Countering Russian Aggression and Tackling Illicit Finance

Debate between David Lammy and Rushanara Ali

Wednesday 23rd February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lammy]

The hon. Gentleman is right. He knows a lot about violence and the corruption of money to fund that violence, and I am sure that the whole House is grateful for his wisdom.

What we know is that autocrats from around the world are watching to see if we meet this test of our strength and resolve. China will be watching to see how the west responds to Russia as it plots its next move. We must be strong not only to defend the people of Ukraine whose dignity and resilience has been an inspiration to all of us throughout the crisis but to defend the liberal international order that we need to stay safe.

Labour would go deeper, broader, stronger and faster on sanctions. The Government’s targeting of just five banks and three individuals is simply not enough. They claim that these are the toughest ever sanctions on Russia, but, after the annexation of Crimea, the UK froze the assets of almost 200 individuals and 50 entities alongside a range of other measures. Labour would go much further. We would increase the depth of sanctions by targeting more oligarchs and more banks. We would increase the breadth of sanctions by widening the measures beyond just asset freezes to sectoral measures, blocking dealing in Russian sovereign debt and banning the fake-news producing Russia Today. We would ramp up the speed of sanctions—we would not wait for Putin’s next act of war but introduce the full set of sanctions now. We would increase their coherence, moving in lockstep with our allies who have sanctioned more people more quickly than us. We would have stopped Nord Stream 2 and targeted Belarus as well, and we would make our sanctions stronger by targeting the systems people operate in as well as individuals. That means reforming Companies House so that it is fit for purpose, creating a register of overseas owners of UK property, as has been mentioned, delivering a strong economic crime Bill, as has been mentioned time and again, and implementing the recommendations of the Russia report finally in this House.

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend will be aware that an estimated £100 billion a year is run up through money laundering, fraud and corruption, so he is right that it is imperative that the Government take action now. When the Minister for Security and Borders, the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds), gave evidence to the Treasury Committee, he admitted that the Government have been found wanting—not his words, but more or less so—and that there is much to do. This week is the moment to act.

[Mr Lammy]

My hon. Friend mentions £100 billion a year: money that could have been spent on schools, money that could have been spent on hospitals, money that could have been spent on our post-covid recovery.

Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill

Debate between David Lammy and Rushanara Ali

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 9th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lammy]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his careful and considered observations. Of course he is right in what he says, because when we are talking about this category of offender we are often talking about gross immaturity, and with appropriate intervention and the appropriate assessment it is possible to effect de-radicalisation. The removal of the Parole Board in this means that that assessment is not made at all. I think that behind the Secretary of State’s words and this Bill is the understanding that we will put this cohort automatically on licence, but of course that comes at a cost. Notwithstanding that, we want the intensive scrutiny of the Parole Board, with it looking once, twice, three times at this cohort of this offender. Removing that is a profound decision, as the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation suggested. For those reasons, I hope that the scrutiny that is required of that decision is undertaken carefully in Committee.

The Independent Reviewer of Terrorism legislation also rightly raises concerns about extending the maximum licence period for serious terrorism offenders to 25 years. We have concerns about both the proportionality and the cost of this reform. Even indeterminate sentences for public protection prisoners have the prospect of their licence period being terminated when they are no longer considered a risk. Importantly, the Government have not gone into sufficient detail about how they will pay for the heavy administrative burden this will place on probation services, coming after a decade of austerity and cuts, where we have seen changes that the Government are now determined to change once again. As we plunge into the deepest recession of our lifetimes, how does the Secretary of State propose to pay for this massive growth in the number of those under licence?

In addition, there are specific circumstances in relation to Northern Ireland that of course require scrutiny and discussion as we move forward. In terms of sentencing, these are the Opposition’s major concerns that we plan to address in Committee, but we also share the concerns raised by the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation when it comes to the changes of monitoring tools available to the security services and counter-terrorism police.

As the Secretary of State will know, he puts me in a strange position with his proposals relating to TPIMs. He will remember that it was a Labour Government, in 2005, which I served in, that first introduced control orders. Back then, in order to impose a control order, a Secretary of State needed only “reasonable grounds for suspecting” that the individual was or had been involved in terrorism-related activity. In 2011, the coalition Government raised the standard of proof, by replacing Labour’s control orders with TPIMs. The Secretaries of State could impose these controls only if they “reasonably believed” that the individual was or had been involved in terrorism-related activity. In 2015, the Conservatives raised the standard of proof even higher to require the Secretary of State to have evidence that on the balance of probabilities an individual was or had been involved in terrorist offences, but in the proposed changes we are debating today, the Government propose lowering the standard of proof from the balance of probabilities back to reasonable grounds for suspecting. The Conservative Government seem to have taken nine years to move away from Labour policy and then to return full circle back to it.

