Lord Cryer
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Counter Terrorism Policing: Arrests
Lord Cryer Excerpts(1 day, 23 hours ago)
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Lord Cryer (Lab)
My Lords, I appreciate my noble friend’s efforts and words in coming here today to make this full Statement, but—I think he sensed there was a but coming—on a subject I have raised often, in both this place and the other place, as night follows day, the malign hand of the IRGC will be in the middle of this. This looks like a serious escalation in Iran’s terror threat towards the West, and particularly towards Britain. I am not asking him to comment on that; I am just giving him and the House the benefit of my views. Surely now we are in a position where we should move to full the full banning of the IRGC.
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
It is no surprise that my noble friend raises the issue that he has. I know he has raised it in both this House and in the House of Commons when he was a Member of that establishment. As I have said, I cannot routinely comment on proscription decisions. The House will be aware of our grave concern, long before these operations, about the arrest of Iranian nationals and the activities of different arms of the Iranian state in the UK, putting people’s safety at risk on UK soil. We are continuously undertaking serious security assessments, which are being instigated and updated as a result of incidents. We will continue to resolve and examine action that can be taken and will keep the House updated as soon as possible.
I know this may not be helpful to my noble friend at this moment, but the review that Jonathan Hall KC is undertaking for the Government has been completed and will be published in relatively short order. There will be a response from the Government to that, which will cover some of the issues that my noble friend has mentioned to date. Counterterrorism proscribing is an important tool, and we are not going to shy away from it, but we are waiting for that review to give factual information for us to make decisions, which we will report to the House at the earliest opportunity.