Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I caution the hon. Gentleman about the terminology that he uses in relation to the power. He has used the term “exile”, but the proposal is not about saying that people cannot return. It is possible for people to return, but they will return on the basis that we have set out in the Bill. Their return will be managed and we will have some control over it.

In response to an earlier intervention, I said that the change that we were making to the threshold for TPIMs was from “reasonable suspicion” to “the balance of probabilities”. The change is actually from “reasonable belief” to “the balance of probabilities”. I apologise to the House for having given the wrong impression about that.

Aside from the diplomatic efforts that we must make and the work we must do with those in the region, I have always been clear that we would keep our terrorism laws and capabilities under review. As the House knows, the first and most important duty of Government is the protection and security of their citizens. As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister made clear to the House on 1 September, we must ensure that our law enforcement and intelligence agencies have the powers that they need to keep us safe. The Bill will strengthen our existing powers so that we can disrupt people’s ability to travel abroad to fight, as well as their ability to return to the country. It will enhance our ability to monitor and control the actions of those in the UK who pose a threat and it will help to combat the underlying ideology that feeds, supports and sanctions terrorism.

Part 1 of the Bill will provide the police and MI5 with two new powers that will significantly enhance their ability to restrict the travel of those suspected of seeking to engage in terrorism-related activity overseas. First, it will provide the police, or a designated Border Force officer under their direction, with the power to seize a passport at ports. That will allow them to disrupt the travel of individuals, and give operational agencies the time to investigate and assess whether long-term disruptive action should be taken, on a case-by-case basis. Such action could be taken through, for example, criminal prosecution; the exercise of the royal prerogative to refuse or cancel a passport; a TPIM; deprivation of citizenship; or deportation. The use of this power will be properly safeguarded through a range of measures, including the need for a senior officer’s approval; an additional check by a more senior officer independent of the investigation after 72 hours; an initial retention period of 14 days for the passport; and a court review of the ongoing need to retain a passport, where a judge can allow more time for the police to continue their investigation—up to 30 days. There will also be a statutory code of practice for officers on how to exercise the power, and we intend to publish this code for consultation shortly.

Secondly, the Bill will create a power to issue temporary exclusion orders, to which I have already referred in response to interventions. These orders can temporarily disrupt the return to the UK of a British citizen suspected of involvement in terrorist activity abroad, ensuring that when individuals do return, it is done in a manner that we control. This power will cancel an individual’s travel documents and add them to watch lists, notifying the UK if they attempt to travel. Depending on the individual case, it may also require the individual to comply with certain activities once they are back in the UK. There has been a lot of interest in the nature of this power, as we have seen already this afternoon, but I want to reassure the House that it will not render an individual stateless. All those concerned will have the right, which their citizenship guarantees, to return to the UK. But when they do, it will be on our terms—quite possibly in the company of a police officer. Once they are back in the UK, the police will interview them, in order to explore their activities abroad, and can make them subject to further requirements. We are discussing this proposal with other Governments, in order to agree how it will work best in practice. So far these discussions have been constructive, and this proposal is consistent with all our existing international legal obligations.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

Will the Home Secretary clarify something so that we can understand the implications of the legislation? What are the circumstances in which she would not grant a permit to return?

[Mrs May]

These matters will be looked at on a case-by-case basis. The point is to be able to manage the return of individuals who have been involved in terrorist-related activity abroad, and we are discussing how the power would be operated practically with a number of other Governments, as I have said. The point is to ensure that when somebody returns, they do so under control and on our terms.

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[Mrs May]

The purpose of putting Prevent on a statutory basis is twofold. First, the statutory duty will now relate to a number of front-line institutions, as I have said, such as local authorities and universities. There is already some guidance that Universities UK and the National Union of Students apply to universities, as I have indicated. However, I believe it is important to ensure that there is that statutory duty on bodies such as universities, and the Bill allows the Secretary of State to make a direction to one of the bodies covered by that power if they are failing to exercise their statutory duty.

[Yvette Cooper]

Will the Home Secretary clarify what she means by that? Could she envisage a Home Secretary making a direction in order to tell a university or institution not to allow somebody to speak?

