Scotland Bill

Debate between Yvette Cooper and Pat McFadden

Monday 9th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

We have been given too little time for such an important debate, so I cannot give way, but I urge Members to bear it in mind that anti-abortion campaigners want this opportunity to fragment and divide us. All of us who support the 1967 Act ought to agree that we should stand together and not allow anti-abortion campaigners to divide us, pick us off one by one, and target us differently. I urge the House to reconsider. We should consult properly, we should take the interests of women and their families into consideration, and we should vote against the new clause tonight.

[Mr Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East) (Lab)]

I agree with what has been said by my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper). Let me remind the House of our earlier considerations of this issue. When the original devolution legislation of 1997-98 was being put together, the decision not to devolve the legislative framework for abortion was not an accident or an afterthought. We examined the issue carefully at the time, and concluded that it did not make good legislative sense to allow for two different legislative frameworks in two different parts of the country.

Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill

Debate between Yvette Cooper and Pat McFadden

Tuesday 2nd December 2014 Commons Chamber

[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.

Ukraine, Middle East, North Africa and Security

Debate between Yvette Cooper and Pat McFadden

Wednesday 10th September 2014 Commons Chamber

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

As many hon. Members have said, this has been a wide-ranging and deeply thoughtful debate. At a time when, understandably, many Members of all parties are focusing on the Union and our own constitutional debate, it is important that today, on behalf of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, we have debated how to keep all our citizens safe using our enviable international power, partnerships, intelligence infrastructure, military capabilities and other resources. We have discussed how to protect our own people as well as civilians overseas, and how to protect and pursue our values for those who are caught up in horrific conflicts.

[Mr McFadden]

Does my right hon. Friend think that that point is particularly important given that Glasgow airport suffered its own terrorist attack a couple of years ago, which shows that the whole UK faces the same threat from the forces that are attacking our way of life?

[Yvette Cooper]

We do face the same threats right across the United Kingdom, and we stand together most effectively against those threats when we work together, including our intelligence and security agencies and police forces. We should pay tribute to those bodies, because they work immensely hard throughout the Union, as has been reflected in today’s debate.

Members across the House have shown great experience in their contributions, particularly in foreign affairs, which shows how seriously we take the threats to regional and global stability, as well as to our interests at home. This has been a difficult debate to sum up, because the range of contributions has been so diverse. I therefore say to the Government that adding those four issues together in a single debate has perhaps strained its nature and made it complex to respond to.

We heard about the principles of foreign policy and how far we should learn from our international history. The right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) spoke about Iraq, the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) about Afghanistan, and my hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock) about Syria, and they mentioned the lessons of each of those decisions. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden) warned that we must learn from the past but not be imprisoned by it.

We debated how far we should engage and Britain’s role in the world, and the right hon. Members for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) and for North Somerset (Dr Fox) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Neath (Mr Hain) had different perspectives on what Britain’s role could be. As the shadow Foreign Secretary made clear, in a complex world with new and complex threats, it is ever more important for us to work through partnerships and alliances, rather than to seek isolation.

We have debated the roles of strategy and the principles of military engagement and diplomacy or, as my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) said, how we use the weapons of the military and the weapons of the mind. We heard a detailed contribution from my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) who spoke about the importance of Iran, and other hon. Members mentioned Turkey. My right hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd) and the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi) debated the Iraqi Government, and the right hon. Member for Croydon South (Sir Richard Ottaway) and my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) spoke about sanctions and Russia. The hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr Turner) and others spoke about the awful conditions in Gaza, and the need to break out of the cycle of violence.

The right hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) spoke about events and the response to ISIL, and rightly argued about the importance of that response being led by those in the region—the Iraqi Government, the Kurdish Regional Government and members of the Arab League. My hon. Friend the Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall) said that we cannot turn our backs or walk away, and that we are most effective when we work in partnership.

We have had a wide-ranging debate on all those issues, but in my remaining minutes I want to concentrate on security, and particularly the implications for domestic security. Although most of the debate has been about ISIL and the threat it poses, we have been warned for many months by the Security Service about the threat that ISIL and the conflict in Syria have been posing to our domestic security at home. That was brought savagely home to us by the terrible videos of the beheadings of American journalists, with a British voice being heard, and the threat to British citizens who are kidnapped. As the Foreign Secretary said earlier, that appears to be at the hands of a British citizen who has joined the barbarism, and we have been warned about many of our citizens who have become involved.

