Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill

Zarah Sultana Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 21st July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Apsana Begum (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this important debate.

It is our duty to reflect, calmly and seriously, on what we need to do to give people real security. This includes having the courage and strength to stand up as a matter of conscience and speak out when we see things around us that are wrong. That is why I must rise to say that the approach laid out in this Bill is fundamentally wrong. Terrorism suspects who have not been convicted of any offence now face expanded and potentially never-ending measures to control their lives. In the words of Rachel Logan, Amnesty International’s UK legal expert,

“It was never right to drastically curtail people’s liberty on the basis of secret, untested evidence using control orders or TPIMs—and we seem to be diving headlong into that territory where the standard of proof is extremely flimsy and people’s liberties can be curtailed on an indefinite basis.”

Indeed, there are real problems with the protection of human rights in the UK. In many areas, particularly in the spheres of immigration control, national security, counter-terrorism, freedom of association and speech, and the treatment of persons with disabilities and other vulnerable groups, UK law has been the frequent subject of criticism from experts in the UN Human Rights Committee and from the Council of Europe.

For some time, many have raised concerns that our approach to counter-terrorism is perceived by some to have been modelled on Islamophobic stereotypes, policies and political structures. That is why it is utterly extraordinary that the Bill removes the existing statutory deadline for the completion of the independent review of the Prevent programme. As people will know, Prevent is widely criticised for fostering discrimination against people of Muslim faith or background. It was developed without a firm evidence base and is rooted in a vague and expansive definition of extremism. It includes overt targeting of Muslim children in schools and has meant that our Muslim young people, in particular, are increasingly being viewed through the lens of security. Many, including some in this Chamber, have expressed how they have been moved and inspired by the Black Lives Matter protesters all around the world. It is an absolute insult that rather than listening and learning as people were calling out the state regarding racism, Islamophobia and discrimination, this Bill will further entrench discrimination against Muslims.

As someone who has first-hand experience of the rise in Islamophobia over the past decade, I know that every single day people of Muslim backgrounds like me face discrimination and prejudice. It is not just about enduring offensive remarks and presumptions, bad as those are, but about living with a real and serious constant threat to our faith group. At the same time, far too often, the foreign policy of successive Governments has fuelled, not reduced, the threat to us all. Yet recently we learned that the UK is to resume sales of arms to Saudi Arabia despite concerns that they could be used against civilians in Yemen in violation of international humanitarian law. That is why my constituents in Poplar and Limehouse know better than most that we must never again embark on illegal wars, imperialism and destruction but instead adopt a progressive, outward-looking global view driven by social justice, solidarity and human rights. The so-called war on terror has manifestly failed, despite the human cost being so devastating.

As has been pointed out by many, the covid-19 global pandemic has profoundly demonstrated that compassion becomes the tie that connects us to one another. Now, more than ever, we must come together and resist those that seek to divide us through violence, intolerance and hate. We cannot let this threat of terrorism take away our hard-fought-for rights and freedoms. We should not let our fundamental values be undermined.  Our values are about caring for the whole of society and all our people, not walking by on the other side of the street when they need our help and support, and loving our communities enough to make this a place where nobody is homeless, hungry, held back or left behind. On the international stage, we must stand up for the values we share—justice, human rights and democracy—and work with others to keep people safe by ending conflict and tackling the climate emergency.

I am humbled and inspired by how people continue to organise to protect our communities, and I want to take this opportunity to recognise the enormous contribution that Muslims across Britain make to our country, our communities and our way of life, from which the values of respect and understanding derive. Those values resonate with everyone as we strive to build a better society for us all. In the end, it is only that hope that can lead us out of despair.

[Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) (Lab)]

I rise to speak about issues relating to amendments 37, 38, 40 and 46. I was seven years old on 11 September 2011, and that awful day passed a long shadow over my childhood. As a young Muslim, I saw the effects of the war on terror at home and abroad. At home, it meant rising Islamophobia, the steady erosion of civil rights, and the installation of cameras on streets near my childhood home. We were told that they were for traffic control, but we soon learned that that was not true. It was an area with a significant Muslim community, and we were being watched. As I got older, I became far too familiar with that. My community were seen not as citizens worthy of equality and respect, but as a threat viewed with hostility and suspicion.

At school and university, I encountered the effects of Prevent. It was said that it was targeting radicalisation, but when it resulted in Muslim university students being reported for reading terrorism-related textbooks as part of their degree, we knew that its effect was to target Muslims and erode the civil liberties of all. If we are worried about free speech on campuses, we need to look at the Prevent strategy.

In the past few years, terrorist atrocities have continued to rock communities across the world, from horrific antisemitic and white supremacist attacks, like that which hit the Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018 and the Christchurch mosque massacre in New Zealand last year, to the far-right extremist who assassinated a Member of this House in 2016 and the devastating attack that cruelly took 23 lives in Manchester in 2017. Everything must be done to combat such awful acts and keep our community safe. We must respect individual liberty and tackle the hate and fear that drives such horrific acts.

