Terrorism Act 2000 (Proscribed Organisations) (Amendment) (No. 2) Order 2015 — House of Lords, 2015-03-26
Topic: Law and Crime
Mark Schreiber (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I support very much what my noble friend is proposing in this order, and in doing so I should like to say that the plethora of these splinter groups which are affiliated to what is now the umbrella body known as ISIS or Islamic State is an extremely worrying phenomenon. It is interesting to discover that new ones are constantly being created, which of course is quite a usual technique among terrorist organisations in order to avoid any disruption to their activities In that connection, I want once again to ask my noble friend about the Muslim Brotherhood, which is actually a very dangerous organisation. It, too, seeks to have theocracy with sharia law and is prepared to use violent methods to achieve that. As my noble friend will remember, the Muslim Brotherhood was started up in 1928 and in January 1949 it assassinated the Egyptian Prime Minister. It was banned by President Nasser after it tried to assassinate him in 1954. It was also responsible for the assassination of President Anwar Sadat in October 1981. The organisation is the trunk of the tree, the roots of which are the Wahhabi and the Salafists, and the branches of which are the various organisations to which my noble friend has referred At this point we are in more danger from terrorism in this country than probably at any stage in my lifetime, and it is getting worse and more serious. There are actions which could be taken which I much regret have not been taken on what are not very good grounds. A particular point which I do not apologise for returning to again is the need for tighter control over passports, in particular through the introduction of a system by which the British Government are at least aware of the other passports being held by British passport holders The Government recently announced the reintroduction next month of exit checks, which is thoroughly desirable. I am glad that that is going to happen, although I am a little worried about the mechanics of how it is to be done. Will the checks on exit be as thorough as those on entry? Apparently, the exit checks are going to be done by the agencies carrying the passengers—the shipping lines, train companies and airlines—rather than by immigration officers who check entrants It would be a great help if we had at least some knowledge of the second passports being held by people. There is no discrimination about it. I was very concerned by the argument used by the Home Office against this proposal because it struck me that it was totally out of proportion to the threat we face. Perhaps I may remind the Minister by quoting from the letter signed by his noble friend: "If there were security benefits, we would look to make best use of such a database"— that is, a database of second passports. The letter continues: "However, we are not persuaded that this is the case. It would create a level of intrusion for all British citizens who hold dual nationality, who would be obliged to keep HMPO informed of any change to their second passport. There are legitimate concerns about imposing such intrusion on one particular class of UK nationals, which we do not believe would be outweighed by operational benefits" I suggest that, with the situation we face, the arguments against this are so trivial that it is absolutely astonishing that they have even been raised. We have had cases in recent weeks and months of people getting out of the United Kingdom who should have been kept in the country because they were on bail or wanted for terrorist offences. Of course, in many cases these sorts of people have other passports, so they may travel in and out when it suits them on British passports and then do other things on other passports All I am asking is for my noble friend to ensure, please, at any rate during the period when all of us are campaigning for our particular political persuasions, that the Home Office will continue to work on better methods of securing our borders and defending the realm. It is certainly true that a balance has to be struck between national security and human rights, but personal privacy, in such a period of crisis as we currently face, cannot itself rate highly against the need to introduce all necessary measures.