Jamal al-Harith Debate

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Department: Home Office

Jamal al-Harith

Charlie Elphicke Excerpts
Thursday 23rd February 2017

(7 years, 2 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Ben Wallace Portrait Mr Wallace
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I think the best thing would be for me to write to the hon. Gentleman. I was the Parliamentary Private Secretary to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) in the Ministry of Justice at the time. If I were to say that my memory of the time is that the Ministry of Justice or the Government signed the payments off, I may be misleading the House inadvertently. The best thing is for me to write an accurate response to the hon. Gentleman, but he will know, as a former Minister, that we all take responsibility and that the whole Government stand by their legally binding commitment.

Charlie Elphicke Portrait Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
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Does my hon. Friend agree that the best way to deal with tragic cases such as this one and the many other cases of this nature is to prevent radicalisation in the first place? Once radicalisation has happened, we need to support our intelligence services and our border officials at ports such as Dover, and work internationally with other countries to ensure that we can deal with the consequences.

Ben Wallace Portrait Mr Wallace
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My hon. Friend makes an important point that the whole way in which we can tackle this threat is by working together both internally in the United Kingdom at our borders between all the agencies—SO15, the intelligence services, the home police, Border Force and everything else—and with our international partners. We do that more and more to ensure that when people threaten to come to this country or to leave and do harm elsewhere, we interdict them, deter them and deal with them to the best of our ability.