Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill — House of Lords, 2021-02-09
Topic: Law and Crime
Brian Paddick (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, as my noble friend Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames has outlined, our Amendment 16 in this group calls for a review of the impacts of Part 1of the Bill. Why is such a review needed? The Explanatory Notes to the Bill describe its purpose as being to better protect the public from terrorism, effectively by two main means: ensuring that serious and dangerous terrorist offenders spend longer in custody, and supporting their disengagement from extremism and their rehabilitation I am pleased to note there is no longer any pretence that longer sentences act as a deterrent to terrorist offenders. There was no such claim from the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay, either, when he introduced the Bill to this House on Second Reading. That will save some time The two premises on which the Bill is based appear to be these: that the public are better protected from terrorists if terrorist offenders are in prison longer; and that a range of tailored interventions while they are in prison will lead to their disengagement from extremism and their rehabilitation. In short, the longer they are in prison, the less likely they are to pose a threat to the public and the more time is available to deradicalise and rehabilitate them The first and most obvious problem with the first premise is that you cannot detain every suspected terrorist for the rest of their lives, despite the Government’s attempts in this Bill to achieve exactly that for some terrorist offenders. With an increasing number of exceptions were this Bill to be passed unamended, you cannot normally lock up suspected terrorists indefinitely or so curtail their freedoms as to effectively deprive them of their liberty indefinitely. We will come to the indefinite deprivation of liberty without charge or trial when we come to the changes to the terrorism prevention and investigation measures The Government’s current Prevent strategy, at paragraph 3.5, says that "radicalisation is driven by an ideology which sanctions the use of violence; by propagandists for that ideology here and overseas; and by personal vulnerabilities and specific local factors which, for a range of reasons, make that ideology seem both attractive and compelling." Such propagandists exist in our prisons. The Government’s argument that the longer someone is in prison, the more time there is to support their disengagement and rehabilitation can also work against their deradicalisation and rehabilitation. First, it provides more time for them to be radicalised, or further radicalised, by propagandists in prison. There is clear evidence that this is happening. On 25 January, the Times reports the current Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, Jonathan Hall QC, as saying that there was an increasing "drumbeat" of links between prison and terror attacks, with offenders not being properly punished for owning radical material, preaching extremism and inciting violence. The Times notes that the man given a whole life sentence last month for murdering three men in a park in Reading in a terror attack last year was befriended by a radical preacher while serving an earlier prison sentence. Secondly, if these vulnerable people believe that the sanctions imposed on them are disproportionate, or that the system that led to their imprisonment was unfair, the ideology promulgated by these propagandists is made to appear even more attractive and compelling No one would argue against a proportionate sentence of imprisonment for someone convicted in a court of law of a terrorist offence, as my noble friend Lord Marks has just said, or that, for a limited time, a suspected terrorist who is believed to present a real and immediate threat should not have their liberty to carry out a terrorist attack prevented while evidence is gathered upon which to base a trial in a court of law. However, paragraph 3.6 of the same Prevent strategy says: "There is evidence to indicate that support for terrorism is associated with rejection of a cohesive, integrated, multi-faith society and of parliamentary democracy. Work to deal with radicalisation will depend on developing a sense of belonging to this country and support for our core values." Disproportionately long sentences of imprisonment and indefinite deprivation of liberty without charge or trial would reinforce this rejection of our cohesive, integrated, multifaith society and parliamentary democracy. They would undermine any sense of belonging to this country and any support for our core values. Indeed, they begin to call into question some of our core values What evidence is there that it is easier to develop a sense of belonging to this country and support for our core values while someone is in prison, compared with when they are on licence in the community? The Times article I quoted previously reports the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation as saying that encouraging and inciting terrorism were being "successfully combated in the community", unlike the failure to address these issues in prison. Although he is to conduct a review of what is happening in prisons, it appears to be limited to examining how terrorism is detected, disrupted and prosecuted behind bars and whether improvements can be made, rather than the comprehensive review called for in our amendment For all these reasons, there is serious doubt whether Part 1 of the Bill will achieve what the Government intend by it; therefore, our Amendment 16 is necessary. Other amendments in this group call for a review of the financial impact of the Bill and the impact on the prison population, both of which could hamper the effectiveness of any deradicalisation or rehabilitation strategy and any attempt to prevent radicalisation or further radicalisation in prison. Reviews are called for on the specific impact of the Bill in Northern Ireland and on the National Probation Service, and we support these amendments as well.