All 1 Diane Abbott contributions to the Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill 2019-21

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Tue 21st Jul 2020
Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill
Commons Chamber

Report stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage & Report stage: House of Commons & Report stage & 3rd reading

Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill Debate

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Department: Home Office

Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill

Diane Abbott Excerpts
Report stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 21st July 2020

(3 years, 8 months ago)

Commons Chamber
Read Full debate Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill 2019-21 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Consideration of Bill Amendments as at 21 July 2020 - large font accessible version - (21 Jul 2020)
Conor McGinn Portrait Conor McGinn
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The overriding priority of this Labour Opposition is and always will be to keep the public and our communities safe. I want to concentrate on the three amendments that our Front Benchers have tabled on behalf of the official Opposition, conscious of the fact that we have little time and I wish to hear from colleagues on the Back Benches who did not have the opportunity to discuss these issues in Committee.

As we—including me, as shadow Security Minister—said on Second Reading and in Committee, the tragic events at Fishmongers’ Hall and Streatham showed that there was a clear need for legislation, and subsequent events in Reading have only affirmed that. We on the Opposition Benches are committed to being forceful and robust in the fight against terrorism, so we welcome the Bill and in principle support its introduction. We have also sought to thoughtfully scrutinise the Bill, both to gain assurances on concerns and to attempt to improve it and ensure it is up to that most important task of keeping people safe.

To delve into new clause 8, following the shocking and tragic incident in Reading on Saturday 20 June, my right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary called for a judge-led review of the Government’s strategy for tackling the dangerous and growing menace of lone attackers. Reading was the third time in seven months that such devastation had been witnessed on UK streets, with lone attackers responsible each time. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Reading East (Matt Rodda), who showed such leadership and thoughtfulness in the days after the appalling attack on his community.

We on the Opposition Benches have no doubts as to the immense skill, bravery and dedication of our police and security and intelligence services. New clause 8 is fundamentally about supporting them as they tackle extremism from root to branch, because they cannot fight the battle alone. We need to look at the range of services we all rely on, particularly when we want to identify, monitor and treat subjects who pose such a huge threat to wider society.

Our proposals would make provision to assess the systemic response needed for the emerging and disturbing phenomenon of lone terrorists. A judge-led review of the effectiveness of current strategies to deal with them could effectively do that. It would address counter-terrorism policy and sentencing policy as it applies to terrorist offenders and the interactions and effectiveness of public services with respect to incidents of lone terrorist attacks. It would also undertake an analysis of a wide range of key public services, including our probation system, the prison system, mental health services, housing providers and local authorities, each of which can intervene at critical points.

The review would build on prior research and expertise, such as the extensive work carried out by Lord Anderson, the previous Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation. That work has already provided insights into how we might better connect the current systems. His review’s proposal for multi-agency centre pilots would involve the identification of newly closed high-risk subjects of interest, the sharing of data by the Security Service and counter-terror policing with other agencies, such as local authorities and Departments, and the enrichment of that data using the databases of multi-agency partners. The review also highlighted barriers to local partners’ involvement in managing subjects of interest, including the challenges of resourcing.

Our public services must have the tools they need to intervene and work together in the most effective and efficient manner possible, particularly as many of the services have interactions with individuals who give them real concern. We need to undertake an assessment of the systemic response needed to confront the dangerous and growing threat of lone attackers, with all the necessary security safeguards in place, and I thank the Minister and the Security Minister for discussions on that.

Jonathan Hall, the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, is looking at the issue in a review of the multi-agency public protection arrangements, which was commissioned by the Home Secretary. My understanding is that the review is currently with the Home Office. Can the Minister say a little bit more about that and perhaps commit to publishing it before the Bill reaches the other place, which I think would provide some assurance?

Turning to amendment 38 on TPIMs, we fully agree that the mechanisms must be robust and agile to help the police, the Security Service and their operational partners to do the job of keeping the public safe. As reflected by the amendments that the official Opposition has tabled, as well as those of the Chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), and the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry), it is fair to say that we feel the Bill’s proposed changes to TPIMs will have a profound impact on the regime, especially when taken together.

We want TPIMs to be as effective and efficient as possible, and when those on the frontline in policing and counter-terrorism say that the changes will be useful, we fully trust and support their assessment and will do all we can to assist them. We will also, however, seek assurances that proper safeguards are in place. We would all want and expect to see such safeguards on measures of such importance in a democracy such as ours. If the standard of proof is to be lowered while simultaneously making possible a potentially indefinite TPIM by removing the current limit, then scrutiny, oversight and safeguards will take on a new-found importance. 

We must remind ourselves that a TPIM notice can involve a wide range of measures: overnight residence requirements, relocation, police reporting, an electronic monitoring tag, exclusion from certain places, limits on association, limits on the use of financial services, and limits on the use of telephone and computers, as well as a ban on holding travel documents. Those are robust measures and, in my view, rightly so, but we must not forget that TPIMs are a restriction on rights for people who have not yet been convicted of any crime. It is not in the interests of anyone to allow such individuals to remain indefinitely on TPIMs, either for their own sake, for society’s, or, crucially, in terms of bringing them to justice.