[Mrs May]

That is not the intention of the duty; its intention is to ensure that the university or institution has in place a policy on matters relating to extremism. For example, they might have a general policy that they apply in relation to extremist speakers coming to their institution. The purpose of the power to make a direction in the Bill is to ensure that they are doing something like that, taking their statutory duty seriously. It is for those institutions that are failing to comply with the statutory duty that that particular power has been put into the Bill.

Alongside that statutory requirement in relation to Prevent, the Bill will also provide a statutory basis for the existing programmes for those at risk of being drawn into terrorism, known as Channel in England and Wales. That will enshrine existing good practice and help to ensure consistency across all local areas.

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[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

As the Home Secretary said, it is the responsibility of Government to protect the liberty and the security of our people, to protect our communities from extremism and terror threats, and to protect our liberty and our democratic values so that the terrorists and extremists do not win. At a time when the terror threat has grown, more action is needed to make sure that the police, the security agencies and other organisations have the powers that they need to protect us, but also to make sure that we have sensible safeguards in place—the right kinds of checks and balances to prevent abuse.

We will support this Bill because it responds to new and changing threats and also corrects some past mistakes, but we believe that amendments are needed in some areas to make the measures more effective or to ensure that sufficient checks and balances are in place to prevent powers from being abused and discredited, thus undermining the fight against extremism.

Last week’s Intelligence and Security Committee report on the murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby provided stark evidence of the serious challenges that our security services and police face in keeping us safe. It is a 24 hours-a-day, 365-days-a-year job, and every decision is loaded with doubt. Today we should pay tribute to their quiet stoicism and heroism. This year alone, the Metropolitan police has made 270 arrests following counter-terrorism investigations. Along with our agencies, it has disrupted several attack plots, including plots against those whose very job it is to protect our communities.

That job of protecting us all from terrorism has become increasingly difficult in the face of the growth of ISIL and its barbarous brand of terror. As the Home Secretary said, the Government believe that about 500 people have travelled to Syria, with about half having already returned to the UK. However, this problem is not unique to Britain. The United Nations estimates that foreign fighters from 80 countries may be in the region, mainly fighting for ISIL. France estimates that 900 French nationals are fighting in the region. Belgium, Sweden, Denmark and Finland have all seen significant numbers of their citizens go to fight. Many countries across Europe are introducing new policies and legislation to address the problem and we should work with them as they do so. We have also seen, through the awful propaganda videos, what people have become involved in, including beheadings, kidnaps and brutalising whole communities in Syria and Iraq.

Of course, a foreign policy response is required to defeat ISIL in the region and to strengthen the Governments who will have to fight them. A humanitarian response is also needed to try to save the lives of communities in the path—or, worse, the wake—of ISIL’s advance. The Home Secretary’s policy of taking only 90 of the most vulnerable refugees from Syria, in parallel with the UN programme, is shameful. Other countries are doing far more, and she was urged to do far more as well. She has the opportunity at next week’s Geneva conference to change her approach, and I urge her to do so.

[Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)]

Does not the right hon. Lady accept that Britain is one of the leading donors to the provision of humanitarian relief to Syria, and will she not celebrate that fact?

[Yvette Cooper]

The Government have rightly provided a very strong response in the region and support for those who are fleeing the conflict. Members on both sides of the House have supported the Government in doing so and call on them to continue to do so. Twelve months ago, however, Members on both sides of the House also called on the Government to do more to help the most vulnerable Syrian refugees who struggle to cope in the camps, and I do not believe that the Government are doing what they undertook to do 12 months ago.

[Chris Bryant]

There are now literally millions of refugees in Lebanon and children are being born there who are effectively stateless. That is not a recipe for a peaceful middle east, is it?

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is right to say that the huge stresses and strains in the region will have long-term consequences. That is why we need to do our bit with our humanitarian response and recognise the long-term security consequences both in the region and here in Britain.

