Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill — House of Lords, 2015-01-13
Topic: Law and Crime
Frank Ashcroft Judd (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I declare an interest as a trustee of Saferworld and as somebody involved in the governance of universities It has become clear in the debate that we all agree on the sinister and horrible nature of the threat and that it is probably increasing. Although as parliamentarians we must constantly keep them under constructive criticism and scrutiny, it is appropriate to put on record my admiration for the police, the security services, the armed services, the Home Office and indeed Ministers—the men and women who are grappling with this situation What exactly are we defending? I thought that the significant speech by the noble Lord, Lord Evans of Weardale, came very close to understanding the complexities of the situation and the interplay between security and human rights. I found his remarks very important. However, one thing has come across to me clearly from recent events and from this debate: by definition, terrorism is international. If we are to grapple with it effectively, there has to be maximum effective international co-operation. This is no time for us in Britain to be involved in a debate as to how we can extricate ourselves from our international involvements. It is a time in which we should strengthen those as a way to contain the nightmare before us Ultimately, what we are defending is not just our economy, our wonderful literary, artistic, musical and architectural inheritance, or our fantastic landscape. All of these matter very much; I will take second place to nobody in emphasising how important they are to a civilised society. However, directly and immediately, it is our people and their families whom we must defend. To do that, we have to defend relentlessly our imperatively important system of justice and the principles on which it is based, for which we have struggled for centuries. We have not perfected it, but for centuries we have been improving the situation. It is there to protect our people Central to this, in my estimation as a non-lawyer—a lay man—is habeas corpus, equality before the law, fearless impartiality, transparency and knowing the case against you. Here, of course, the issue of interception becomes very important. Of course we must understand the dangers of and the anxieties of those responsible for our security about what could happen if we go down the road of bringing intercept evidence into court. I believe that it is a matter not of how we do not do it but of finding a way to do it that improves the quality of the other elements that I have described We must beware of counterproductivity, accentuated by shortcuts. Terrorism works best, it seems to me, in a context of ambiguity: when there are larger numbers of people, many of whom—I have said this before in this House—would abhor the act of terrorism as much as any of us, but who sometimes just wonder whether, however misguided and horrible, these people are on their side. That is why it is imperative that we emphasise the importance of human rights in our society. I put it as strongly as this: if we have a good, demonstrably effective and encompassing record on human rights, the extremists will be on the defensive. People will want to embrace that kind of society because they feel that it is in their interests. If there are some doubts about how far human rights really apply to them in a particular situation, we begin to get into trouble. People can be influenced in the wrong direction, in a way that leads them to involvement with the very worst. This issue of counterproductivity cannot be overstressed Policing and building security depend essentially on working with the community. I was glad that the noble Lord, Lord Wasserman, made the point about being certain that anything that we do on the security front is not at the price of conventional policing, because conventional policing has a vital role to play in combating terrorism. At its best, conventional policing is close to the community, knows the community in which it works and can therefore play a critical part in foreseeing what might happen, in informing and in being able to brief the specialists whom we must have to deal with crises as they emerge I want briefly to deal with a couple of specific points; they have been referred to in the debate. The first is the temporary exclusion order. I find it very difficult indeed to believe that, in the Britain in which I want to live, we can ever contemplate isolating somebody abroad. At a practical level, we can lose control of the situation by abandoning them abroad, where they may become more active. It is surely much better to have them under our jurisdiction In that context I was interested by the report of the Joint Committee on Human Rights. We are fortunate to have the Joint Committee working for us. I always feel that its reports are indispensable reading, as I am sure the Minister does, and its members do not mince their words in their recent report. They say: "We are opposed in principle to any exclusion of UK nationals from the UK, even on a temporary basis … In our view, the Government’s objective of managed return could be achieved by a much simpler system requiring UK nationals who are suspects to provide advance notification of their return to the UK on pain of criminal penalty if they fail to do so" They recommend that the Bill should therefore be specifically amended to cover this point. At the same time, to the Government’s credit, they welcome the Minister’s indication that the Government will return to the issue of judicial oversight during our deliberations in the House of Lords The other issue, on which several noble Lords have spoken, is education at school level and at higher education and university level; there have even been references to what all this means at pre-school level. Again, in the Britain which I love and which is dear to me, a pillar of our society has been the principle of academic freedom—the autonomy and independence of universities. We must be very careful indeed, whatever the threats, about how we begin to infringe on that. I am glad that on that point the Joint Committee on Human Rights reminded us in its report that Parliament gave statutory recognition to academic freedom in Section 202 of the Education Reform Act 1988, which provides that university commissioners, "shall have regard to the need to ensure that academic staff have freedom within the law to question and test received wisdom, and to put forward new ideas and controversial or unpopular opinions, without placing themselves in jeopardy of losing their jobs or privileges they may have at their institutions" That has been central to the exercise of freedom in our society. I am a bit alarmed about the implications of some of what is in the proposed legislation. I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure us Security cannot be imposed. Security, like policing, even in a conventional sense, works best when it works with, involves and has the assent, endorsement and the identification of the community with its purposes and what is necessary to fulfil them. We have to be careful again within the language of our deliberations—and there has been reference to language—that we are not reinforcing doubt or even marginally encouraging and fanning alienation. Do the provisions of the Bill—this is what we shall have to scrutinise in every clause as we go through it—help us to build society’s security or may we inadvertently be causing dissent and anxiety? We must watch that closely because, as the noble Lord, Lord Evans of Weardale, said, there is no fundamental clash between the principles of security and human rights. Indeed, they are there to reinforce each other and we must make sure that in every step of the Bill just that is happening.