put in place for a particular person.
Baroness Brinton
I was trying to make the point that it would be helpful to have an example of where the existing codes of practice guidance are failing, which requires the draft legislation we are looking at today.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, Amendment 112BA is grouped with a number of other amendments, most of which relate to Clause 24. The amendments in this group in my name and those of my noble friends have been tabled to enable me once again to raise issues about equalities and concerns about discrimination.
It has been put to me that Prevent is regarded as a security prism through which all Muslims are seen and that Muslims are suspect until proved otherwise. The term “siege mentality” has also been used. We have discussed the dangers of alienation arising from the very activities that should be part of the solution, not part of the problem, and of alienation feeding violence. I have said to the Muslim organisations that have contacted me, and I think I have said in the Chamber, that because the current context for this legislation is the war in Syria and since most Britons, not all, who are drawn into fighting there are Muslims—I am not saying that they come from the same ethnic background; that is, of course, quite different—it is inevitable that Muslims will make up the great majority of those who are the subject of, or some might say subjected to, the provisions of this Bill.
We have laws about equalities and they apply to this legislation as to every other piece of legislation. I doubt that much can be done in legislation to address the concerns I have just summarised but what can be done should be done: in legislation, in practice and in providing safeguards against discrimination. Transparency is a very important tool and it occurred to me today that, the more transparency there is about how these provisions are operated, the more ammunition—if that is not an indelicate word in the context—the Government can give themselves to counter those concerns.
I have mentioned the current context. The counter- terrorism strategy and policy of course are also directed to dealing with other extremism manifested in violence—for instance, right-wing extremism. I am told that freedom of information requests for basic statistics about Prevent are routinely denied on the basis of national security. It seems to me that we should be looking for ways of providing information that do not endanger security. For instance, I wondered how many individuals are in a programme because of anti-Semitic violence. Over the last day or two, I have been pondering what it would look like if one substituted “Jewish” for “Muslim” in the briefings and descriptions we have had. The issue is not just how I would see it as a Jew—not a very observant Jew but one who is aware of her background and heritage—but also whether other people, who might be resistant to some of the points I have been making, would see things differently if it were a different group interposed in that way. I think that if this were aimed at the Jewish community or communities, I might feel targeted rather than protected. I say all that by way of some introduction and can go through the specific amendments fairly quickly.
I said earlier this evening that I think—although I am going to have to read the debate to check—that the Minister in his answer on the first group implied more support, at least for the thoughts that lie behind these amendments, than I suspect he is going to articulate now and he also implied more consultation than the clause spells out. The clause deals with revised guidance as well as the first issue of guidance. If one accepts the Minister’s point about how well the Government have conducted the process so far for the purpose of the argument, nevertheless the issues I am raising will be important for the revision of guidance as well.
The first of my amendments, Amendment 112BA, states:
“Guidance … shall in particular deal with equalities issues”.
I think that that speaks for itself.
Amendment 112BB would insert that there must be consultation with,
“the specified authorities subject to the guidance”,
as well as with, as stated in the Bill, the Welsh and Scottish Governments. The clause then goes on to include the very wide catch-all—although it could be a very narrow “catch-few”—of,
“any person whom the Secretary of State considers appropriate”.
It must be right for those who are going to be the subject of this guidance to be consulted.
I then take that a stage further with Amendment 112BC by providing that, before responding to that consultation, a specified authority should,
“consult its local or other relevant communities”.
It comes pretty naturally to most local authorities to consult their own communities when they are proposing to do something, although not always. However, I do not just mean residents as a kind of amorphous bunch. There are communities within communities. We are all members of more than one community, and the specified authorities can identify their communities as they see fit under what I am proposing.
The next of my amendments, Amendment 112CB, relates to Clause 24(7), under which the Secretary of State can make minor revisions to the guidance without going to Welsh and Scottish Governments if the,
“Secretary of State considers that the proposed revisions … are insubstantial”.
I would like to see that as an objective test so that it could be challenged—in other words, I would like to change this subsection so that the consultation provisions have effect unless they are insubstantial.
Amendment 112DA is an amendment to Clause 25. It must be the case that authorities have the opportunity to make representations before directions under this clause are given—this being the clause which takes us to the sanction for failing to comply with the duty. I would hope that that would be automatic. It is perhaps a matter of general law but, again, I think that it should be spelled out.
Amendment 112F also relates to the directions clause provisions. It would insert that the Secretary of State should report to Parliament on any direction given. Giving a direction in this way is a pretty substantial action, and I think that it should be reported to Parliament with the reasons for it.
I hope that I have covered everything that is in my name. My noble friend tells me that I have, so I beg to move Amendment 112BA. As I do so, I realise that each of the amendments is on what might be thought to be a small point but, in my view, they amount to trying to find a way of addressing concerns which are clearly very real in the minds of those who have been looking at this legislation.
Baroness Brinton
My Lords, I should like to speak to Amendments 112C and 112E, which are in my name. I start by apologising to the Minister. I am sorry that I could not manage to get to his meeting last week. I know that my noble friend Lady Hamwee expressed my concerns and I am grateful for the Minister’s letter on some issues which has been referred to considerably since we started today’s session.