Let me turn to the Bill’s measures and how they respond to the challenge we face. More needs to be done to prevent young people from being radicalised or drawn into extremism in the first place. The Home Secretary has said that she wants to strengthen the Prevent programme, which we welcome, and we hope that putting it on a statutory footing will help do that. She will know, however, that getting the Prevent programme right is not simply about legislation. The programme has been narrowed over the past few years, which has led to criticism from the Intelligence and Security Committee, which noted in its report last week

“the relatively low priority (and funding) given to Prevent in the CONTEST programme as a whole”.

The Committee concluded:

“The scale of the problem”—

by which it meant the number of people travelling—

“indicates that the Government’s counter-radicalisation programmes are not working.”

We know that Prevent support for local community programmes has dropped from £17 million to less than £3 million over the past few years. Although the Home Secretary talked about the promotion of a counter-narrative, the evidence suggests that far less work is being done now than a few years ago to promote counter-narratives within communities.

[Hazel Blears]

Does my right hon. Friend share my concern that, although many of the Bill’s provisions are very welcome, including those relating to the panels and putting things on a statutory footing, it is couched in terms of individuals? It mentions individual referrals and individual plans, yet, in essence, challenging the narrative is a collective responsibility for all of us, not simply individuals.

[Yvette Cooper]

My right hon. Friend is right. She has great expertise in looking at the work of the Prevent programme, particularly the community and local work that was being done. This is a concern. The Government originally cut the number of local authorities receiving funding through the Prevent programme from 90 to 23. They have subsequently reinstated some of them, but only four out of the 30 councils that were tasked with delivering Prevent submitted evaluations to the Office for Security and Counter-terrorism last year.

The Home Secretary has talked many times—we have pressed her on this—about the fact that she has passed some of the Prevent work to the Department for Communities and Local Government, but it is of considerable concern to us that there is no evidence that it is doing significant work on it. The community-led programme to counter radicalisation simply does not seem to be strong or effective enough. Much more could be done even without legislation to improve the Prevent programme, and if the Government do not do their bit, all the legislation in the world will not make the programme effective.

[Keith Vaz]

Evidence suggests that the biggest pressure on young jihadists comes not from organisations, but from peer groups. What is missing is that we have not yet got into the DNA of trying to deal with peer group pressure. Does my right hon. Friend agree that we should direct more of the funding to such community organisations?

[Yvette Cooper]

My right hon. Friend makes a very powerful point. We should be honest about the fact that we do not know the perfect answers. This is a difficult area, and different things need to be tried. However, the current programmes are not addressing two significant challenges: peer group recruitment, which is clearly taking place in many areas, and social media, through which recruitment and radicalisation are taking place. Much more should be done to address those challenges, and community-led programmes might be considerably more effective than police-led or Government-led programmes in achieving results.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

I applaud the constructive tone of the right hon. Lady’s remarks so far. May I take her back to the intervention by the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears)? Most of what is being discussed is still at community or even individual level, whereas we believe that something needs to be done at national level that is comparable to the efforts made to counter Nazism in the second world war and to counter communism during the cold war.

[Yvette Cooper]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman that more needs to be done at the national level. The Bill introduces a statutory duty on a series of organisations to do more, and those organisations should certainly work in partnership to prevent people from being drawn into extremism and terrorist activity. Given the points made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears) about some of the gaps, particularly in relation to the Department for Communities and Local Government, there is a question about whether the duty should in fact extend to that Department, rather than simply to local organisations across the country.

In Committee, we will probe the Home Secretary further on what she intends to do with her power of direction. That is still unclear from the Bill, and it is unclear what she envisages putting in guidance. She said that guidance would be published alongside the Bill, but we have not yet seen it. I do not know whether it has already been published.

[Mrs May]

I have listened very carefully to what the shadow Home Secretary is saying about the Prevent programme. As I said earlier, one of the first things that the Government did when we considered the programme was to decide that it should no longer look simply at violent extremism, but at non-violent extremism as well. Does what she is saying mean that she agrees with the step that we took, and does she therefore accept that the previous Labour Government got it wrong in concentrating the Prevent programme only on violent extremism?