I have real concerns that the Bill falls short of those standards. First, it introduces control orders in all but name, which threaten all our civil liberties. Secondly, it removes the statutory deadline to review Prevent. Thirdly, it abandons any attempt to rehabilitate and reform, and instead keeps individuals trapped in a permanent web of surveillance and prisons.

On the first point, concerns and objections to changes to terrorism prevention and investigation measures have been raised by independent reviewers, including the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, and civil rights groups such as Liberty and Amnesty International. Liberty says that the change

“reintroduces Control Orders in all but name”.

Control orders have allowed people to be placed under indefinite house arrest, without ever having been convicted of a crime or even having known the evidence against them. The coalition Government rightly abolished them, but this Bill effectively brings them back. Liberty says that the changes pose

“a threat to fundamental pillars of our justice system.”

That should be a concern to us all, so I encourage Government Members to support amendments 37, 40, 46 and 47.

On the second point, the Bill removes the statutory deadline for an independent review of the Prevent programme. To say that the programme needs an independent review is a serious understatement. Again, human rights organisations have consistently raised concerns about it. In 2018, Amnesty International said that it was developed

“without a firm evidence base and rooted in a vague and expansive definition of ‘extremism’”.

Countless examples can be found of the programme’s discriminatory impact on Muslims. In addition to the ones I have already mentioned, I want to include that of an eight-year-old boy who was questioned by Prevent officials after his teacher mistook the writing on his T-shirt, as well as the labelling of countless Muslim individuals, charities and mosques as extreme by the Government. The flaws of the programme have reached such heights that the likes of Greenpeace, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and Extinction Rebellion were put on Prevent documents alongside proscribed neo-Nazi terror groups. The case for a statutory review of Prevent is clear, so I again urge Conservative Members to support amendments such as amendments 38 and 51.

On the final point, this Bill omits any effort to improve rehabilitation, which is an absolutely key measure to keeping our communities safe and preventing future attacks. Endlessly locking people up and interning them in underfunded, overcrowded, privately-run prisons is no way to protect the public. Instead, it is simply a recipe for creating more problems down the line.

I cannot support the approach of this Bill. We need to tackle terrorism, and we need to do that through prevention, but also by tackling the fear and hate upon which it thrives by bringing communities together and by never letting us be divided on the grounds of race and religion.

Windrush Lessons Learned Review

Zarah Sultana Excerpts

Tuesday 21st July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

My hon. Friend raises a very important case and an important point of principle about veterans who give their allegiance to our country and serve our nation and how we support and give justice to those individuals. I will update him and the House in due course on some of the changes that I am making in that area. On the specific case he raises, I would be more than happy to take a look at that in further detail.

[Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) (Lab)]

The “Windrush Lessons Learned Review” recommends that the Home Office implements a comprehensive programme to educate staff about Britain’s colonial history, but the Prime Minister, in an article he wrote for The Spectator, said that the problem with British colonialism was not

“that we were once in charge, but that we are not in charge any more.”

If we are to have trust in this Government to deliver that education programme, will the Home Secretary condemn the Prime Minister and acknowledge the brutal crimes that British colonialism inflicted upon millions of people across the globe?

[Priti Patel]

My statement was very clear in terms of the needs of this Government, but also the needs of my Department—the Home Office—to learn from the recommendations of Wendy Williams. That is effectively what I am focusing on and it is right. If the hon. Lady heard my statement, she will have heard of my commitment, which is also a commitment by this Government, to ensure that we right the wrongs of the past.

Oral Answers to Questions

Zarah Sultana Excerpts

Monday 13th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Sam Tarry (Ilford South) (Lab)]

What progress she has made on implementing the immigration health surcharge exemption for NHS and social care workers.

[Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) (Lab)]

What progress she has made on implementing the immigration health surcharge exemption for NHS and social care workers.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Kevin Foster)]

Home Office and Department of Health and Social Care officials are working to implement the surcharge exemption. The Home Office is currently identifying all those on a tier 2 visa who will benefit from a refund, and those payments have already started. Those eligible to apply for the new health and care visa will be exempt from the immigration health surcharge.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Foster]

I think the people of Ilford South working in the NHS will have been pleased to see the measures that we have taken, not least the fact that we will look to prioritise those coming to work for the NHS under our new visa system.

[Zarah Sultana]

Key workers kept our country running through the crisis, from doctors and nurses to supermarket assistants and delivery drivers. That is why we clap for them. They all pay their taxes, and they all contribute to the NHS. That is why the NHS surcharge is a discriminatory double tax on migrants. The Government acknowledge that it is wrong to clap for nurses one day and charge them extra the next, so will the Minister extend that principle to all workers and scrap the immigration health surcharge for all?

[Kevin Foster]

I will contrast those comments with the comments on the immigration health surcharge from the Labour party during the Immigration Bill Committee. We are clear that our NHS offers fantastic free-at-point-of-need care and services, and it is not unreasonable to ask those who come to this country to make a contribution towards it until they achieve indefinite leave to remain or settlement, which means that they are making a long-term commitment to this country and are therefore exempt from the charge.

