Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill — House of Commons, 2019-01-22
Topic: Law and Crime
Robert Ben Lobban Wallace (Conservative, Centre-right): I would be delighted to look at that. I also remind the hon. Gentleman that the Crown Prosecution Service has a role in this. It will test not only the validity but the interest of prosecuting in this area. We do not risk people being wrongly prosecuted by organisations not being on the list as it is, by the time the process has been gone through. While the individuals may not be totally au fait, the prosecutor will be, as will the judge who will test the proposition of the prosecution. I do believe that we should be confident about that. However, I give the hon. Gentleman the undertaking that I will keep it under review The hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands) made a good point about best practice. My experience of visiting Prevent around the whole of the United Kingdom is that it is better received in some areas and better delivered in others. It is absolutely the case that Prevent works very well in some areas, depending on the different communities and who the Prevent champions and community leaders are. He made very good points about community cohesion in Scotland. We are, absolutely, happy to look at that to see what lessons are to be learned. At the heart of his point, he is absolutely right—best practice is going on. I do not want us to throw out Prevent because of a few failing examples, or examples that do not actually exist when tested. We need to build on it and show where it is a success, and we must not be frightened to say, "Look, it is working", if that is what the reviewer decides. But of course it can be improved. We improve Contest every few years. We do not hold that the Contest strategy overall is absolutely stuck, and therefore we make sure that we move it on The right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Sir Edward Davey) talked about proscription. He will know that Lord Anderson made this suggestion. I met former Lord Chief Justices and a number of Members of the House of Lords on the issues. The Lords, including those on the Labour Front Bench, rejected the amendment. It is quite easy to request that an organisation is looked at and de-proscribed. It only takes a letter from someone to say, "Will you consider de-proscribing this organisation?" In doing so, they are effectively immune from being prosecuted. If they say, for example, "I do not think this organisation should be proscribed because I support it", and send the letter in, the process starts. That is already open to people However, the legislation around proscription is not as straightforward as some people think. We often proscribe groups overseas. In fact, since I have been Security Minister, we have de-proscribed groups that I had frankly never heard of until we did so. They were way overseas somewhere. For example, we de-proscribed one of them so as to assist peace building in a country that was a fragile state so as to allow that process to progress. It is not as straightforward as I think some in the House of Lords had thought it was going to be. A lot of the proscription legislation came around the time of the Northern Ireland Good Friday agreement. We should be mindful about what automatic de-proscription, or automatic reviews, may unlock not so far away It is important that we reflected on the issues. We rejected the proposal as there is a solid mechanism already in place whereby people can ask to de-proscribe and call for a review. That is why the House of Lords rejected it, and we are not going to seek to replace it here Lords amendment 1 agreed to. Lords amendments 2 to 11, 13 and 16 agreed to. After Clause 16 Persons detained under port and border control powers