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[Yvette Cooper]

It is absolutely right to look at both violent and non-violent extremism. If the Home Secretary has listened to what my right hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles has said on the issue over many years, she will know that the previous Government’s work was about looking at both violent and non-violent extremism and at the process of radicalisation from beginning to end. The whole point of providing counter-narratives is to tackle non-violent as well as violent extremism.

It is unfortunate that the Home Secretary chose to narrow the programme in the way she did and handed over community-led Prevent programmes to the Department for Communities and Local Government, which simply did not pursue them. The police have done very good work, but narrowing Prevent to just a police-led programme means that it has simply not been effective, and there have also been considerable gaps in the programme.

On the Secretary of State’s power of direction, there will be questions not only about how she intends to use it, but about what safeguards will ensure that she does use that power inappropriately.

The next challenge is how to deal with those who have become radicalised and pose a serious threat. Wherever possible, those people should clearly be prosecuted and passed through our courts. We know that there are difficult cases in which that is not possible, but people still pose a serious terror threat. It will come as no surprise to the Home Secretary or the House that we welcome the return of the relocation powers. She told the House in 2011 that the removal of the relocation power was a deliberate and desirable part of TPIMs. She said:

“Forcible relocation will be ended”,

and individuals

“will have greater freedom to associate.”—[Official Report, 26 January 2011; Vol. 522, c. 308.]

The Home Secretary defended her decision on relocation after Ibrahim Magag absconded in a black cab on Boxing day in 2012 once his relocation order had been revoked. She said at the time:

“I am confident in the TPIM package that was available”.—[Official Report, 8 January 2013; Vol. 566, c. 165.]

She also defended her decision in 2013, when Mohammed Ahmed Mohamed fled in a burqa after his relocation order was revoked.

No powers are perfect, but it is significant that no terror suspect has absconded under a relocation order. The Home Secretary has said in the House that she made those changes because control orders were under threat in the courts and TPIMs were not. In fact, both the former and current independent reviewer of terrorism legislation have made it clear that relocation orders were never under threat in the courts. It was a policy decision that was taken by the Home Secretary and the coalition.

The truth is that TPIMs have not worked. Despite the increased terror threat, only one is in place at the moment and it relates to someone who has left prison. TPIMs simply do not contain enough powers to be useful for the agencies or the police, or to be worth the extra effort involved. The independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, David Anderson, concluded in his review:

“A power to relocate subjects away from their home areas would be of real practical assistance…in distancing subjects from their associates and reducing the risk of abscond. It would also facilitate monitoring, save money and could help restore faith in a TPIM regime that has withered on the vine.”

It is not because of the increased terror threat that the regime has withered on the vine; it is because the TPIM regime simply was not effective without the relocation orders that it needed.

[Pete Wishart]

I have not heard from either Front Bencher the two words “civil liberties”. Is it the right hon. Lady’s view that the measures we are discussing today will tilt the balance between civil liberties and security too far towards security and compromise some very important civil liberties?

[Yvette Cooper]

In fact, I talked about the importance of protecting both liberty and security when I opened my remarks. We need both in a democracy and it is the responsibility of Government to protect both. On TPIMs, I think that the Government were wrong to remove the relocation powers. They are important and effective, and it has been recommended that they should be restored by the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, whose judgment has proved to be balanced and sensible on a series of issues. There are other areas where additional safeguards are needed, and I will come to them shortly.

[Richard Fuller]

The right hon. Lady will understand that there is some sensitivity on this issue, given the rather poor record of the last Labour Government on protecting civil liberties. For example, we had 90 days’ detention without trial and the imprisonment of children for immigration purposes only. Does she at least agree with the Home Secretary’s move to raise the threshold for when relocation can be imposed from reasonable belief to the balance of probabilities?

[Yvette Cooper]

I do support the proposals, because they came out of David Anderson’s report about changes to the TPIMs regime. He looked at the evidence and came up with sensible recommendations. However, I warn the hon. Gentleman against playing party politics on this issue, because that is what got the coalition into trouble in the first place. The reason the coalition removed relocation orders was that it wanted to make party political points, rather than look at the evidence. That is why it has had to do a U-turn: it has finally had to look at the evidence. I caution him about doing the same again.

