Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Monday 15th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hanson]

That is an important point.

As the Committee will know, under schedule 7 to the Terrorism Act 2000, there is the power to stop and question individuals who are suspected of involvement in terrorism. The annual report on the Terrorism Acts by the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, David Anderson QC, that was published in July this year gave facts and figures about that power. It included the number and ethnicities of the people who have been examined under schedule 7 in recent years. Although he noted that there was not overwhelming evidence that the power was exercised in a “racially discriminatory manner”, he noted:

“It remains imperative that police should exercise their considerable powers in a sensitive, well-informed and unbiased manner”.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

Would the proposal in amendment 17 not be stronger if there was a time limit within which the Home Office had to reply to the application to remove a passport, so that the court would have to consider the matter in a timely manner? There is a parallel in the people who are denied entry to this country or are deported from this country and who have to appeal from a third country. The fact that there is no time limit means that the injustices that such cases often involve can go on for a very long time.

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[Mark Field]

Perhaps I do not share the great faith in the bureaucratic competence of the Home Office that was expressed by the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn)—

[Jeremy Corbyn]

It was the opposite.

[Mark Field]

I guessed that that was the case. I was being slightly ironic. One issue with the notion that we could have appeals is that if there was a great emergency and the passports of many dozens or even many hundreds of people were seized, the appeals process would become unwieldy. One hopes that such a situation will not come about. If there was a small number of individuals at any one time, it would be quite manageable, but if there was a large number, that would make it more difficult.

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[James Brokenshire]

Ultimately, those facts will concern any challenge that may be made, and a review may be undertaken of the proper exercise of the power and oversight provided for in the Bill. The right hon. Member for Delyn commented on the nature of the protections in the Bill. I hope that will assure the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) about the way such things would be advanced and protected, and that oversight is provided to deal with the issues he has raised.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

Will the person whose passport or travel documents are removed be informed of the reason they have been taken away? The maximum time the passport can be held without going through a legal process is two weeks. When does the Minister envisage that there will be a review of that decision, and when can the person reasonably expect to get their documents back and be allowed to travel? The points made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) were clear—the issue is one of access to a judicial process, rather than an executive decision, which is effectively what the removal of the documents would be.

[James Brokenshire]

The hon. Gentleman leads me neatly to mention a number of protections in the Bill, and to say how we will ensure that the exercise of this power is proportionate and suitably circumscribed by a range of stringent safeguards. Some of the points about the need for speed and assurances about the exercise of such powers have been well made. A powerful power is being advanced in schedule 1, and those who exercise it must be satisfied that it is necessary to retain the relevant documentation. The different mechanisms available to challenge a decision underscore why we regard current protections as proportionate to this power.

In essence, officers who might exercise the power would be governed by a specific code of practice that would specify how they are to use it. Paragraph 2 of schedule 1 states that the constable must have

“reasonable grounds to suspect that the person is there—”

in the port—

“with the intention of leaving the United Kingdom for the purpose of involvement in terrorism-related activity”.

The officer then has to seek a further review by a senior police office of at least superintendent level to confirm that the power is appropriate in that case. There is a further review by an officer of chief superintendent rank within 72 hours of the officer’s findings, and that is referred to the chief constable who must remain satisfied with the case. Even from an administrative perspective there are a significant number of checks and balances to ensure that the power is being exercised effectively. If the documents are to be retained beyond the 14-day period, there is a court process and a review to consider how further oversight should be provided.

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[Jeremy Corbyn]

Does my right hon. Friend think that this will lead to a whole cadre of virtually stateless people who will congregate together in one place, and that will be a problem for absolutely everybody rather than one state? Surely, as he rightly says, a state has a responsibility towards its own nationals.

[Frank Dobson]

I understand my hon. Friend’s point. The whole proposition of exclusion orders seems to be predicated on the idea, first, that these people are totally rational; and secondly, that their greatest desire is to come back to Britain. Neither of those things will necessarily be the case, because some very odd people are going to be involved.

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[John McDonnell]

I seek some clarity on clause 9 on pages 5 and 6.

We know of two young men who have left my constituency to fight—we believe—in Syria, and we worked with one of the families, with the assistance of the Government, to enable them to go to Turkey to try and convince the young man to return. When I read his letters to his parents, I found them to be extremely sincere. He thought he was going to Syria to fight against the Assad regime—he called it “jihad”—to protect people being bombarded by the regime and to prevent what he considered to be war crimes. I also found him sincere in his hope that his parents would not be distressed. It was a rather sad leaving letter. At one point, he explained to his parents that there was still a few bob left on his Oyster card for them to use. It was a short, extremely moving letter from a young man in his late teens, early 20s, explaining his intentions. I believe that many young men, and possibly women, have gone out with what they and others would consider to be the best of intentions: to engage in a military action to protect people from the abuse of human rights by a dictatorial regime that, as we now know, was using gas and other weapons against its own people.

I am trying to find a mechanism to encourage people to come back and be reintegrated into our society because I think that a lot of people who went out realise they made a mistake; they might have thought their intentions virtuous in the first instance, but I think many of them would now acknowledge that they made a mistake and it has gone wrong. Clause 9, however, introduces significant offences. It states:

“An individual subject to a temporary exclusion order is guilty of an offence if, without reasonable excuse, the individual returns to the United Kingdom in contravention of the restriction on return specified in the order.”

It would be extremely helpful if the Home Secretary gave us greater clarity, either now or later, about what a reasonable excuse would be. I would not want practicalities—for example, a person not knowing they had an exclusion order against them—to be an issue. Clause 9(4) states:

“In a case where a relevant notice has not actually been given to an individual, the fact that the relevant notice is deemed to have been given to the individual under regulations under section 10 does not…prevent the individual from showing that lack of knowledge of the temporary exclusion order, or of the obligation imposed under section 8, was a reasonable excuse for the purposes of this section.”

We need to be clear about what a reasonable excuse would be in this instance.

Many of these individuals already led chaotic lives, but they are now in a zone of operations that in itself is chaotic, and I think that many will want to return. However, the fact that there is uncertainty about what would be a reasonable excuse for returning—of getting on that plane and coming back—and the risk of up to five years in prison or a summary conviction of up to 12 months could act as a disincentive.

I think we should be easing the path as best we can to as many as possible of those who want to come back to be de-radicalised or rehabilitated. In some instances, unless we are absolutely clear about the nature of these offences and, in particular, about what would be construed as a reasonable excuse for return when the person does not know whether a temporary exclusion order is in place, it could provide a disincentive to carrying out the purpose that the Government, the Opposition and others want to happen—the process of managed return.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I shall speak briefly because I know the Home Secretary is about to reply. Following the speech of the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) about the general direction in which anti-terror law has gone, I want to make two essential points. Ever since I have been a Member, we seem to have had some piece of anti-terror legislation before us every year. I assume that there is a very large department in the Home Office that is writing next year’s anti-terror Bill and the one for the year after that. I am sure there will be an ambition to do that.