Diane Abbott Portrait Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)
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Does my hon. Friend accept that the concern about TPIMs is not just the breadth of measures available but their indefinite nature against people who have not actually been tried and charged?

Conor McGinn Portrait Conor McGinn
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I do, and I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend for the work she has done on this issue and her commitment to it. I am sure the Minister will have heard what she says. It is something I raised in Committee and I did receive some assurances from the Minister, but I think we would wish to hear—not just in the light of what my right hon. Friend says, but of what the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation said when he made a similar point—what the Minister is doing to ensure those safeguards are in place.

--- Later in debate ---
Nigel Evans Portrait Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
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Order. We are going to have to introduce a time limit of five minutes to get in as many as we can. The Minister will come in just before 5.50 pm

Diane Abbott Portrait Ms Abbott
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I rise to speak in support of the amendments. The stakes in any debate about terrorism and how to combat terrorism successfully are extremely high, because these are issues that involve the lives and liberties of all of us. Children as well as adults have lost their lives in some of these terrible incidents, particularly in the horrific Manchester Arena bombing. Police officers have been murdered. We were all shocked by the murder of a fellow MP, Jo Cox, and I was a Member of this House in the ’80s and ’90s at the height of the IRA’s mainland bombing campaign, so, please, there is no one on the Opposition side who does not take the threat of terrorism seriously. However, it is extremely appropriate that Parliament should not be nodding through counter-terror legislation but should be subjecting it to proper scrutiny, because that is in the interests of us all. At the heart of that scrutiny has to be: will this legislation help minimise terror attacks?

Governments of all parties, including my own, have tended to want to argue that measures that undermine civil liberties are the answer to terrorism, but sometimes such measures run the risk of being a recruiting sergeant for terrorism. It is in that light that I address my remarks to the Prevent programme. The Government previously committed to a review of Prevent. I can only ask: where is the review? My hon. Friend the Member for St Helens North (Conor McGinn), speaking from the Front Bench, described Prevent as controversial. It is not just controversial; it is a toxic brand, and I would argue it is increasingly counterproductive in the fight against terrorism that we all want to support. We should look at a replacement for the Prevent programme. It is not that good work has not been done in the name of Prevent—I visited some of those programmes in another role—but increasingly it is not doing the job it was established to do and, because its reputation is so toxic, it is not as effective as it could be in combating terrorism.

If we examine the terror incidents that have been inflicted on our communities in detail, we find that very few of the perpetrators have ever been in contact with a Prevent programme. At the same time, Prevent casts a hugely wide net over people, particularly in the Muslim community. In 2017-18, 7,300 people were referred to the Prevent programme, and the overwhelming majority of those were incorrect referrals. In fewer than one in five cases was there any discussion of these individuals at a Channel panel, and fewer than 400 people have received support from the Channel programme. No wonder, to many communities that find themselves targeted, it looks and feels like a trawling operation. I remember that in counter-terrorism debates with reference to the IRA’s mainland bombing campaign, it was former Army officers in this House—not people on my side of the Chamber—who argued against measures that could be a recruiting sergeant for terrorists.

As we know, when Ministers are challenged on Prevent, they respond as if any criticism of it is leading to an attempt to abolish our counter-terrorism efforts altogether. I want to nail that one. As Ministers know, Prevent is only one strand of the Contest strategy and we support the other three strands of pursue, protect and prepare. Serious consideration should be given to how all of those can be enhanced and made more effective. But, from all the evidence and all the people and communities I have spoken to, I conclude that Prevent is in danger of being counterproductive, alienating communities and ultimately making the fight against terrorism harder.

A more effective anti-radicalisation programme could and should be constituted. It would involve communities themselves. It would not be imposed on communities, but it would be working with communities, relying on people’s intelligence information, their sensitivities and their very real concerns, and the very real concerns of the overwhelming majority of people in this country who are opposed to terrorism in all its guises. Working with communities and relying on them, not demonising them and ostracising them, is the way forward.

In conclusion, all of us on both sides of the House have a great responsibility in fighting terrorism. The most important duty of any Government is to keep their citizens safe, and we on the Opposition Benches feel that very strongly, but the safety and security of our people in the fight against terrorism cannot be upheld by knee-jerk reactions, simplistic formulations or programmes that prove to be counterproductive. An impartial review of the Prevent programme is long overdue. The fear is that now there is too much political capital invested in the Prevent programme for it to change course, but the fight against terrorism is too serious to be taken lightly. If something is not working, we need to fix it. That is why the time is right to review Prevent and to start again with an entirely new programme with the same aims, but a programme that works with communities rather than demonising them.