Whether or not it can be justified, lowering the standard of proof inevitably increases the chances of innocent individuals being subjected to serious constraints on their freedom. Given that the courts found no problems with the current threshold, as the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation notes, what are the reasons for this U-turn? As has been suggested by the Chair of the Select Committee and the spokesman for the SNP, the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry), I do not think the House has yet heard the reason for this U-turn, given that it was not indicated in February, and given that the independent reviewer does not support it and the last one certainly did not support it. Were the Conservative Government wrong when they raised the standard of proof in 2011 and then again in 2015, or are they wrong today when they propose lowering it?

An additional and significant issue about which the reviewer has raised concerns is the removal of the two-year limit on TPIMs, allowing them to be renewed indefinitely. Let me remind the House what a TPIM can involve: overnight residence requirements; relocation to another part of the country; police reporting; an electronic monitoring tag; exclusion from specific places; limits on association; limits on the use of financial services; limits on the use of telephones and computers; and a ban on holding travel documents. This would mark an unprecedented restriction of rights for individuals who, we must remember, have not been convicted of any crime. It raises significant issues, and for that reason I suspect that it will occupy the Bill Committee. It is entirely right when the Secretary of State says that we must be strong on dealing with terrorism—of course, that unites the House—but because we believe in the rule of law and the democratic traditions that we inherit in this House, it is also right that we have the right safeguards, and it is those safeguards that we will very definitely want to scrutinise.

[Rushanara Ali]

My right hon. Friend makes a very important point about the balance between security and liberty. It is not easy for any Government to strike the right balance, but it is very important that this Government recognise that we cannot afford to lose the wider community—we must ensure that people are not wrongly convicted and there must be assurance that there are safeguards in place to protect innocent people while we go after those who are dangerous and who are committing crimes and acts of terror.

[Mr Lammy]

My hon. Friend is right to raise the question in the manner that she does, because fundamental to our policing model in this country, even where it relates to terrorism, is the consent model. We must take the consent of communities with us, and when we lose consent, we get disorder. One might say that, in parts of the United States at the moment, one can see the loss of consent from particular ethnic communities. The point she raises is fundamental, and it is why we would not be doing our job properly if we did not scrutinise these changes carefully.

In 2015, the then Justice Secretary, the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), commissioned a report by former prison governor Ian Acheson into Islamist extremism in prisons, probation and youth justice. The report found evidence of growing Islamist extremism in prisons and called for

“a central, comprehensive and coordinated strategy”

to fix it. Acheson proposed 69 recommendations, which were consolidated into a total of 11, eight of which we were told would be followed.

It is unclear, however, how many of his recommendations have been implemented and what effect any changes have had on de-radicalisation. Indeed, last year, when Acheson published a report for the Centre for Social Justice, he did not seem confident that much had changed. He wrote:

“Our unsafe prisons provide a fertile breeding ground in which predators, peddling extremist and violent ideologies, can prey upon the vulnerable, creating significant risks to national security and the public at large…On the present trajectory, it is all too conceivable that a future terrorist will have been groomed and radicalised within our prison estate.”

How can the Government justify their failure to include any new policies on rehabilitation or de-radicalisation? Where is the new funding for de-radicalisation in our prisons? Where is the extra support for our probation services? We know that the Government believe in stricter sentences, but what do they have to say about defeating the ideology of hate? Only one part of this package touches on this question, and even it does not attempt to solve it. It instead pushes back the legally binding deadline for the completion of an independent review of Prevent. That review was supposed to be completed by August 2020, and yet this summer it will be further delayed until next year.

We will not seek a Division today because we recognise that there must be progress on this issue, but we are very disappointed by the lack of focus on de-radicalisation. Indeed, some of the Government’s plans, including removing the Parole Board, may actively reduce the chances of rehabilitation in prison. Defeating the ideology, not merely imprisoning those hypnotised by it, is what is necessary if we are serious about preventing reoffending.

After Jack Merritt was killed in Fishmongers’ Hall, his father Dave wrote poignantly about how his son would have perceived the political reaction to his own death. Dave wrote:

“What Jack would want from this is for all of us to walk through the door he has booted down, in his black Doc Martens.

That door opens up a world where we do not lock up and throw away the key. Where we do not give indeterminate sentences, or convict people on joint enterprise. Where we do not slash prison budgets, and where we focus on rehabilitation not revenge. Where we do not consistently undermine our public services, the lifeline of our nation. Jack believed in the inherent goodness of humanity, and felt a deep social responsibility to protect that.”

Jack Merritt’s death was cruelly ironic, but it is a further bitter blow that in its wake, punishment for the offenders he sought to help will become more strict. It is undeniably true that Jack’s murderer never rehabilitated. He maintained his twisted ideology to the very end. However, we must not let this nightmare blind us into believing that second chances exist only in dreams. The murderous terrorist who took Jack’s life would no doubt like us to lose our faith in humanity. But Jack would like us to keep it. The very least we owe him is not to forget this.