The theme that runs through all such legislation is an attempt to give greater and greater executive powers to the Home Secretary, which are usually rowed back by a combination of the courts and parliamentary action; then, a year or two later, we come back to yet another counter-terror Bill in respect of which the Home Secretary, no doubt with the very best of intentions, is nevertheless given a high degree of executive power. It is no part of our duty as elected Members of Parliament to undermine an independent judicial process and hand executive powers to Ministers, on the basis of which they can either detain or exclude people under any process whatever. That is fundamental to what I understand our democracy to be.

Although there is—ultimately, I suppose—some degree of judicial oversight when an excluded person finally comes back to this country, I would have thought that the points made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson) are surely true and important. If someone goes abroad, albeit on the basis of perhaps misguided notions about what they can do when they reach the zone of conflict to which they have gone, they will be there and will subsequently be prevented from returning. That might render them at risk of imprisonment by another judiciary, which might have much less concern for human rights than anyone here, and they could then be tortured and all kinds of terrible things could happen to them. Would the possession of British nationality on the part of someone affected in that way require the British Government to intervene on their behalf to stop them being tortured, given that the Government opposed their return to Britain in the first place? This whole process is full of many complications and contradictions, which I hope have been adequately thought through by the Home Secretary in introducing this legislation.

Secondly, I want to note the points made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth). We are involved in a process of making subjective judgments about who goes where to fight for what, and for whom. My right hon. Friend made the point that if somebody goes to fight for ISIS in Syria—I wish they would not; I have no truck whatever with ISIS—they will be deemed to be a terrorist and a dangerous person. If they go to fight for the Syrian Government, I presume the same point applies, but if they fight for the free Syrian army, which is supported by the Americans and the British, and they do things as despicable as they would in any other force, are they then deemed to be all right? Do they then have to prove which particular force they joined in Syria’s three-way civil war?

There is a further complication. If someone enters Syria from Turkey to fight with the Kurdish forces, having been taken there by the PKK, which is a listed terrorist organisation in Turkey, they would nevertheless be on the side of the Kurdish forces against the forces of the Syrian Government and against ISIS. There are an awful lot of contradictions surrounding how we decide who is a good fighter and who is a terrorist; who is struggling for liberation and who is a terrorist. There was a time when people involved in Umkhonto we Sizwe in South Africa were known as terrorists; they were later welcomed to this country as freedom fighters. Things can turn full circle.

None of what I am saying is intended to give any succour, comfort or support to ISIS, but I feel that we should think about this rather more carefully and avoid the knee-jerk reaction of saying, “These are bad fighters and those are good fighters, so we will ban these and allow those in.”

[Mr George Howarth]

My hon. Friend has already answered the question that I was going to ask, but I will make my point anyway. I am sure he agrees that there is no comparison between the barbaric acts that are being committed by members of ISIS and what was done by the freedom fighters in South Africa.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Of course that is true. I have no truck with those who commit those barbaric acts, and nor does any other Member.

Our job is to scrutinise legislation, and that is exactly what we are doing tonight. We can vote to change some of the amendments tonight, or we can return to the issues on Report. However, I hope the Home Secretary understands that a great many of us are deeply concerned about the principle of dealing with British nationals in this way, as we would be in relation to any other country. We are concerned about the long-term consequences: about what such treatment does to those people, and about the increased radicalisation of others. My hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) talked about that.

I have encountered young people who have been attracted to what ISIS is doing. They say that what the west did in Iraq and Afghanistan was appalling, and was questionably legal in the case of Afghanistan and definitely illegal in the case of Iraq. We are living with the consequences of the war on terror of 2001, and if we continue to try to create legal obstacles and make value judgments about people without considering the overall policy we are following, we will return to legislation such as this again and again, year after year.

[Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

That is a humbling thing. It is, however, a lamentable fact that my constituent Omar Hussain appeared on the BBC to express considerable support for ISIS. Does the hon. Gentleman accept that such people need to be subject to special measures when they return to the United Kingdom?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I have no support for ISIS whatsoever, and obviously that should apply to someone who has committed crimes, but we should bear in mind that expressing a political point of view is not in itself an offence. The commission of a criminal act is clearly a different matter, but expressing a point of view, even an unpalatable one, is sometimes quite important in a democracy. We should be slightly cautious about announcing that we will start to deal with people on the basis of a general view that they have expressed. We should think seriously about where our foreign policy has brought us, and what our legislative position now is.

[Steve Baker]

I am very much inclined to agree with what the hon. Gentleman is saying, but the problem is that this particular individual expressed support for beheadings with a knife. I feel that the practical realities mean that we must take special measures in the case of such people.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I would want that person to have some kind of treatment, or I would want measures of some kind to be taken, but expressing support for something and doing it are two rather different things.

There are very unpleasant parallels in the British colonial past. I sat through the hearings in the High Court when the Mau Mau people were seeking compensation. The way in which they had been treated by the British Army in Kenya in 1955 was disgusting and disgraceful beyond belief. We are now going through a horrible, vile period in Syria. We must understand where we have come from and how we will get through this period without denying our own civil liberties and encouraging more people to join in this whole ghastly process.

[Mrs May]

This has been a constructive and well-informed debate. Some Members have raised practical questions and others have raised questions of principle, but it was the right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson) who brought home to us why we must look at the issue of our terrorism legislation when he explained that his own constituency had been affected by not the theory but the actuality of terrorism, and that people had lost their lives as a result. So this is not an academic discussion; we are talking about a real threat to this country, and we need to do everything we can to combat that.

The hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) talked about the balance between civil liberties and national security. I have always taken the view that without our security we cannot enjoy our civil liberties, but I would simply point out that this Government reviewed counter-terrorism legislation when we came in and took a number of steps such as reducing the period of pre-charge detention from 28 to 14 days, so we have been very conscious throughout of the need always to be aware of the freedoms we hold dear and the desire to ensure we can maintain them.

I am grateful for the constructive tone adopted by most of those who spoke in the debate. There will of course be discussion of the details and consideration of how best to achieve our desired objective, but many of those who spoke recognised the legitimate aim of what the Government are doing. It is perfectly legitimate to try to ensure we can manage the return to this country of those who may pose a threat to the people of the UK.

The right hon. Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth) talked about the complexity of the situation we are dealing with, particularly in relation to Syria and Iraq. People going out there, sometimes with the best of intentions, may find themselves being radicalised. People may go out to fight or work with one particular group but get caught up in fighting with other, more extreme terrorist organisations. So it is a very complex picture; I understand that.

The right hon. Gentleman raised the question of whether people would be looked at in categories, and described a number of categories. As I have said, individuals will be considered on a case-by-case basis. Whether they meet the criteria set out in the Bill will be considered, and that will include looking at them in much the way he described, and putting in place the appropriate measures in relation to particular individuals. Of course, such considerations will be made in consultation with operational partners, notably the security services and the police, but that this will be done on a case-by-case basis is a very important element that people should remember.

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[Mrs May]

I remind the hon. Gentleman that the power to remove a passport from an individual—the royal prerogative power—is not subject to an automatic court process. This is more akin to that royal prerogative exercise in the removal of a passport than it is to the imposition of the sort of measures that can be within the terrorism prevention and investigation measures.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Let us be clear: a judicial review is not an appeal; it is an examination of process. It is no more and no less than that. To call it a judicial oversight is really not correct.