[Mr McFadden]

The Home Secretary said in her speech both that we were engaged in a generational struggle and that the security situation had changed markedly in the past couple of years, justifying the U-turn that part 2 of the Bill represents. Are those statements not contradictory? It is true that we are engaged in a generational struggle. It would be better for the Home Secretary to apologise for the grave error of judgment that put the public at risk than to pretend that the situation has changed radically.

[Yvette Cooper]

My right hon. Friend is right that the threat level is the same now as it was when the Home Secretary came into office. There have been ongoing threats to our security and liberty for many years, and it was not increased threat that led either Ibrahim Magag or Mohammed Ahmed Mohamed to abscond when their relocation orders were revoked. It was the lack of a relocation order and the weakening of the counter-terrorism powers.

Counter-terrorism policy is always difficult. There will always be things that Governments find challenging, and there will be times when they get the balance wrong. However, we should look at the evidence together. The Home Secretary and the Government failed to look at the evidence about relocation powers, and they failed to listen to the advice of the security experts. They have had to do so now not because the security threat has changed but because TPIMs simply did not work. It is right that they should be strengthened now and that powers should be restored.

There are two other puzzling things about the Home Secretary’s measures on TPIMs. The first relates to the point that my right hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles made about the 200-mile limit: what is the difference between someone being 205 miles away and someone being 195 miles away? More puzzling is the measure that the Government are introducing to prevent people on a TPIM from having access to a firearm. That seems extremely sensible—we would not want any terror suspect to have access to a firearm—but how could any of them have had such access before? That raises the question whether either the gun licensing regime or the TPIMs regime is considerably weaker than we thought. We hope that some clarity will be provided in Committee on why that measure is needed. We will clearly support it, but it is a puzzle that existing powers are not strong enough to ensure that that sensible restriction is in place.

The next challenge is how to deal with the new and growing problem of British citizens leaving to join the conflict overseas, where they may become involved in awful crimes and barbarism, be further radicalised and become a threat to this country. We need new measures to prevent people from going. Removing people’s passports through the royal prerogative is understandably not a swift process, and sometimes faster action is needed. If troubled parents ring the police because they are worried that a son or daughter has left to join ISIS and taken their passport with them, the police need to be able to move quickly. We therefore agree that temporary powers are needed.

The lack of judicial oversight is a concern. As the Bill stands, the police will be able to seize a passport based on their own judgment of reasonable suspicion, and there will be no judicial oversight for 14 days. Even then, a magistrate will look only at whether the police are continuing to investigate, not at whether there was reasonable suspicion in the first place. The power to seize a passport is important, but that means that it is also important that it is not abused.

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

Does my right hon. Friend believe that the apprehension of passports requires proper border agency staffing, which the Home Secretary has cut by 50%? She is now proposing to cut the police by 30,000 in the next period, which will make it extremely difficult for any of the actions set out in the Bill to be carried out.

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[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend makes a really important point. There are no proper exit checks in place across the country, and we need the staff to be able to do them. That is why we have made proposals for 1,000 additional border staff, which is the right thing to do to ensure that such checks are in place. There should also be checks and balances on the power to seize passports. It is important and necessary, but there should be further safeguards to ensure that it cannot be abused.

The next important measure in the Bill is temporary exclusion orders. There is a serious problem for the police and the agencies dealing with those returning from conflict, who may have committed awful crimes abroad and might pose a threat in Britain. More needs to be done to address that threat, which was why we called for TPIM powers to be strengthened and for the Channel programme to be made compulsory. There should be requirements on people returning, and I understand the Home Secretary wanting to manage people’s return, but it is still unclear exactly what the Government want to achieve through the new powers.

The Prime Minister has said:

“We are clear in principle that what we need is a targeted, discretionary power to allow us to exclude British nationals from the UK.”—[Official Report, 1 September 2014; Vol. 585, c. 26.]