We have had threats from extremists against Britain before, so this is not new. Since 9/11, 330 people have been convicted of terrorism-related offences in Britain. We have seen attacks inspired by al-Qaeda, and attacks carried out or attempted by British citizens—some trained abroad, many radicalised at home. Last year we had the awful attack on Drummer Lee Rigby, and the murder by a right-wing extremist of Mohammed Saleem.

We stand against extremism and violence in all its forms wherever we see it, whether that is by condemning the appalling rise in anti-Semitic attacks or the awful increase in Islamophobic attacks, or condemning those who become involved in terrorist organisations or extremist groups and who do not share our values, no matter that they may have been born or brought up in Britain.

Those who join ISIL extremists are going to join no Spanish civil war. They are beheading people and parading their heads on spikes, subjugating women and girls, and killing Muslims, Christians and anyone who gets in their way. As many hon. Members have said clearly, this is no liberation movement; it is a perverted, oppressive ideology that bears no relation to Islam. Some of the strongest voices against young Britons joining the conflict have been Muslim youth groups, communities and parents desperate to stop young people going. We agree with the Government that more needs to be done to prevent young people from being drawn into the conflict and to deal with the threat they pose.

More could also be done to improve the situation. We have called for improvements to the Prevent programme. The Home Secretary has said previously that before 2010 the programme was flawed but has now been improved, and she has defended its effectiveness. I hope she will review that because there are gaps in the programme. There were flaws in it before and there are flaws in it now. Things change all the time and more needs to be done, working with communities to support community-led programmes to prevent young people from being radicalised.

The programme must keep up with new methods of radicalisation. Young people are now being recruited not simply by traditional methods, but by appeals through social media, contacts from friends and so on—different kinds of approaches that need to be responded to. Excellent work is being done by the Channel programme, but more people, particularly those returning from the region, must be required to engage immediately with the programme, which has done important work de-radicalising people and reducing the threat. The Government should also do more in respect of temporary passport seizures. Some who left should have been stopped, and we look forward to working with the Government on ways to bring in those powers.

I hope the Home Secretary will say more about the measures the Prime Minister announced, because there is some confusion around them. Downing street has briefed that people born as British citizens will be prevented from returning to the country, even if they have no alternative citizenship. The Prime Minister says that this would comply with international obligations—international law prevents countries from making their citizens stateless—and has said it would be a targeted, discretionary power to allow us to exclude British nationals from the UK. It sounds as though the Government intend people to remain British citizens but be kept out of the country. How would this work? Do they hope that other countries will adopt people? Is this a temporary exclusion? Are they to be detained at foreign airports or to be deported somewhere else? What is the plan? There is considerable confusion, and no one has yet been able to understand their intention.

On the proposals for terrorism prevention and investigation measures, the Prime Minister has said that relocation powers will be restored, but the Deputy Prime Minister has said they are looking only at existing powers. The Home Secretary knows our view: we have argued from the start that the police and security services need relocation powers at their disposal, subject to the agreement of the courts, to be used in the difficult cases of terror suspects who, for complex reasons, cannot be prosecuted. She has defended the removal of relocation powers in the past, but I hope she will now recognise the importance of reintroducing them. None of those relocated under control orders ever absconded, whereas two of those in whose cases the relocation powers were removed under TPIMs did then abscond. She has not confirmed that relocation powers will be introduced or said when they will be introduced. The powers are ready, in the clauses drafted and scrutinised as part of emergency legislation, and we stand ready to bring them in as soon as she brings them forward. Will she confirm that she intends to do so?

This has been a complex and thoughtful debate. The challenge is to protect our security and the values of our democracy. In certain areas, we need not only strong powers but strong checks and balances to protect the values and the liberty of our democracy, as well as the safety of our citizens. The challenge abroad is to act with humility but determination and to pursue the co-operation and collaboration we need at a time when those threats are becoming more complex than ever.