Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill — House of Commons, 2018-06-11
Topic: Law and Crime
John Woodcock (Independent, Unknown): It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes). I have sat here and listened to some thoughtful speeches. In particular, the hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) gave us a lot to think about on an issue that I had hoped the Home Secretary would cover in his opening remarks—the new provision on encouragement, effectively, of terrorism through statements that fall short of specifically inciting support for proscribed terrorist organisations. This is a really important provision, as the hon. Gentleman set out cogently in relation to Northern Ireland This is a difficult subject to raise, but I am brought back to remarks made in the past by Members who sit on the Labour Benches, some when they were MPs. We have the man who would be Chancellor of the United Kingdom having apparently, in 1986, praised the ballot, the bomb and the bullet. That is deeply, deeply serious. If my understanding of the new legislation is right, had it been in place at the time that that Member apparently made those remarks, he would have been guilty of a terrorist offence. Is the Minister able to share his understanding on that, or is he going to let me raise the matter alone? This is a serious matter in and of itself, but how wide-ranging these new powers could be deserves great thought from Members who will consider the Bill in Committee I want to spend a little time talking about the case of Ethan Stables, a young man from Barrow, aged 20, who has just been committed under existing terrorism legislation. On 23 June last year, Ethan Stables posted on Facebook that he was going to war, that he was preparing for a slaughter and planning to attack a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Pride event at the New Empire pub. Fortunately, those posts were immediately seen by someone local. The alarm was raised and he was picked up by the police as he was walking to the New Empire pub. He was convicted of terrorism offences. It was found that he had a machete and knives in his home, that he was a neo-Nazi sympathiser and that he had googled things such as "I want to go on a killing spree" and "What is prison like for a murderer?" Clearly, the signs were all there. There is a separate question about why it took so long to pick up Mr Stables. He was literally on the verge of attacking people who were celebrating a community event in the New Empire pub. If the legislation had been in place, the fact that Mr Stables had repeatedly viewed violent videos online and looked at how to download and create his own bombs, would have made him guilty of an offence long before he got to the stage of actively planning. That in itself is surely a reason to welcome this new legislation The case of Mr Stables raises the wider question of resources. It is all very well having the offences in place, but the Government will need to explain how they will be able to secure prosecutions earlier on in the process, rather than finding a reason, once someone has been apprehended for other reasons, to go through their viewing history It is my understanding that there is no requirement, or indeed any legal possibility at the moment, for internet companies such as YouTube routinely to provide the IP addresses of people who have viewed banned material more than three times, which would make them subject to criminal action under this terrorist legislation. I am talking about videos which would potentially see YouTube found guilty of a criminal offence, or certainly a civil offence, if it kept them up after having being warned about them. Will the Minister address that matter in his summing up? Will he consider bringing that forward so that there is potential to catch more people who are online at the time they are doing this, rather than as part of some retrofitting The Home Affairs Committee took evidence last week from the Met police commissioner, Cressida Dick. She was quite clear about the scale of pressure that her resources are under, even at present. She went through a number of areas, including, of course, counter-terror, where more resource was needed and where the amount available was inadequate at the time. Yet this legislation creates a new tranche of offences, which, unless the Minister can explain otherwise, will not be sufficiently resourced to be properly policed The other major omission, which the Minister will expect me to raise as we have been backwards and forwards on it both inside and outside the House for many months now, is on the issue of returning jihadis. It is good to get the recognition from the Home Secretary in this debate that he is considering introducing the Australian-style offence at the amendment stage. I can see no other way in which the Government will be able to get close to securing sufficient evidence to prosecute people who are returning from places such as Iraq, Syria or wherever the next terror hotspot is The Minister knows that I was able to interview at length someone who was being held in a removal centre in Izmir, Turkey on suspicion of supporting Daesh. She was being removed back to the UK on those grounds. There was a suspicion at the time about what would happen to the woman whom we interviewed. The very tough rhetoric that we hear from the Government, which is that we always seek to prosecute individuals, is not actually commensurate with being able successfully to prosecute individuals once they are here. Clearly, people are going over. They are travelling to Syria without a specific or verifiable reason, such as being part of aid work. They are clearly not going for a valid reason, yet, at the moment, we need verifiable proof, which is very hard to find, to be able to prosecute such people A number of us have repeatedly pressed the Government on this. The Minister can enlighten us all on this in his closing remarks if he wishes, but for many months now the Government have refused to give the number of people who have returned from Syria who have been successfully prosecuted. The response now is that those numbers are not quantified in that fashion. Well, they were quantified in May 2016, when the Advocate General, Lord Keen, in the other place gave a written response. Back then, he said that 54 people had been successfully prosecuted, with 30 ongoing cases. Clearly, it is possible to update the House on this and the Government are choosing not to do so. Our strong suspicion is that that is because so few are able to be prosecuted—