Lord Walney
Main Page: Lord Walney (Crossbench - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Walney's debates with the Home Office
(5 years, 2 months ago)
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Sajid Javid
My right hon. Friend might be reassured to know that when we cannot prevent someone’s return, we will in all cases seek to question them, investigate them and, where appropriate, prosecute them. Even if they are mono-national, if they are British citizens, we can strip them of their passport, have temporary exclusion orders and manage their return.
John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Ind)
Wonderful tributes have been paid to Paul Flynn, and few things demonstrated his place as a wonderful contrarian so well as the fact that he lent his support to my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall) in the 2015 leadership contest despite the fact that he seemed to disagree with all her major policy points. Amid those tributes, I am sure that the House will want to register its thanks to Sir Charles Farr, the head of the Joint Intelligence Committee, who passed away last week.
The Home Secretary talks about people facing consequences for supporting terror, but he knows that far too many of them do not face consequences. He talks about doing whatever it takes to bring people to justice, so why is he not making the very valuable designated area offence, for which many of us campaigned, retrospective? Does he really think that the law as it stands, under which people can go to Syria, make themselves jihadi brides and offer their support to foreign fighters yet not have their prosecution guaranteed, is strong enough? Surely it is not. What measures will he take?
Sajid Javid
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to mention Charles Farr, who has sadly passed away, and to point out the huge contribution that Charles made to the security of this country, both at the Home Office and as the chairman of the JIC. I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman mentioned that, and he was absolutely right to do so.
The hon. Gentleman talks about the laws that are available and the tools for prosecution, and particularly about the new powers in the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act 2019. These are far-reaching powers, and we tried to prepare a Bill that had the support of the House while being well balanced and offering due process. As for the designated powers procedures, as I said earlier, we started work on that in anticipation of Royal Assent, which has now happened. We hope to bring an order to the House as soon as possible.