However, it seems that that is not what the power in the Bill will do. If someone is served with an order and the host country decides to deport them anyway, Britain will co-operate and they will be returned. There is no power to exclude them. If they apply for a permit to return, the Home Secretary can refuse to grant one only if the suspect does not turn up to an interview. Presumably, that is an interview in the foreign country; otherwise, they would already be home. The suspect does not have to co-operate with the interview, only to turn up.

Thirdly, what I asked the Home Secretary under what circumstances she would refuse to grant a permit to return, she did not give a clear answer and gave the impression that even if the suspect did not turn up to the interview, a permit to return might still be granted. It appears, then, that there is still no power to exclude them, so this is not the power that the Prime Minister said he would introduce. It seems to be described as a temporary exclusion order simply to give the Prime Minister the headline that he wanted.

[Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)]

Temporary exclusion orders may be necessary—there are obvious dangers in people coming back, having been indoctrinated and wanting to commit crimes. There may be a strong possibility of that, but surely judicial oversight is needed so that if the Home Secretary takes such powers, they can be challenged in court. I trust that my right hon. Friend will take the opportunity in Committee to table appropriate amendments.

[Yvette Cooper]

More judicial oversight is needed in this area and we will certainly table amendments. It is also important to clarify what the powers are intended to achieve. It appears that they are not intended to achieve exclusion at all and have a very different intention.

[Chris Bryant]

My right hon. Friend is right to raise such queries. May I add two others that she might want to put to the Home Secretary? The first is what constitutes serving notice on somebody. Presumably this happens in another country. How is that notice to be served? How will somebody be deemed to be suitable to have that notice served on them? Secondly, at what point does the exclusion start? Is it before they get on an aeroplane or a boat to come to this country, or is it at they moment they arrive in this country? Once they are in this country, what happens to them? Are they effectively deported?

[Yvette Cooper]

Again, my hon. Friend raises important questions. The independent reviewer said that the policy was an announcement in search of a policy. It started with an announcement by the Prime Minister at a press conference. To be fair to the Home Office, it probably worked hard to try to turn it into some kind of sensible measure that might achieve something as part of the Government’s counter-terror policy but that could still have the label “temporary exclusion order” attached to it in order to keep the Prime Minister happy. The House needs to understand exactly what the Home Secretary’s intention now is. This is not a hugely responsible way to make counter-terror policy or for us all to be able to understand whether it gets the balance right between the powers and measures that are needed and the safeguards that are needed as well.

The Home Secretary has described this as a policy to manage return. The intention behind that is sensible, requiring people to co-operate with the police and security agencies and to attend Channel interviews if they have been involved with ISIL or have been in the region. That is important, but there are some practical questions about how the policy will work—first about co-operation with other countries, secondly about bureaucracy in the process, and thirdly about the safeguards and the judicial oversight.

What happens if a country does not want to co-operate? Have countries such as Turkey said that they will co-operate? Will they immediately deport people? Will they detain people at the airport? How will those orders be served and what will the response be?

[Sir Edward Garnier (Harborough) (Con)]

What are the right hon. Lady’s suggestions, therefore?

[Yvette Cooper]

There are some changes that could be made and we will table amendments to that effect, but we need to know from the Home Secretary what discussions have taken place with other countries. It is very hard for anybody in the House to propose appropriate amendments without knowing what discussions have taken place and what other countries intend to do in response. Will the measure work because other countries will co-operate, or will it struggle because other countries have said they will not co-operate?

[Sir Edward Garnier]

rose—

[Yvette Cooper]

I will give way to the hon. and learned Gentleman if he can tell me whether Turkey, for example, has said that it will co-operate.

[Sir Edward Garnier]

It may well be that the right hon. Lady is making a good argument, but I cannot judge that until she tells me what her position is.

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[Yvette Cooper]

In which case perhaps the hon. and learned Member should stop intervening and let me get on and speak about the amendments.

[Mr Jim Cunningham]

One thing that has bedevilled these debates is that neither the Home Secretary nor anyone else has made it clear which countries are prepared to co-operate, particularly with Turkey which sends different signals.