[Mrs May]

The point is that there is a process in which the courts consider whether the decision by the Secretary of State to exercise the temporary exclusion order was reasonable. Let me come back to the point made by the hon. Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick). If we look at the difference between a royal prerogative power and the terrorism prevention and investigation measures, the restriction on an individual that can be imposed through a TPIM is far greater than that imposed through the exercise of the royal prerogative power. This power of the temporary exclusion order is more akin to the royal prerogative power, which is why I believe that the proposals in the Bill are appropriate for the sort of measure that we are putting in place.

As the Bill goes through its various stages in this House and the other place, there will be further discussion on the issues that have been raised by hon. Members today. What we are proposing is a new power, but it is both necessary and proportionate. As I have said before, it will not render anyone stateless. It will ensure that those who have been fighting abroad and who want to come back to the United Kingdom do so in a managed way and on our terms, and it is compliant with all our domestic and international legal obligations. I invite all those who have tabled amendments to withdraw them, and the Committee to agree that clauses 2 to 11 should stand part of the Bill.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 2 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clauses 3 to 11 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

To report progress and ask leave to sit again.—(Mel Stride.)

The Deputy Speaker resumed the Chair.

Progress reported; Committee to sit again tomorrow.

Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Khalid Mahmood (Birmingham, Perry Barr) (Lab)]

Today and over the past 10 days or so, the vast majority of people in the Muslim community in the United Kingdom, which numbers between 2.5 million and 3 million people, will have been apprehensive about what the Bill holds for them, how they will come to look at it and in what way they must play a part in delivering this policy and moving it forward. There will, of course, be those who will try to capitalise on that. They will say, “This Bill is about putting you down. It is about doing things to you because you are not regarded as full UK citizens or as belonging to society in the UK.” Those are the people we have to look at and deal with.

I stand before the House as a member of the Muslim community who believes that those people do not speak for me. The ideology that the hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) spoke about is very warped. I refuse to call it a Muslim or Islamic ideology, because in no way does it encompass the beliefs that I have. To me, Islam translates as submission; it is not about torturing people and it is not about killing people of different faiths. Recognising the three great Abrahamic faiths, which belong to the book, and calling any of them kufr is certainly not justified in any way. These people will use whatever little snippet they can grab hold of, try to turn the whole thing upside down, and use that as a recruiting sergeant for their ideology. They did not have the right to cruelly butcher Alan Henning. My respects go to his whole family for what they have suffered. There is certainly no justification for that in any religion of Islam that I support, believe in and will continue to believe in.

Before I consider the issues before us, I pay a huge tribute to the police, not just in Birmingham and the west midlands where I belong, but across the country, and to the security services, which have done a tremendous job over the past decade or so to protect us all from the plots that have been mentioned by the Home Secretary and others. That is what they do, day in, day out, and they deserve huge gratitude.

As for the Bill, the first issue that I wish to raise concerns the strengthened powers of temporary restrictions on travel and the suspension of passports. A number of Members have dealt with that point, so I will try to make my remarks fairly brief. The shadow Home Secretary had a significant amount to say about it, and the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) made some important remarks about it. My hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi) also made some good points about whether legal aid would be granted to the people in question. We need to look more deeply at the proposal, because, as a number of Members have mentioned, it will leave us in a legal quagmire. I only wish the Government had taken some more time to consider it. Unless we are prepared to do that, the problems will not be dealt with properly.

On the subject of passports and people coming into the country, I do not believe that we currently have sufficient border agency staff to deal with the problem. We need to move forward on that if we are to solve it in any way. It was said earlier in the debate that 500 people have travelled to Syria—a figure that I do not necessarily agree with—and that at least half of them have returned. If so, where are they? If we had proper passport control and exit controls, perhaps we would know. Not only are we missing those people coming back, but we are missing a huge opportunity to learn from them how they were radicalised, what their points of contact were and what happened. We miss that opportunity at our peril. I welcome the fact that the shadow Home Secretary said that she wanted to reinstate 1,000 border control personnel to fill that gap, because it is important that we deal with the problem.

I turn now to control orders, if I can call them that. I was in the Chamber when TPIMs were first discussed, and the Government did not really want to listen to the Opposition or the shadow Home Secretary. Unfortunately, we are back here now discussing control orders under different guises and different names, and there are different protestations about what we are supposed to be doing. Control orders are a difficult legal issue, but when people are significantly radicalised, it is important to try to resolve that problem. We have to start tackling it so that we can stop those people spreading their evil ideology and recruiting more people through their presence in the community. We need to find a proper answer, and we have not had the wherewithal to do that—as has been said, two people under TPIMs escaped.

The Government need to consider security arrangements overall. The new budget for the security services is welcome, but the cuts to the police and the forthcoming further cut of 30,000 people will not help. If we are saying that TPIMs are important for the safety and security of our citizens, surely we must consider how we can best put them into effect. Without the personnel on the ground, it will be difficult for us to do that.

I deal now with Prevent. My right hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears) made a fantastic point about the work that she has done, particularly when she was in office. I remember a meeting that we had about some of these issues just before she left office. The issue that I raised at the time was ideology. On the subject of Prevent and how these problems are dealt with, slashing the budget from £17 million to £3 million did not help, nor did giving the responsibility to the Department for Communities and Local Government, which was not bothered about how we dealt the matter or how we moved forward, and which did hardly anything in that respect. We need to consider how we deal with radicalisation through Prevent.

I welcome the measures placed on schools, colleges, universities, prisons and young offenders institutions. Those measures will go some way. I had to deal with the “Trojan horse” schools in Birmingham, and found myself in a very lonely place. Everybody criticised me. Colleagues on the Opposition Benches were not happy with what I said. I had known for some time that there were issues that had to be dealt with. The difficulty for me was that they were not in my constituency, but in the end I got involved because I thought enough was enough. Somebody had to get involved and deal with them.

There were clear signs of what was happening in the classroom. I had taken an interest in such matters before. I spoke to head teachers of those schools, former head teachers who had been excluded from those schools, deputy head teachers, senior teachers who had been excluded from those schools, parents and governors who had been pushed out of those schools. I even spoke to students in those schools. Practices that went on were, for example, boys and girls not being allowed to sit together, and the girls being pushed to the back of the classroom so that they would know their place.

I spoke to one of the parents, who said everything was fine and none of that happened. I asked whether any of her children went to the school in question. She said that both her son and her daughter went there. I asked her to ask one of them. She asked her son. He said, “Yeah, Mum, that happens normally.” The mother asked, “Why don’t I see it?” Her son said, “When you come to school, there’s a different arrangement from what we normally do in class.” On parents evening, the parents were shown the school acting normally, but when they were not present the girls were made to sit at the back and the boys in front.

The schools had a specific interpretation of music and art and photographs of the human form or living form. The children were even told that if they had photographs of their parents or grandparents at home, or photographs of other family members, perhaps deceased, that was not right and was a crime under Islam. That is what was happening. Many people might see it as non-extremist radicalisation, but if a school has a child for eight years and passes on such teaching, what happens when the child leaves and goes to college with that ideology fixed in their mind? We need to think about how we deal with these issues and move forward.