Public Order

Zarah Sultana Excerpts

Monday 8th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. What we witnessed at the weekend was utterly despicable. I look forward to visiting the mounted police section quite soon. I have had it with authority from the Metropolitan Police Commissioner that the injuries to the horse were mild, but importantly, she highlighted yet again how the acts of thuggery are disproportionate to not just police officers, but the animals.

[Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) (Lab)]

Edward Colston made his fortune by violently transporting 84,000 Africans to the Caribbean. At least 19,000 died en route. Statues of racist murderers like Colston can be found in cities across Britain, so I ask the Home Secretary a simple question: does she believe that it is right that black Britons have to walk in the shadows of statues glorifying people who enslaved and murdered their ancestors—yes or no?

[Priti Patel]

I hope that the hon. Lady will join me in lobbying councils across the country where Labour has been in charge for many years to bring about the change that black, Asian and minority ethnic people would like to see.

Windrush Compensation Scheme (Expenditure) Bill

Zarah Sultana Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons & Money resolution & Programme motion
Monday 10th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) (Lab)]

My grandad was born a British subject in Kashmir. He came to the west midlands in the 1960s to help Britain’s post-war reconstruction, and he soon faced racism. It was a cruel irony that he had come to the heart of the metropole to continue the work that made the British empire rich. “We are here,” the anti-racist writer Sivanandan said, “because you were there.”

When the Windrush scandal came to light two years ago, it felt incredibly personal to me. Just as my grandad had come to Britain to build a life, so, too, had the Windrush generation. Just as he had been told that he did not fit in, so, too, were they. Here were British citizens, people who helped to build the NHS and to rebuild the country after the war, who were being told that they were not really British and that they did not deserve rights or respect. That is what they were being told when they were denied healthcare, when they were denied jobs, when they were forced on to the streets and when they were detained and deported.

The pervasive apparatus of the hostile environment sent one message, that these British citizens did not really belong. This was a gross injustice, and so, of course, they are owed full compensation—and my hon. Friends have highlighted many of the serious problems with the compensation scheme as it stands—but they are also owed something more. They are owed that this injustice is tackled at its root because the Windrush scandal was not a technical mistake, was not a human error and did not happen in a vacuum. It was the result of long-entrenched ideas that scapegoat minorities and migrants, and it goes back decades.

While the Windrush generation was busy rebuilding the country, the likes of Enoch Powell were blaming migrants for the country’s faltering economy. While my grandad was organising in his trade union to get better pay for blue-collar workers, the soon-to-be Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was warning that the country risked being “swamped” by people from abroad.

Those ideas were turned into policy. It was Thatcher who changed the law to stop people who were born in the UK automatically acquiring citizenship, a change that led to some children of the Windrush generation being denied their rights. Ever since, leading politicians have continued to scapegoat: blaming falling wages on migrants, not on greedy bosses; blaming growing housing waiting lists on asylum seekers, not on the sell-off of council homes; blaming overcrowded classrooms on refugees, not on the Government who slashed education funding; and blaming violent crime on “black culture,” not on decades of state neglect.

Those attacks—that scapegoating—were so successful that the last Prime Minister boasted about creating a hostile environment and spoke with pride as she sent “go home” vans around London boroughs. That happened even as charities such as the Legal Action Group warned of the dangers such policies would have for black and brown citizens who did not have documents to prove their rights. But, of course, they were ignored because the Government had an agenda to push.

The Government have now apologised for the Windrush scandal, saying they

“will do whatever it takes to put it right.”—[Official Report, 30 April 2018; Vol. 640, c. 35.]

Why should we believe that? Every step of the way, the Government have dragged their feet: the compensation scheme has only given out payments to 3% of claimants; the lessons learned review has still not been published; and charter flights are still deporting people, even before the review is published, even before its recommendations are implemented, and even before it has been established that none of those waiting to be deported has a Windrush claim.

[Gary Sambrook]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Zarah Sultana]

I apologise, but I will continue.

The flight scheduled for tomorrow will deport people whose lives are rooted here and always will be, including a dad with young kids whose family moved to Britain when he was four years old. He has lived here for 41 years, and he has no family in Jamaica and has not been there since he was a toddler. Another is a husband, and the father of a six-month-old baby girl, and he has lived in the UK since he was a young child. A third was born here and is himself a child of the Windrush generation.

These are people who were raised in Britain, who went to school here and who have built their lives here. They have served their sentences. To deport them is a discriminatory double punishment, so I urge the Government to stop these deportations, to give these people access to legal advice and to publish the lessons learned review.

[Gary Sambrook]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Zarah Sultana]

I have nearly finished.

Throughout this whole sorry saga, black and brown Britons have been forced to prove themselves: to prove that they are British and that they deserve rights and respect. This is what the late, great Toni Morrison said about racism:

“It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and so you spend 20 years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says that you have no art so you dredge that up. Somebody says that you have no kingdoms and so you dredge that up. None of that is necessary.”

It is about time the Government acknowledged that. It is about time they ended the hostile environment, shut down their inhumane detention centres and, once and for all, stopped forcing black and brown Britons to prove they are British.