Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill — House of Commons, 2020-07-21
Topic: Mixed Topics
Zarah Sultana (Labour, Centre-left): I rise to speak about issues relating to amendments 37, 38, 40 and 46. I was seven years old on 11 September 2011, and that awful day passed a long shadow over my childhood. As a young Muslim, I saw the effects of the war on terror at home and abroad. At home, it meant rising Islamophobia, the steady erosion of civil rights, and the installation of cameras on streets near my childhood home. We were told that they were for traffic control, but we soon learned that that was not true. It was an area with a significant Muslim community, and we were being watched. As I got older, I became far too familiar with that. My community were seen not as citizens worthy of equality and respect, but as a threat viewed with hostility and suspicion At school and university, I encountered the effects of Prevent. It was said that it was targeting radicalisation, but when it resulted in Muslim university students being reported for reading terrorism-related textbooks as part of their degree, we knew that its effect was to target Muslims and erode the civil liberties of all. If we are worried about free speech on campuses, we need to look at the Prevent strategy In the past few years, terrorist atrocities have continued to rock communities across the world, from horrific antisemitic and white supremacist attacks, like that which hit the Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018 and the Christchurch mosque massacre in New Zealand last year, to the far-right extremist who assassinated a Member of this House in 2016 and the devastating attack that cruelly took 23 lives in Manchester in 2017. Everything must be done to combat such awful acts and keep our community safe. We must respect individual liberty and tackle the hate and fear that drives such horrific acts I have real concerns that the Bill falls short of those standards. First, it introduces control orders in all but name, which threaten all our civil liberties. Secondly, it removes the statutory deadline to review Prevent. Thirdly, it abandons any attempt to rehabilitate and reform, and instead keeps individuals trapped in a permanent web of surveillance and prisons On the first point, concerns and objections to changes to terrorism prevention and investigation measures have been raised by independent reviewers, including the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, and civil rights groups such as Liberty and Amnesty International. Liberty says that the change "reintroduces Control Orders in all but name" Control orders have allowed people to be placed under indefinite house arrest, without ever having been convicted of a crime or even having known the evidence against them. The coalition Government rightly abolished them, but this Bill effectively brings them back. Liberty says that the changes pose "a threat to fundamental pillars of our justice system." That should be a concern to us all, so I encourage Government Members to support amendments 37, 40, 46 and 47 On the second point, the Bill removes the statutory deadline for an independent review of the Prevent programme. To say that the programme needs an independent review is a serious understatement. Again, human rights organisations have consistently raised concerns about it. In 2018, Amnesty International said that it was developed "without a firm evidence base and rooted in a vague and expansive definition of ‘extremism’" Countless examples can be found of the programme’s discriminatory impact on Muslims. In addition to the ones I have already mentioned, I want to include that of an eight-year-old boy who was questioned by Prevent officials after his teacher mistook the writing on his T-shirt, as well as the labelling of countless Muslim individuals, charities and mosques as extreme by the Government. The flaws of the programme have reached such heights that the likes of Greenpeace, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and Extinction Rebellion were put on Prevent documents alongside proscribed neo-Nazi terror groups. The case for a statutory review of Prevent is clear, so I again urge Conservative Members to support amendments such as amendments 38 and 51 On the final point, this Bill omits any effort to improve rehabilitation, which is an absolutely key measure to keeping our communities safe and preventing future attacks. Endlessly locking people up and interning them in underfunded, overcrowded, privately-run prisons is no way to protect the public. Instead, it is simply a recipe for creating more problems down the line I cannot support the approach of this Bill. We need to tackle terrorism, and we need to do that through prevention, but also by tackling the fear and hate upon which it thrives by bringing communities together and by never letting us be divided on the grounds of race and religion.