As part of Prevent, we should recognise that we have a generation of lost young people—a small minority, as the hon. Member for New Forest East said, but still far too many.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a very interesting contribution. Does he agree that one of the problems—only one of them—is the high degree of Islamophobia that is reported in many of our newspapers and media all the time? Any discussion about anything to do with the Muslim community rapidly descends into a quite unpleasant area. This is played out in our communities, schools, colleges and streets, and some young people are forced into extreme positions because of it. That is bad, but we should recognise that there is a bigger problem concerning perceptions in society, which has to be challenged.

[Mr Mahmood]

I certainly agree that there are issues of Islamophobia in terms of employment, but it comes to something when people call me Islamophobic because of the work I did with the Trojan horse schools. Control of the press is difficult, given the way it sometimes tries to—excuse the pun—“sex up” certain issues. That is difficult to deal with and we need a far wiser press to do that. Trying to further excite the issue of Islamophobia affects the wider community, and we must look at that.

There are real issues about how we deradicalise our young people, and the way to do that is not to allow a half-way house—as we have done previously—or look to non-extremist organisations to hold that place. If they do that, the ideology of the non-extremist organisation allows issues to foment; we allow people to get the whole of that ideology into place, and it is then easily pushed to the next stage. That is my problem when people say that we can use some of those organisations to prevent extremism. We are currently trying to deal with issues in Birmingham, and Channel and Prevent programmes have been used with some of those organisations.

If we are to provide the safeguards we must consider the issue. Unfortunately we have had the missing link of leadership from within the Muslim community—whether the Muslim Council of Britain, the Muslim Association of Britain, or other national organisations that said they represented Muslims across the community—which did not quite deliver that. To save that lost generation, and future generations, we need a joint effort. We must start ideologically, from the point of Islam, to stop people persuading young people from within the Muslim community—including different schools of Sunni, Shi’a and other schools of thought in Islam—to be ripped away from their parents, community and societies. That is the best way to move forward. I would like to discuss other issues in the Bill, but time does not permit so I will do so at a later stage.

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[Pete Wishart]

I know that my hon. Friend has been paying real attention to some of the conversations that we have been having. That is exactly how Labour behaved. What a Government! They established and effectively monitored an anti-civil libertarian state. My hon. Friend is spot on when he reminds us of the proposal for 90-day detention. The one reason for which I applauded the incoming Conservative Government was that the first thing they did was bring about the bonfire of the ID cards and the national database. Is it not depressing that they have fallen into their old manners and customs? They are almost right back to where the Labour Government were in supporting the creation and maintenance of an anti-civil libertarian state.

We always get this wrong. At the heart of all these counter-terrorism Bills is a critical balancing act. On one hand there is our need for security—the need to make our citizens safe—and on the other hand are the civil liberties that we all enjoy as a result of being part of a democracy.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that one problem is that there is a mentality and a default position that anything to do with national security and terrorism has to be dealt with by secretive special courts and a secretive special process, all designed to protect the security services from any kind of accountability? Does he agree that we should actually rely much more on the basis of the criminal law, so that where people commit criminal acts, they should be tried for that crime?

[Pete Wishart]

The hon. Gentleman reminds me of the last feature I wanted to include in the list of what we always see in these counter-terror Bills, which is the very thing he mentions; it is all about suspicion, and the powers of the Home Secretary and how she will be allowed to exercise them, never testing things in courts, because the evidence is not substantive enough. It is all to do with this idea that somehow we have got to make people safe in this country by proposing all sorts of control mechanisms on suspects. If the Government were serious about this—if they believed and had the courage of their convictions—they should take it to court and test it in the public court, and give people an opportunity to defend themselves. If someone is subject to one of these new TPIMs, they have no means to try to fight their defence; they have no access to having that tested in court. The Government talk about how extremism develops, about radicalisation and about the furthering of ideologies, but when they are doing things like this, it is no surprise that people might take a jaundiced view about some of the things that happen.

I enjoyed the contribution of the hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis). It was good and there was very little I could disagree with. Some of the things that are necessary to tackle extremism are the sorts of things he presented, and many of the things mentioned by the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears) are also absolutely necessary, but we have got to look at ourselves. We have got to look at the decisions we made. We have got to understand the things we have said, passed and done that may have inflamed the situation. If we cannot do that, we are not acting responsibly. We have got to make sure we account for our actions and see what they led to.

I was in the House when we had the debate on the Iraq war, as were other Members, and we said what would happen as a consequence of the Iraq war—an illegal war that inflamed opinion and passions not just in communities here, but communities around the world. We said that there would be a consequence and a reaction. That has come true. That has happened. The reason why we are now having to mop up with this type of legislation and these types of measures is because of some of the critical decisions we took, and some of the appalling and bad decisions we made and are still accounting for.

Deferred Divisions

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Yasmin Qureshi]

I am sorry, but I respectfully disagree with my hon. Friend. Yes, some people have radical views that we would all disagree with, but unless we hear what they have to say, we cannot challenge them.

I speak to a lot of young people all the time, especially young Muslim males, and I listen to what they say. Sometimes they come out with things that do not make me think for a minute that they are going to commit a crime, but show that they have a view about certain issues. I sit there and explain to them, “That is not right and this is how it should be,” and they listen. That kind of discussion is important, and we cannot stifle it.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

My hon. Friend is making an interesting contribution. Does she think that young Muslims, particularly young Muslim men, sometimes feel rather patronised because the only concern of the whole world is the danger of their being radicalised? I have had many discussions with young Muslim men at mosques in my constituency, and in schools and colleges, and their concerns are jobs, housing, health, and career prospects. They sometimes feel that they are being unfairly singled out as a danger to society, when they want to make a contribution just like everybody else.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. He will not be surprised to hear that I entirely agree with him.

As somebody who talks to a lot of young Muslim males, let me explain that they are very fearful and frightened at the moment. We see all the headlines in the newspapers about what happened at the school in Birmingham, for example. Yes, what happened at that school was wrong, but pictures are painted that every Muslim school in the country is acting in that way, or that every single young Muslim male is behaving in a certain way. That kind of narrative is dangerous. Sometimes we in this place need to be careful about what we say as well, because these people are very vulnerable.

While I have no doubt that people I talk to are not going to do anything stupid or wrong at all, it is appropriate to be able to discuss things. In talking about a safe space, I do not mean that people should be allowed to say things unchallenged, but that we should hear what they have to say and then challenge them and tell them that they are wrong. Unless we confront people’s difficult thoughts, we will not be able to challenge them. That is how we deal with this. Professor Kundnani has suggested that proper research should be carried out with some of the people who have returned from Syria and other places to find out their motivation for going there.

Governments and politicians can certainly do a lot more to furnish a counter-narrative. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth) said, we should see on the internet a counter-narrative to the other narrative. That is very important. As the Home Secretary has said, many imams and scholars of Islam living in this country post on websites and blogs and clearly state that the stuff that ISIL and others are doing is completely un-Islamic. It is important for the Government and institutions to push what those people and scholars have written to the forefront of the media, so that the country at large and young people can be educated by it.

Historical Child Sex Abuse

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Thursday 27th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Karen Bradley)]

May I start by congratulating the hon. Member for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk) on securing this important debate, and thank the Backbench Business Committee for giving him the time to address and air the incredibly important issues involved? I welcome the chance to debate them again.