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend makes an important point, and by the time the Bill gets to Committee, the House needs to know whether there have been discussions with other countries, how those countries will respond, and what the level of co-operation will be.

My second question concerns what happens if the Home Secretary wants someone to return and be required to co-operate with the Channel programme, but does not want to delay their return. At the moment it appears that the order must be served and a permit applied for, and then the Home Secretary has to issue a permit, potentially introducing delays during which someone might abscond again. Is there any way to place requirements on someone once they return, without having to go through that further bureaucratic process at the airport? It appears from the Bill as though the Home Secretary cannot compel people to go to appointments at the police station or to comply with the Channel programme unless she also introduces bureaucratic delays with the application for a permit at the foreign airport. It would be helpful to know whether she has the power to allow someone to swiftly board the plane and also to introduce those powers.

Thirdly, what are the safeguards to prevent abuse? At the moment, temporary exclusion orders can be imposed by the Home Secretary on the basis of reasonable suspicion. That could include ongoing requirements for someone to attend regular appointments, or perhaps even to report daily to the police for two years after their return. There is no ability to appeal when someone returns—for instance, if they have been involved in humanitarian work in the region—and if the orders are breached, the penalty is the same as for breaching a TPIM. I think the Home Secretary should consider that further, because for TPIMs a judicial process rightly has to be satisfied. For a temporary exclusion order there is no judicial oversight, yet penalties for breach are the same. We believe that the powers need to be debated in detail in Committee to ensure they are effective, cannot be abused, and involve appropriate oversight. In response to the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick), we will be tabling amendments on judicial oversight.

Finally, I wish to raise an issue familiar to the House which was included in the original Communications Data Bill. That Bill was far too widely drawn, but there was wide consensus on the need for action on IP addresses, which had the support of the Joint Committee that considered the Bill. IP addresses are created and assigned automatically. Some companies retain those data, but some do not or routinely allocate multiple IP addresses to lots of people. That means that if an abusive image of a child has been sent from a particular IP address, agencies can struggle to discover who that address belongs to or where the child may be being abused. The Opposition support the principle behind that change, although I am sure it will need detailed scrutiny to ensure that the legislation does what is intended. We must be clear that simply having the technical and legal capability to do things is not sufficient as long as, for example, there are huge delays in the National Crime Agency investigating child abuse cases and passing them on to local forces.

[Julian Smith]

I may have interrupted the right hon. Lady at the wrong point, but I would be grateful if she could outline Labour’s view on communications data more generally, and say what measures she would support as we introduce further changes.

[Yvette Cooper]

We said some time ago that we would support measures on IP addresses, and that the whole area needs to be looked at by the independent reviewer. That is why we called for an overall review of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 by David Anderson, and insisted on that being included in the Bill. It is right to allow him to provide expert evidence on the way that the police and agencies are having difficulty keeping up with changing technology, and on the scale of the additional safeguards needed. In all those areas, strong powers may be needed in some cases, but we also need strong checks and balances and proper oversight. I think there are areas where sufficient checks and balances are not currently in place.

More action is needed to deal with the serious threats resulting from the conflict in Syria and the rise of ISIL. That means preventing radicalisation and dealing with people who pose a threat. It means having the right foreign policy and action in the region, but it also means ensuring that our laws at home are effective and proportionate, and that they cannot be abused, so that we do not let extremists threaten our democratic values, the protection of our historical liberties and our security.

At the beginning of this Parliament, the Home Secretary and the Deputy Prime Minister were inclined to make grand, sweeping statements attacking previous Labour Governments, and to make strong party political claims about our counter-terror policy, be they about the Prevent strategy or control orders. The Opposition warned the Home Secretary and the Deputy Prime Minister that that was not wise, because counter-terror policy is not easy; it requires care and thought. All Governments will get things wrong, and all parties will get things wrong. The Opposition will therefore work with the Home Secretary. We agree with her on some things, but we do not think she has got it right yet on others, and amendments are needed. Parliament as a whole must be thoughtful and responsible, because our liberty and security depend on each other. We need both in a democracy to keep us safe.