Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill — House of Lords, 2015-01-28
Topic: Government Operations
Angela Smith (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, clearly we have returned from our break reinvigorated, although I suspect that when noble Lords saw the words, "House adjourned for pleasure" while they ate with indecent haste, they might have wondered about the term "pleasure". We will all claim some indigestion later I shall speak to all the amendments, including our Amendment 112CA. Yet again these amendments highlight the concerns around making sure that something is effective in practice, that the necessary checks and balances are in place, and that the reporting procedures will ensure that it is working as it should. Our amendment reflects a point made by my noble friend Lady Lister, which is that the guidance should be subject to the affirmative resolution procedure. That is important because the guidance we are discussing and which we will rely on is now out for consultation, and that consultation has not been completed. I think that the noble Lord has been both wise and helpful in pre-empting the consultation responses in his letter sent last night to noble Lords. It goes into some of the changes that can be made. However, the importance of the consultation is such that it is going to inform the guidance, which in turn will indicate to specified authorities what is going to be expected of them. I appreciate that noble Lords have pointed out in earlier debates that it is not prescriptive, but the role of the guidance will be crucial to how the specified authorities can ensure that they do not find themselves subject to a direction from the Secretary of State, which is quite a significant move. We should not underestimate the importance of the consultation and the guidance We are not going to see the guidance until the Committee stage has finished, so there will be no real opportunity to discuss it as we would like. Moreover, I do not know whether the Government are going to issue a formal response to the consultation. Indeed, the consultation itself had not been issued when the other place considered this Bill, and that is why we think it would be a sensible and practical move for the guidance to be considered by both Houses under the affirmative procedure. This has the support of Universities UK and million+ Part 5 sets out a new duty which has a very wide range. It relates to schools, universities, prisons, the police and some public companies exercising a public duty. We had a long debate earlier about higher education. I also appreciate that recently there have been cases in Tower Hamlets and Birmingham which highlighted the need to bring schools within the Prevent agenda to see how it could be of positive assistance to them, although the Minister is probably very aware of the fact that we need further information on how that will work in practice However, I am struggling to understand why nurseries have been included in the list and how they are going to operate this. The noble Baroness, Lady Hussein-Ece, raised the same point earlier. We all know that young children say things that they do not understand and they do not mean. A young Muslim friend of mine was absolutely horrified when her nephew came home from school playing with an imaginary gun and saying that he was going to fight in Iraq. He does not know where Iraq is and he had no idea of what he was saying. He did not hear it at home, but somehow he picked it up. What would be the duty of the nursery when he said that? My nephew at the age of four caused great embarrassment to my younger sister when on a train back home one day he asked the German man sitting opposite him: "Are you a Nazi then?". Where did he pick that up? One thinks of "Raiders of the Lost Ark". Children say things that are inappropriate; that they do not mean or understand. I wonder how that fits in with the Government’s Prevent agenda and the duty that they are going to place on nurseries I declare an interest because my mum runs a preschool. It was a Church of England voluntary preschool; it is now state-funded under the Labour Government’s plans to provide nursery provision for three and four year-olds. It is Ofsted inspected. If I have to tell her that she now has a further duty to have due regard to ensure that her three and four year-olds are not drawn into terrorism, I wonder how she will respond and what the responsibility will be to ensure that she fulfils that duty. I joke slightly, but this is a serious matter. I do not understand how the Government expect people to fulfil that duty I have read the guidance and would be interested to know how many nurseries, preschool providers and childminders had access and would have known to respond and understood what there is. If the noble Lord is able to say at the end of the consultation how many responses there were from those providers, it would be interesting to get a sense of the legitimacy of the consultation If the concern is about parents, it is important for the welfare of a child that nursery staff have a very trusting relationship with parents. We should not take any action which undermines that. The Minister nods and I am sure that he understands the point I make. Why are nurseries included and how will the measure work in practice There is nothing in the guidance, it seems to me, that looks at the issue of online radicalisation. If you look at the risks of being drawn into terrorism—a point which has been made today by a number of noble Lords—the only route is not through university, as seems to be indicated in some of the documentation that we have seen. What action is proposed to counter radicalism, recruitment and grooming online? There is a significant case for far more to be done to tackle online grooming, extremism online and social media—all these different routes. This does not seem to be catered for in the guidance that is out for consultation Another point that has been raised, but is worth repeating when talking about the duty and parliamentary scrutiny, is the need for the Government to give further clarity on what is meant by extremism. Which definition should be used? I turn to the detail of the amendment. Clause 24 gives the Secretary of State the power to issue guidance to specified authorities about the exercise of their duty. The consultation ends on Friday. The Bill was semi-fast-tracked. We have not had the opportunity to benefit from the consultation results. I found the consultation documents quite narrow—as did other noble Lords—in how they expected people to respond. Without those responses it is absolutely essential that Parliament, not the Secretary of State, has the final say in how that guidance should reflect the responses to the consultation. Otherwise, all we are doing in the clause is to provide an enabling power for the Secretary of State. Given the impact that this will have, we think that such scrutiny from your Lordships’ House and from the other place is important Over the past week or so we have had discussions with various Muslim representative groups, the Muslim Council of Britain and MEND regarding their concerns about the Bill and particularly the Prevent duty. It is worth putting on record that in many cases we see that Muslim community groups and youth organisations have been among the most vocal in condemning extremism and extreme violence and in pointing out that the action of barbaric groups such as ISIL are not representative of the Islamic faith whatsoever. I would not want anything that goes out from the Bill or from the debates that we have today to undermine our acknowledgement of that We have to ensure that we continue to speak to those communities about their experiences and work together to try to counteract the issues that divide us. There is far more that unites us than divides us and the Prevent strategy is not going to work unless we have that interfaith and all-faith and no-faith understanding. It is because the Opposition support Prevent that we want it to be effective and proportionate. The guidance that the Secretary of State is going to issue will be crucial in this. That is why we believe it is so important that it has parliamentary approval.