I thank all hon. Members who have contributed to the debate, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), whose experience as a former children’s Minister makes him an expert in this field. I promise my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford), who also has great experience, that I listened to his speech extraordinarily carefully. I have always appreciated his regular suggestions to me on many topics, particularly those under discussion. My hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) also has great knowledge of the issue as a result of his constituency experience, and he has been instrumental in making sure that it is taken seriously and given the prominence it deserves in Parliament. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming) for his contribution, which shed considerable light on the path we have taken to get to this point.

I want to start by being clear on the title of the inquiry under discussion. It is the independent panel inquiry into child sexual abuse. It is not, as the title of this debate on the Order Paper says, an inquiry into “historic” child sex abuse. I say that because survivors have been clear with us that, for them, the abuse they have suffered is not historic—it is not done, it is not finished and it is not in the past. It is something the consequences of which they have to deal with every single day of their lives. The hon. Member for Rochdale opened his speech by mentioning William and John—I know those are not their real names—which really brought home how live this issue is for victims. We should treat it not as historic but as a real, current problem.

As the Home Secretary set out when she spoke to the House on 3 November, the work of the inquiry is hugely important, providing us with a once-in-a-generation opportunity to expose what went wrong in the past and prevent it from going wrong in the future. I want to focus on how we go about finding out the truth about these crimes.

I repeat that it is a live issue. If hon. Members had the opportunity to check their phones or smart devices during the course of the debate, they will have seen the report about the conviction yesterday of a Bristol sex gang jailed for grooming girls:

“Thirteen men have been convicted of a string of child sex crimes in Bristol involving the abuse, rape and prostitution of teenage girls.”

My hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham talked about the awareness we have today and how this crime is now treated differently. We should all be very proud of that. We should also be very pleased that the police are taking such matters seriously and getting successful convictions.

We need, however, to understand what happened in the past. It is important to consider the inquiry’s terms of reference, which are:

“To consider the extent to which State and non-State institutions have failed in their duty of care to protect children from sexual abuse and exploitation; to consider the extent to which those failings have since been addressed; to identify further action needed to address any failings identified; and to publish a report with recommendations.”

That is important because, when a specific crime is uncovered as a result of this work, it must be investigated by the police, law enforcement bodies and the relevant bodies in whichever territorial area the crime took place. The inquiry is looking at the way in which state and non-state institutions have approached child abuse in the past. We need to make sure that we get to the bottom of that, but that does not preclude us from looking at the crimes themselves and ensuring that, wherever those crimes took place, they are properly investigated.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

For the record, am I right in thinking that the commission of inquiry will, if necessary, investigate outside UK jurisdiction—the Channel Islands, for instance—reports of abuses in children’s homes there?

[Karen Bradley]

If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I will come on to territorial extent shortly.

On the chairing of the inquiry, the House will be aware that the first two chairs resigned. It is important to say that they resigned not because they did not have the right credentials, but because they did not command the confidence of survivors. As the Home Secretary made clear, the priority now is to find someone who is suitably qualified and who can also win that confidence.

The Home Secretary and the whole of the Home Office are committed to working with survivors and their representatives in the process of recruiting a new chair. I can update the House today by saying that the Home Secretary has had a number of meetings with survivors of abuse and their representatives. She has not yet finished that process so I am not in a position to provide an update on the outcome of those discussions, as I am sure all hon. Members will understand. However, I can say that survivors have made it clear that they want the inquiry, that they want the right chair to be in place and that they want to continue working with both the Government and the independent panel. I absolutely agree that all that must happen.

The discussions with survivors and their representatives are helping to form the process for appointing a new chair. The Home Secretary will also speak to the panel and parliamentarians as the process develops. We are clear on what survivors require. I can confirm that whoever the Home Secretary chooses as the new chair will be subject to a pre-confirmation hearing in front of the Home Affairs Committee.

In the meantime, nominations for the chair continue to come in to the Home Office. As has been noted, there are already more than 100 nominees on the list. We are confident that among the nominees we can find a suitable chair, someone who will command the overall confidence of survivors and be able to lead the complex and sensitive work of the inquiry.

What is the panel doing? As the Home Secretary set out in her statement to the House on 3 November, the panel will continue to go about its vital work. It is meeting weekly in the run-up to Christmas. Panel members have already attended two listening meetings with victims and survivors. Two further regional meetings will be held before Christmas, and four regional meetings will be held in the new year. The meetings will provide an early opportunity for survivors to give their views, and they will help to inform the panel on how to go about its work.

Child Abuse Inquiry

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Monday 3rd November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I am having a number of discussions with the Department for Education and I understand that the Education Secretary is looking at the advice available in relation to PSHE. A number of issues that have been discussed in this House over time come under that particular heading. We all want to ensure that young people and children are being given appropriate advice and guidance.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I commend the Home Secretary, particularly for her earlier remarks about assessing the credibility of the accusations rather than the credibility of either the accuser or the accused. That is a very important starting point. She also seemed to indicate that there would be a degree of interim reporting, which I welcome, because this is clearly going to be a massive undertaking. Does she envisage that the whole inquiry could turn into almost a standing commission? That might not be a bad thing, because it might be necessary in the longer term.

Finally, in my own borough there have been complaints about Islington children’s homes in the past and the council has investigated them. The council is in a very different place now, but nevertheless it welcomes the inquiry and will co-operate with it. As the Home Secretary is fully aware, many of the children who were abused in children’s homes also went to homes in other parts of the country—in some cases to the Channel Islands. It is therefore very important that the inquiry is able to investigate across local authority administrative areas and, indeed, across jurisdictions to ascertain what happened, tragically, to many very vulnerable young children who were taken to homes in the Channel Islands.

[Mrs May]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments, especially his remarks on the willingness of Islington council to participate in the work of the inquiry. His idea of a standing commission has not been raised before. Although it will take time for the panel of inquiry to complete its work, I do not want there to be an expectation that it will just carry on because the impact of its report might be lost and, crucially, that would affect our ability to act on its findings. I expect the panel to make interim reports, as I said earlier, so that any necessary actions can be undertaken as soon as possible, and so that survivors and others can see the ongoing work and continue to have confidence in that work.

Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill (Business of the House)

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Tuesday 15th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I acknowledge your entreaties to be very brief, Mr Speaker. We would not normally be discussing timetable motions at any length at all, but this goes to the very lifeblood of what Parliament is about.

The Bill has been introduced in a big hurry. There has been no public consultation, no parliamentary scrutiny and very little public debate. It is a major piece of legislation that has global implications for what this country does. It relates to the surveillance of everybody’s telephones, internet and everything else. It is a massive intrusion into people’s lives. The Government are doing a great disservice to Parliament by insisting that we debate the whole of Second Reading by 5 pm, amendments by 9 pm and Third Reading by 10 pm, for the Bill to go to the Lords and come back here again on Thursday all done, and then have a sunset clause that goes on for two years.

This is not an appropriate way for Parliament to be treated and every MP should think very carefully. Why are we here? We have been elected to hold the Executive to account and to scrutinise legislation. This timetable motion is a travesty of what scrutiny of legislation should be about. I, for one, will oppose the timetable motion, so that we have a proper opportunity to scrutinise and debate the Bill.

Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Tuesday 15th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

Obviously, the Wilson doctrine applies to parliamentarians. It does not absolutely exclude the use of these powers against parliamentarians, but it sets certain requirements for those powers to be used in relation to a parliamentarian. It is not the case that parliamentarians are excluded and nobody else in the country is, but there is a certain set of rules and protocols that have to be met if there is a requirement to use any of these powers against a parliamentarian.

In relation to intercept, I mentioned the need for agreement from a Secretary of State. If the National Crime Agency wants to listen to the telephone calls of a drugs trafficker, or the Security Service wants to read the e-mails of a suspected terrorist, agreement is needed from a Secretary of State first. I see warrant applications day in, day out, and can personally attest to the care with which they are prepared, the seriousness which those applying for them attach to complying with the statutory restrictions and the gravity of the cases with which they deal. Warrant applications provide the detailed intelligence background that forms the basis on which a person is being sought.

Ministerial oversight, which I share with the Foreign Secretary and the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, is a vital safeguard to ensure that this sensitive and intrusive power is used only when it is necessary and proportionate. But in the absence of explicit provisions in legislation, as has been mentioned in a number of interventions, some overseas companies have started to question whether the law applies to them. Indeed, as the Prime Minister said last week, some companies are already saying that they can no longer work with us on interception unless UK law is clarified immediately. This Bill does exactly that.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

Will the Home Secretary reflect again on the intervention by the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis)? If a foreign Government who are routine abusers of human rights passed the same legislation through their Parliament, could they then intervene on an internet service provider based in this country to obtain data on their citizens, in the same way that the British Government take that power for themselves in another jurisdiction?

[Mrs May]

The power that we are taking is to be able to serve a warrant in relation to somebody who is based overseas. There would be implications for anyone attempting to apply to serve something into the UK in relation to the operation of that under UK law.

Clauses 4 and 5 make it clear that RIPA applies to all the companies that provide communications services to people in the United Kingdom, regardless of where those companies happen to be based. The final clause contains the sunset provision, which means that the legislation will expire at the end of 2016. I recognise that a number of Members have suggested that this sunset clause should be at an earlier stage. I say to them that the reason it has been put at the end of 2016 is that we will have a review by David Anderson which will report before the general election. It is the intention that a Joint Committee of Parliament will look at his work and that of the Intelligence and Security Committee. It will then be necessary to put the required legislation in place. If anyone stops to think about that timetable, it is clear that it could not be completed by the end of this year.

Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Tuesday 15th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hanson]

My daughters tell me that I should get involved in Instagram, but it is a foreign country to me at the moment.

The point that I am making—perhaps in a jocular way—is that new clause 7 refers to “changing technologies”, which include technologies that we would not have envisaged even a few years ago, and others that may be coming down the line over the next few years. Those are the technologies that the independent reviewer should be considering.

I am warming to new clause 7. It also refers to “proportionality” in relation to

“the effectiveness of existing legislation”,

and requires the independent reviewer to make a case

“for new or amending legislation.”

Helpfully, the new clause requires the independent reviewer to report to the House by 1 May 2015. Mr Hood, I suspect that you and I will be focusing on other matters on that day, given the potential date of the general election, but it is handily placed in that any incoming Government, of whatever colour and composition, would be able to pick up the report. I hope that that helps my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich East. The report would be published by the Prime Minister of the day, it would be possible to ensure that it was open to the public and laid before Parliament, and any new Government could act on it in a way that I hope would be proportionate to whatever Members wanted to happen at that particular time.

Let me say, in summary, that there are two issues that I want the Committee to examine. First, may we have a regular review of this Act? There are many options, and I hope that the Minister will respond positively to one of them shortly. If we can agree on that, we shall have taken a major step towards meeting some of the concerns that have been expressed by people outside the House who have contacted us today.

The second issue relates to the longer-term review. My right hon. and hon. Friends and I have tabled new clause 1, and the Home Secretary has tabled new clause 7. My warm feeling towards new clause 7 suggests that the Minister could persuade me to support it. All that remains is amendment 2, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich East, which would shorten the life of the Act by changing the welcome sunset clause date of 2016 to 2014. I do not want to say too much at this stage, because my hon. Friend has not yet spoken, but I will make one point that I think deserves consideration and a response from him.

We are engaging in what is admittedly a very speedy procedure, involving a day and a half of debate, and the House of Lords will do the same when it debates the Bill over the next two days. My hon. Friend is proposing that the sunset date should be, effectively, December this year. That means that we would go through this procedure again in December, and in January and February next year, after only a short period during which the new arrangements will have been in place.

I suggest to my hon. Friend that the amendment that we have tabled, in three forms, proposing a formal review by the independent reviewer in December and every six months thereafter, would meet the concerns about the legislation and any flaws and faults that we see in it. I accept that my hon. Friend may not take the same view, but I am making him that offer. I think that there is a mechanism that can enable a report to say, in six months’ time, “This has worked well”, or “This it has worked badly”, and to suggest tweaks that can be made.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

The Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act 1989 was also subject to a six-monthly review, but it went on for 10 years having six-monthly reviews before eventually being replaced by the Terrorism Act 2000, so that did not actually end the Act at all.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Huppert]

As I have said, I would be very happy to stay longer and have a less rushed Bill. We need to get this passed properly, with enough time to get the review going before the summer. I am happy to stay here next week; I have said that quite publicly and I have said it in this place. I take my hon. Friend’s point on that issue.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

rose—

[Dr Huppert]

Let me make a little more progress. The type of change that I want to see is fundamental to how RIPA works. I wish to have a system that retains communications data for a very short period—a week or a month—so that we can find out, say, what happened just before somebody died yesterday. It should not be available for any longer unless a preservation order is applied for. That sort of system would massively reduce the amount of evidence that is kept on people, but would allow it to be available for those very serious cases that all of us want to see investigated. That is the sort of system that I would like to see, but that is not an easy thing to write down. It would take many, many months of work to try to write that into a form that we can make work.

There is another problem, which runs right at the base of this. It is what I hope to talk about when we get on to the next collection of amendments, my new clauses 3 and 4. The Home Office simply does not have evidence on how this information is used and for what purposes. As I understand it—I am sure the Minister will correct me if I am wrong—the only information on how communications data are used is based on a two-week snapshot survey of police forces. What sort of crime is it? We know that data are used and we know of many examples. It is only that small survey that tells us exactly what sort of things they are used for. We need to have that data to make a sensible decision. The more data we retain, the more things we can do to combat crime, but the more invasive it is. We cannot set a sensible balance without that data. The Home Office urgently needs to collect that data but it will not have it in the next couple of months.

I worry—I have seriously considered and agonised over this—that what is being suggested would not put us in a better place. The alternative to having a Bill that started almost straight away would be to wait a bit longer—until November—and have a new Bill. We could use that time to get a bit of information for a review, but then we would again be forced to fast-track the legislation. We would go through exactly the same process, with not that many Members here debating it, and we would have exactly the same problems. That would not help and would not take us to where I want to be, because I am passionate about getting rid of the awful system that we have and coming up with something better. As I said earlier, we can have more security, more civil liberties and more protection, which is something that I have debated on many occasions.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I do not wish to be unkind, but the hon. Gentleman is confusing me. He says that he would sit until next week to ensure that we considered the Bill properly. I agree with that, but it will not happen. However, what is the difference between that and having a six-month sunset clause? That would give us six months in which to hold a consultation and a debate. The Government would then have the opportunity to bring forward legislation in the light of the responses received during the consultation.