These two amendments are important and my noble friend Lady Hamwee ended on that point. After going to war, the right to curtail freedoms is one of the most important decisions that a Government have to take. The one thing that is missing at the moment on some of the key directions, particularly on guidance and on where the Secretary of State gives a direction to an authority, is any sense of accountability and transparency.
I shall take the amendments in order. Amendment 112C says that if guidance is issued,
“the Secretary of State must lay before Parliament … the proposed guidance or proposed revisions”,
and it should be done by an affirmative instrument of both Houses. As I have said on earlier amendments, guidance also needs to be combined into one document with any other parallel guidance that will ease matters for those having to use it. The duty in the Education Act 1986 is absolutely clear and I believe that the guidance has been brought forward in haste. The Commons has not managed to see the draft guidance and the consultation does not end until tomorrow. I am grateful to my noble friend for some of the changes that he has made but I see nothing in his letter that relates to this issue of transparency and accountability to Parliament. It is important on such a sensitive issue that goes to the heart of the freedom of people in this country that Parliament at the very least should have the right to examine any changes that the Secretary of State wishes to lay.
Amendment 112E asks for the same scrutiny for the Secretary of State should she or he direct under the terms of this provision. It is important that we as Parliament understand how and why an appropriate authority has failed, partly so that we can amass the evidence that my noble friend talked about earlier, but also because we as Parliament need to know exactly what is happening. Amendment 112E also provides that:
“A copy of any such report must be sent to—
(a) the Chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights;
(b) the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation; and
(c) any other person whom the Secretary of State deems appropriate”.
It is also important that the relevant sector sees what is going on so as to understand the issues, a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. The three bodies mentioned also deal with some of the wider issues around terrorism, freedom and liberties. It would be inappropriate for them not to comment before such matters were discussed in Parliament.
Baroness Hamwee
I will try to move this amendment in under one minute, and not only because the Chief Whip is here. The amendments in this group more or less replicate, word for word, amendments made in respect of the Prevent programme. This part of the Bill is about the Channel programme. The Minister has been stressing the importance of guidance—which makes me think that my amendments are important. I simply invite him at this point to make any further or different comments or responses to those which he gave when I moved and spoke to similar amendments earlier this evening. I was just under a minute, I think. I beg to move.
Baroness Brinton
The noble Baroness has set a racing example, and I, too, will try to be extremely brief. My name is on Amendment 115B, which repeats the request found in two earlier clauses in the Bill through my amendments that when the Secretary of State issues or revises guidance she should make sure that Parliament has sight of an affirmative instrument in both Houses. I repeat, for the third time, I think, today, that where guidance is in parallel with other guidance, it should be issued as a single document.
The principal reason for this amendment is exactly the same as that for the other amendments: the Secretary of State has taken to herself and her successors a right to take decisions on guidance on sensitive issues. It is extremely difficult to assess which people are vulnerable to being drawn into terrorism. I am sure Parliament would want to have sight of this guidance and be able to review in future. As with my other comments, I hope that the Minister will be able to provide some reassurance that Parliament will be able to assess the guidance before it is given.
Lord Ashton of Hyde
My Lords, we have had a very brief debate on this part of the Bill. I am grateful to my noble friends for tabling this amendment. I fear that I may not be able to satisfy them. Amendment 115B seeks to make the guidance under the duty in Chapter 2 subject to approval under the affirmative procedure. Noble Lords should be aware that Channel is already an established programme across England and Wales and those who participate in the programme follow existing non-statutory guidance. The Channel programme has been in place since April 2012.
The current guidance for local authorities’ panels is being amended, in consultation with those involved in the programme, and will be reissued on a statutory basis. Guidance of this sort is not routinely made subject to parliamentary scrutiny, and the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee has not recommended that it should be in this instance.
Amendment 115AF seeks to ensure that local authorities are consulted on any guidance issued for panels. Amendment 115E aims to ensure that partners of panels, or their representatives, are consulted before any guidance is issued. I can assure noble Lords that local authority panel chairs, panel members and police practitioners are being consulted about the revised guidance. Panel members invited to a meeting are likely to be those panel partners who have shared relevant information in relation to a referred individual and therefore will also be consulted at a local level. The consultation process will ensure that the views of all relevant stakeholders are taken account of and that the guidance is meaningful for those to whom it is issued. Their experience and expertise is invaluable in achieving this.
I hope that reassures my noble friend and that she will withdraw her amendment.
Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn
My Lords, I certainly support the intention behind the amendment. My noble friend the Minister may well say in his reply that some of these issues are already covered by the Dealing in Cultural Objects (Offences) Act 2003. It is certainly the case that it is illegal to sell in this country cultural objects that were illegally exported from their country of origin after 2003. However, there are many new dimensions and my noble friend is right to draw attention to them. The scale on which terrorism is being funded through the sale of such artefacts gives cause for concern. I am not sure that many artefacts of this kind are being sold in this country now, but many will be in transit. As they may well be sold in the future they could still command a good price in the market.
