Far-right Violence and Online Extremism

Debate between Yasmin Qureshi and Ben Wallace

Monday 18th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

I have long been a good friend of Baroness Warsi. I read her book and met with her, and indeed I encouraged her to apply to be the extremism commissioner at the time the post was advertised, because I thought she would bring a good measure of sense to dealing with some of those issues. Regrettably, she did not take up my invitation, but it would have been a good thing.

I am not making excuses for Islamophobia. Islamophobia exists. Islamophobia is racism. Islamophobia should be dealt with. If it happens in my party, we should deal with it and we should deal with it forthwith, and I am happy to do that wherever I see it. We should all make sure we deal with it. I totally agree with the hon. Lady: it is racism and where we see it we should stop it in its tracks.

[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)]

There is an old expression, “The pen is mightier than the sword.” Words, written and spoken, have consequences. Over the past 20 years we have seen the rise of anti-migrant sentiment, anti-Muslim sentiment and anti-black and minority ethnic community sentiment, not only in the United Kingdom, Europe and America, but in Australia. Politicians and media online, in print and in other forms, newspaper moguls and editors such as the owners of Fox News and Murdoch, the Daily Express, The Sun and others have consistently run lies about all those communities. It is not surprising that some people seeing this day in, day out, start to hate those communities. We have established writers and columnists in this country, such as Katie Hopkins, Rod Liddle and Melanie Phillips, encouraging all this. When will we seriously tackle the issue of what is in the media?

[Mr Wallace]

I still believe that the best way to challenge the ignorance and misinformation spread by the likes of Katie Hopkins is to call them out and challenge their argument. The best way to bring these people down and show them to be the Walter Mittys or the fake people they are is to put their arguments to the test, because time and again they fail. I read the online advice published by groups such as al-Qaeda; it is by made-up half-trained imams who do not know what they are talking about when they talk about Islam. I see the neo-Nazi and National Action stuff; it is written by pretty much imbeciles making two plus two equal 10. The best way to expose them to our young people is to challenge them, because when they are challenged in any forum they fall over at the first test. That is a good way to put them out of business for good.

Foreign Fighters and the Death Penalty

Debate between Yasmin Qureshi and Ben Wallace

Thursday 11th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

Every week, I see cases of exclusions. We exclude people in line with the legislation. If they are from the EU, we have some powers to exclude, and if they are from outside the EEA, we have more powers to exclude. We exclude people and, as I said, deprive people of their citizenship where the intelligence evidence points to the fact that either there is no alternative or they pose a considerable threat.

The biggest challenge for the future is safe spaces—people’s ability to communicate through end-to-end encryption, go online or go to a warzone such as north Syria, where they can play a part in planning and directing attacks. We, as a country, have very little reach into those places, either to affect behaviour or indeed get justice delivered. One of the biggest challenges in this case is that the detention of these individuals is not by a state; it is by a non-state actor in a prison in north Syria, which is a warzone. That is a real barrier to what we can do in the pursuit of justice for the victims of the crimes that these people are accused of.

[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)]

May I remind the House that this urgent question is about the death penalty? People are against the death penalty either because it is inhumane or because there could be a miscarriage of justice, and we should remember that. We either believe in the death penalty or we do not. We do not have the death penalty in this country, which means that whenever we deal with these issues, we must at all times seek assurance that there will be no death penalty. That is the question here.

[Mr Wallace]

As I said earlier, this Government, the coalition Government and the Labour Government before it have, in exceptional circumstances or where there are strong reasons, not sought death penalty assurances. That has been the long-standing position of successive Governments under the OSJA. That is partly because, while we oppose the death penalty in principle, we have to balance the options on the table.

These two individuals are not United Kingdom citizens in this country; they are in a country where there is a war. People seem to forget that. If they were in this country, the courts would have much more power to gather evidence, put them on trial and so on, but they are not, and therefore we are guided by the OSJA, published in 2011 under the coalition Government. It seems, having looked through previous records, that other Governments have on occasions viewed something as exceptional or having strong reasons not to seek death penalty assurances.

Kerslake Arena Attack Review

Debate between Yasmin Qureshi and Ben Wallace

Wednesday 28th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady, but think I need to check her assertion. I have been to the Merseyside joint control room, where they do incredible amounts of good work. The north-west fire control is a regional control room. The report does not point to that as the failure; the point was the failure in the inter-agency liaison officer not being able necessarily to take the right decisions, and their being involved in almost too many of the decisions; it was not about the location or organisation of the control room. Before we suddenly seek to change that in the north-west, we should look at the report’s findings, which were very much about the roles of a few individuals and the decisions that they took on the night.

[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)]

May I put on record the fact that after the attack, many people volunteered their services, whether they were cab drivers, or restaurant owners who opened their restaurants to the victims and everyone around?

My constituent Rebecca Ridgeway is a disabled person who uses a wheelchair. When she went into the arena, she had to be taken out of her wheelchair and placed on a seat. When the incident occurred, there was nobody there to look after her. In fact, somebody came in, put her in her wheelchair and she was taken out—not by the arena staff or the security staff, but by a member of the public. As a result of the incident, she has not been able to leave her house, so I visited her in her home. She told me that there has been no counselling, psychiatric services or psychologists available in sufficient numbers to deal with her and many other people who suffered trauma from the incident. Will the Minister provide proper funding for that?

[Mr Wallace]

I am sorry to hear about the hon. Lady’s constituent’s experience. First, I am absolutely happy to take the detail of that case to event organisers throughout the country, whom I meet regularly, to make sure that they think about disability. Secondly, with regard to her particular constituent, I have met the victims liaison team and many of the health trusts in the region, and they are delivering services, so if she is not getting that, will the hon. Lady please tell me the details? I will take that, either with her or on my own, to the relevant health trust to make sure that her constituent is given counselling and support. Many others are getting it and it is wrong that she is not.