[Dr Huppert]

The answer to the hon. Gentleman’s point is that we simply do not have the time to make that happen. We cannot take account of the detailed reviews that are necessary. I totally accept that we could do a bit more, but it would not fundamentally change where we are. It would not allow for the data collection and information gathering to work up much better proposals, which is what we need to make progress.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Lewis]

I always love it when an Opposition Member precisely anticipates my final point. My love, affection and esteem for coalition politics are legendary. I want Ministers to give me the explanation—so far, we have been denied it—that there is indeed a rational alternative to the paranoid belief currently abroad that all this is being rushed through because we wanted to stifle debate, were afraid what the public would say and feared the context of all the revelations of secrets.

Let us get to the heart of it: if the truth is that it took this long for the Conservatives and the Liberals to agree what they wanted to introduce, there is nothing to be ashamed of in saying so; it is a natural downside of coalition politics. I appeal to my hon. Friend the Minister, who does these things with such panache and dependability, to put his head above the parapet and simply say that this was one of the many disadvantages of coalition politics—which Conservative Members and Labour Members look forward to seeing the back of in a few months’ time.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I support amendment 2, which was tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich East (Mr Watson), who made his case extremely well.

Surely the issue is simply this: Parliament is here to scrutinise what the Executive do and to try to represent public opinion. We need to take advice from the public, organisations, lobby groups and so on, but all I have managed to find was an interesting and quite useful briefing from Liberty that came in yesterday—all credit to Liberty for getting a reasonable briefing together in a very short time—and a series of articles in The Guardian and one or two other newspapers.

But this Bill has massive implications in relation to the ability of the state to dip in and out of people’s telephone and e-mail accounts. Because it takes on itself a global reach, it has huge implications all around the world. If we are to take the global reach to dip into e-mail accounts all around the world, what are we to do, as the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) said in an intervention, when an unpalatable regime decides to do the same and pitches up in a British court and says, “Well, you’ve taken these rights unto yourself. Why shouldn’t we do exactly the same?”? The implications of the Bill go a very long way indeed.

I am always suspicious when the House is summoned in an emergency and told, “This is an absolutely overriding, desperate emergency, so we’ve got to get this thing through all its stages in one day,” and Front Benchers from both sides of the House get together and agree that there is a huge national emergency. I am sorry, but what is the emergency?

There was a court decision some months ago, about which the Government have since done very little and made very few statements. There has apparently been an interesting debate between the Liberal Democrats and the Conservative party in the coalition. In the interests of public scrutiny, we should be given the minutes of the discussion between the Deputy Prime Minister and the Prime Minister, and of all the sofa discussions that have no doubt taken place. I thought that sofa politics ended with new Labour, but apparently it still goes on in Downing street. We need to know the nature of that debate.

What is the objection to a sunset clause that would bring the—to me—very unpalatable Bill to a conclusion in six months’ time? Such a clause would at least give lawyers an opportunity to make a detailed case, and the Government an opportunity to explain their case a bit better. It would give the Home Affairs Committee a chance to discuss it, and the Joint Committee on Human Rights a chance to examine it, which we as Members of Parliament would also be able to do.

In an age of social media, it is interesting to see the numbers of people following the debate online and live. They are interested in social media, privacy and communication, and they all have views and opinions. I have no idea what all their views and opinions are. All I know is that as an individual Member of Parliament, I, like all colleagues in the Chamber, must vote on this piece of legislation without having had the chance to reflect or consult.

This is not a good day for Parliament. It is not a good advertisement for Parliament. It is not a good advertisement for democracy. The very least that we can do is to agree that this wrong-headed piece of legislation will expire by the end of this year and force the Government to come up with something more palatable, more carefully thought out and more sensible in respect of the protection of privacy and civil rights for all. That is why we were elected to Parliament. We should be given the opportunity to do our job, and should not have to lie down in front of a steamroller and accept something that we know in our hearts to be ill thought out and wrong.

[Caroline Lucas]

I spoke a lot in the debate earlier and was not going to speak again until my colleague, the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), reminded us of how this debate looks to the public outside this place.

As we have all said, this issue is of huge importance. Almost no issue that we deal with affects people as directly as their personal communications, and, therefore, is as sensitive. That is why it is so negative that we have given the impression that we simply do not care what people think. The public are pretty disengaged from MPs and Parliament, and do not have much respect for what goes on in this place. Today was an opportunity to begin to build bridges with them and to demonstrate that we can take these issues and their concerns seriously, and I feel so sad about the fact that Parliament seems to have flunked it. We have decided not to build bridges and have given the public the impression that we do not take ourselves seriously, so why should they take what we do in this place seriously?

Many arguments have been advanced on why it is not necessary to pass the Bill in such a short time. There is no serious argument that this is an emergency. If there were, it would have been dealt with three months ago. People can see through that. Their concerns and disillusionment with this Parliament will be redoubled by this process, instead of being addressed by it.

One reason why I support amendment 2 to the sunset clause is that it would rescue something from this unhappy state. If we at least said that over the coming months, we will do this piece of work properly and a review will happen, we could build some confidence among the public. As it is, I regret to say that we have lost yet more public confidence today, at a time when we can least afford to do so.

Immigration Bill

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Wednesday 7th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

I will make two points in answer to my hon. Friend. First, the decision of the Secretary of State would be reviewable by the courts. It would, therefore, be open to the individual to challenge the decision and the reasonableness of the Home Secretary’s determination. Secondly, I point him to amendment (b), under which there will be an independent review of the power, which will report after one year and then on a rolling three-yearly basis. That will provide clarity about how the power is being used and give the reassurance that he has sought to exact.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

Will the Minister clarify the point that he has just made? Is he suggesting that there will be a right of appeal against a ministerial decision, or will there only be a right to undertake a judicial review, which of course would relate to process and not to the facts of the case?

[James Brokenshire]

There is the ability to challenge deprivation decisions. Many cases have been brought before the courts that relate to the Home Secretary’s use of the existing deprivation powers. That will continue to apply for the power and the amendments relating to the specific circumstances in which someone may be rendered stateless, subject to the Home Secretary’s being satisfied of their ability to seek the citizenship of another country. The existing challenge, process and procedures will continue to apply.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hanson]

The Minister should reflect on that. He will know that the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 specified just two grounds on which citizenship could be removed: it could be removed from those who had gained it through fraud, and it could be removed

“if the Secretary of State is satisfied that the person has done anything seriously prejudicial to the vital interests of…the United Kingdom”,

provided that the revocation of citizenship did not render the person stateless. That is the point, and that is the position that was taken by the Labour Government in the 2002 Act, about nine to 12 months after the horrendous events of 9/11. Surely, if we made that judgment in 2002, at the height of concern about the impact of 9/11, the Minister will be able to back it up in 2014. If he cannot, let him justify that to a Joint Committee. Lord Pannick said in another place:

“The Joint Committee will also want to consider whether the benefits, if any, of the proposed new power justify the… international implications.” .”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 7 April 2014; Vol. 753, c. 1169.]