I draw attention to one point. Proposed new subsection (2)(c) would require the examination of,
“the possibility of placing a strict liability on United Kingdom auction houses in respect of the provenance of any cultural artefacts they sell”.
This is not the occasion for a long debate on these matters. Some of them were raised in amendments during the passage of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009, although they were not carried. They placed an onus on auction houses in particular to be more transparent about vendors because auction houses are not obliged to declare for whom they sell such objects and somebody selling privately on the open market is not obliged to declare from where the objects came. There is a real problem. Indeed, there have been cases recently where auction houses have offered for sale objects which, it turned out, did not have a respectable provenance and had emerged on the market by shady means. It is therefore time to place an onus on the auction houses to check the provenance of the artefacts and to be assured that they left their country of origin legally after 2003, which would comply with the Dealing in Cultural Objects (Offences) Act. However, there is at present no onus on auction houses to be clear about the source of their objects. That is a glaring loophole, and that is why I support the amendment.
Baroness Brinton
I will speak to Amendment 118B but will not repeat the points made by my noble friends Lady Berridge and Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn. I want to remind the House of the scale of this problem and that it is a key funding area for Islamic State. A flash stick recovered after a courier was killed last year revealed that $36 million of goods had been taken from one town alone in Iraq. If you scale that up, and understand that each item can be sold for between $20,000 and $50,000, one begins to understand where IS’s money to resupply itself with weapons comes from. In addition to the provenance arguments and making sure that auction houses deal with appropriate items, there is a real issue of funding terrorism that needs to be addressed as well.
Lord Ashton of Hyde
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for tabling this interesting amendment and for giving due warning at Second Reading that it might be coming. It allows us the opportunity to give due consideration to the looting and sale of cultural artefacts. Of course I agree with all noble Lords who have spoken that this is a relevant issue in the context of the terrorist threat, given that such sales are often used as a source of finance for ISIL and others, as noble Lords have said. I hope that I may be able to give some reassurance.
I should stress that this is a global issue, on which all states need to respond together. That is why the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 2195 in December 2014. This calls on all states to prevent and suppress the financing of terrorism. In particular, the resolution highlights the fact that terrorists can benefit from a plethora of activities, including through the sale of artefacts. It also recognises that defeating terrorist fundraising requires a global effort.
My noble friend’s suggestion of a further examination of this issue is timely. The UN resolution already requires the Secretary-General to submit a report to the Security Council outlining efforts to address the threat of terrorists benefiting from a range of transnational organised crime, including the sale of artefacts. Notably, the report will contain recommendations to strengthen member states’ capability in relation to this issue. Rather than commission a separate report at this time, the UK will carefully consider the findings of the UN report and take appropriate action as necessary.
In addition to this, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime established an intergovernmental expert group on protection against trafficking in cultural property. In January 2014 that group finalised guidelines for crime prevention and criminal justice responses with respect to trafficking in cultural property and other related offences. Again, the United Kingdom has actively been involved in this work.
Amendment 118B proposes that a panel be appointed to explore looting and sale of antiquities for the purposes of financing terrorism and report on that subject. I hope that I have given my noble friends some reassurance on why such a requirement is unnecessary, given the UN work in this area and in light of our wider work on the issue.
As I have said, all states, including the UK, are required to stop terrorist financing, including through the sale of artefacts. The UN Security Council resolution makes it clear that there will be a report on efforts to counter the financing of terrorism-related crimes, including the sale of artefacts, which will include recommendations on how member states can strengthen their capabilities. I must stress that the UK takes the funding of terrorist organisations through any means, including through the sale of artefacts in the UK, very seriously. Instances of terrorist financing in the UK will be investigated by the police.
The UK already assesses how we can reduce all instances of terrorist financing and countering terrorist financing features in the Government’s counterterrorism strategy, Contest. The Government continually assess how best to disrupt the financing of the activities of terrorists, whether through the sale of antiquities or by other means.
Auction houses are required by law to report any suspicions of terrorist financing relating to high-value goods to the National Crime Agency. I can confirm to my noble friend Lord Renfrew that there is no suggestion that any UK companies or auction houses have been involved in terrorist financing through the sale of artefacts. Additionally, Part III of the Terrorism Act 2000 already makes it illegal to make funds available to terrorists or to enter into an arrangement that will result in funds being made available. Where there are suspicions of terrorist financing, it also creates various reporting obligations for the regulated sector, including auction houses, which are subject to criminal sanction in the event of non-compliance. Therefore, we do not see the need to impose an additional strict liability on auction houses, given that they are already obliged to raise terrorist financing suspicions with the authorities. I hope I have reassured your Lordships that the UK already has a very robust response to this important issue and plays an active role in what needs to be an international approach. I welcome the opportunity to put our work on this issue on the record and I am grateful to my noble friends for providing the chance to do so. In the light of the extensive work that already goes on in this area, I hope that my noble friend will feel able to withdraw her amendment.