How can the British Government lecture others, or promulgate international law, when the Bill proposes the establishment of circumstances which, in my view, would break international requirements across the board? The Minister says that that is not the case, which is a view that we need to discuss.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I agree with what my right hon. Friend has just said, but is not one of the fundamental problems the fact that what the Government are doing has about it more than a whiff of Executive decision making on major issues to which there is no simple legal remedy? The Government are trying to avoid a court process, and to give powers to an elected politician over an independent judiciary.

[Mr Hanson]

I am grateful for that because my hon. Friend anticipates the concerns we had and that we raised in the debate on 30 January. The proposal then from the Minister was that the Home Secretary could determine, on reasonable grounds, the deprivation of citizenship. There was no judicial oversight promised. The Minister has today brought forward amendments (a) and (b) which would provide for a review. I do not happen to think they go far enough. I think we need to stick to the original idea of an examination by a Joint Committee. The Minister, however, has brought forward those amendments which move slightly from his original proposal of some six or seven weeks ago. Why has he done that? He has done so because he has been roasted in another place and, this proposal having been considered by Members of that other place, has lost the vote quite considerably. Yet today we find that, rather than listening to those concerns, the Minister wishes to vote down this amendment and has brought forward proposals that, again, I think do not go far enough.

--- Later in debate ---

[James Brokenshire]

Let me reassure the right hon. Gentleman, and the hon. Member for Wigan, that all children who are dealt with by means of the national referral mechanism—with which the right hon. Gentleman will be familiar—will be provided with advocates as soon as they are identified as suspected victims of trafficking. We intend appropriate support to be provided as soon as children have been referred.

Let me now deal with Lords amendments 1 to 4. When the Bill left this House, clause 1 provided for regulations specifying, first, who would count as a family member for the purpose of removal and, secondly, the arrangements for giving notice of removal. The power to make regulations is exercisable by statutory instrument following the negative resolution procedure.

The Joint Committee on Human Rights asked why the original clause gave discretion over whether family members should be notified of removal when we had clearly stated during a debate that they would always be notified. The Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee believed that the definition of a family member should be in the Bill, and that delegation was inappropriate. The Lords amendments are designed to address all the concerns raised by the two Committees: they would insert in the Bill the definition of family members, the requirement always to notify them of removal, and the effect of the notice.

The Government have transformed the approach to returning families with children, in line with their commitment to end the detention of children for immigration purposes. Lords amendments 5 to 9 and 29 to 34 give legislative effect to our current policies on family returns by putting key elements of the new process into primary legislation. That will guarantee that the fundamental elements of the approach cannot be changed without parliamentary oversight and debate.

First, the amendments prevent families from being removed for 28 days after any appeal against a refusal of leave has been completed. That will ensure that they will always have an opportunity to consider their options and avoid enforced return. Secondly, we are placing the independent family returns panel on a statutory footing: its advice must be sought on how best to safeguard and promote the welfare of children in every family returns case in which return is enforced. Thirdly, we are providing specific legislative protection for unaccompanied children so that they are not held in immigration removal centres when we are trying to return them. Finally, we are providing a separate legal basis for pre-departure accommodation, independent of other removal centres. It will be used only for holding families with children and only within the existing maximum time limits.

I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather) and others have tabled some manuscript amendments to Lords amendments 6, 7 and 8, which were debated in Committee and again on Report in the other place. I am sympathetic to her intentions and the intentions of those who have supported her manuscript amendments. However, although I understand the motivation, her amendments (a) and (b) to Lords amendment 6 and amendment (a) to Lords amendment 7 would widen the definition of families in the family returns process and apply the 28-day period during which a child, relevant parent or carer may not be removed or required to leave the UK to parents who do not live with the child as part of a family unit. They would also stipulate that we could only separate a child from their parents for child protection reasons.

These amendments do not reflect the Government’s returns process. We will always seek to ensure that families remain together during their return, but there are exceptional circumstances in which temporary separation may be necessary. For example, where there is a public protection concern or, indeed, a risk to national security, a dangerous individual might not be considered a threat to their own children but could be a risk to the wider public and we would therefore need to remove them as soon as possible, which might require a family separation.

Manuscript amendment (a) to Lords amendment 8 would mean no unaccompanied child could be detained under Immigration Act powers. Lords amendment 8 reflects the operational reality that unaccompanied children may need to be held for short periods in transit to a port of departure or at the port awaiting removal. These types of removal are rare, but if we do not hold children safely in very limited circumstances while they are travelling unaccompanied in and out of the UK, we increase the risk that they may come to harm by falling prey to traffickers or even absconding. Lords amendment 8 will ensure that detention is for the shortest possible time.

Lords amendments 10 and 11 deal with appeals, and the Government have reformed appeal rights in this Bill to reduce complexity and provide the most effective and appropriate remedy for all cases. Administrative review will provide a faster and cheaper way of correcting caseworking errors, but Lords amendment 10 provides further assurance. It requires that the Secretary of State commission the independent chief inspector within a year of clause 11 being commenced to prepare a report on administrative review. That report must address the specific concerns raised about the effectiveness and independence of administrative review. Lords amendment 11 makes a technical correction to clause 11(5), which provides that the tribunal may not hear a new matter that the Secretary of State has not considered unless the Secretary of State consents to its doing so.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

On the question of administrative review, is it not really a way of avoiding the inconvenience —from the Home Office’s point of view—of a proper appeal where the individual can be properly represented and the whole case be considered? Is it not just another example of trying to get rid of the impediments of any legal appeal system on behalf of the individual?

Asylum Seekers (Support)

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Thursday 10th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his comments on the process on asylum claims. It is important to recognise that there has been a growth in the number of people seeking asylum in this country—the increase has been about 8%, although that is not as big as has been seen in some other European countries because of continuing crises in various parts of the world. Some decisions do take too long, but the Government are addressing the problem: most decisions are dealt with quickly. In 2012-13, 78% of decisions were made within six months. I agree that decisions should be taken more quickly. Our visa and immigration command is looking at this work carefully and is putting more caseworkers in place to support that activity, which is important.

My hon. Friend makes a connection in respect of the rate of support and Department for Work and Pensions levels, but asylum support is provided for different purposes. It is provided to meet essential living needs only and is temporary in nature. I highlight the fact that there are other services—accommodation and utilities—that are provided free which other benefits would seek to take into account.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

This ought to trigger a review by the Home Office of its asylum policy, given the points raised by the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) and others about the very slow response to initial applications and in dealing with those who wish to appeal against an initial refusal—many of these appeals are granted. Will the Minister look at the misery, destitution and waste of human resources that comes from keeping asylum seekers in desperate poverty, and not allowing them to work and contribute to our society and economy?

[James Brokenshire]

I agree that it is important to take decisions as speedily as possible to ensure that those who are entitled to the full humanitarian protection of this country receive that support and can continue with their lives, and that those who are not entitled can then be removed from this country so that the system is seen to be upheld.

We judge that the levels of support are appropriate, but we keep them under review. We will be reviewing the level of current support in the coming months, as I have committed to do in this House.