HANSARD
Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015 (Risk of Being Drawn into Terrorism) (Revised Guidance) Regulations 2023
- Considered in Grand Committee
- 3:58 pm
- Moved by
- That the Grand Committee do consider the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015 (Risk of Being Drawn into Terrorism) (Revised Guidance) Regulations 2023.Relevant document: 52nd Report from Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee
- My Lords, this instrument, which was laid before Parliament on 7 September 2023, relates to Prevent. Prevent is one of the pillars of Contest, the United Kingdom’s counterterrorism strategy. The aim of Prevent is to stop people becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism. It also extends to supporting the rehabilitation and disengagement of those already involved in terrorism. These aims could scarcely be more important.Put simply, Prevent is an early intervention programme to keep all of us safe. To do so effectively, it requires front-line sectors across society, including education, healthcare, local authorities, criminal justice agencies and the police, to support this mission. This is why we have the Prevent duty, set out in the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015. It sits alongside long-established duties on professionals to protect people from a range of other harms, such as involvement in gangs or physical and sexual exploitation. The Prevent duty helps to ensure that people who are susceptible to radicalisation are offered timely interventions before it becomes too late.
- 4:00 pm
- We cannot pretend that this is easy. Radicalisation is complex and there is no single track to a person becoming radicalised. There are many factors that can, either alone or combined, lead someone to subscribe to extremist ideology and, in some cases, terrorism. These factors often include exposure to radicalising influences, real and perceived grievances and an individual’s own susceptibility.
- The Prevent guidance exists to support and provide reassurance to those working in front-line sectors on how to navigate these challenging situations. The Counter-Terrorism and Security Act requires specified authorities to have regard to this guidance. It is challenging, but we must always strive for excellence.
- The Government are committed to ensuring that Prevent is effective. The Independent Review of Prevent—the IRP—was published on 8 February 2023. In it, Sir William Shawcross made 34 recommendations, all of which were accepted by the Home Secretary in the Government’s response. The Government are working at pace to drive improvements. We expect to have implemented at least 29 of the 34 recommendations within a year of publication and the rest shortly thereafter.
- We introduced the new security threat check to ensure that decision-making is always informed by a proper consideration of the current threat picture. Updated training has been provided for public sector staff subject to the Prevent duty. The updated guidance, which is the subject of this statutory instrument, was published on 7 September and responds to several of Sir William’s recommendations. The guidance has updated Prevent’s objectives to make it clear that Prevent should
- “tackle the ideological causes of terrorism”.
- It sets out requirements more clearly, articulating the need for high-quality training so that risk can be identified and managed. It provides an updated threat picture and gives details of the strategic security threat check, which helps Prevent to recognise and respond to the greatest threats. This will ensure that Prevent is well-equipped to counter the threats that we face and the ideologies underpinning them.
- As well as responding to the Independent Review of Prevent’s recommendations, the guidance reflects current best practice. It supports and exemplifies the excellent work that we know takes place across the country to keep us safe and to help to prevent people from becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism. The guidance will assist statutory partners to understand how best to comply with the duty. It includes details of the capabilities that they should have to be able to identify and manage risk. It also advises on how they can help to create an environment where the ideologies that are used to radicalise people into terrorism are challenged and not permitted to flourish.
- People with Prevent responsibilities were consulted on the guidance. A range of key governmental partners were engaged throughout the development of the updated guidance and their feedback has been positive. The Government have been working closely with these partners to roll out the guidance and support its implementation.
- Subject to the approval of the House, this statutory instrument will bring the new guidance into effect on 31 December 2023, replacing the outdated guidance from 2015. It will strengthen the Prevent system and help to keep us safe, which is why I commend it to the Committee and beg to move.
- My Lords, I pay tribute once again to the work of the police, security and intelligence services. It is difficult but it saves lives and, as I know the Minister will agree, it helps to keep us safe. Extremism is a stain on our society. It feeds on fear, which seeks to drive us apart, and is perpetuated in the name of one extreme ideology or another. All of us on this Committee and beyond are opposed to that.We have seen a terrorist attack on Fishmongers’ Hall, close to London Bridge, the awful attack at a concert in Manchester and the brutal murders of Jo Cox and Sir David Amess, among other shocking events, such as the bomb attack at the Dover Border Force centre. Was it not a bad mistake for the Shawcross review not to include that last incident as one of the examples of attacks listed in that report, given that it was not Islamist? It could have been included, because it took place months before the publication of the original review. The Minister will know that one of the criticisms of the review and worries about it is its supposed bias.Ongoing threats are thwarted and ongoing action is taken by the police and security services. Can the Minister outline their view of these guidelines, as well as those of others who have to implement them, such as local authorities or education providers—schools and so on?Prevent is extremely important, as is its purpose of early intervention to prevent radicalisation, extremism and, ultimately, terror. We, like others, support its actions in that regard. However, the strategy is seen by some as contentious and many feel that it is one-sided. How are the Government going to restore confidence and trust across the community in their work on Prevent and the broader counterterrorism strategy?For example, we have seen the criticisms from the former head of counterterrorism police, Neil Basu, as well as others such as Amnesty International, of the Shawcross review. Is public confidence not increasingly important, given the current awful international situation in the Middle East and the domestic challenges it gives rise to in the UK? Have the Government reflected on these current events? Given the horror we all feel at what we have seen, is the guidance as up to date as it needs to be to reflect the current situation? Might further amendments be required in due course? Is anything planned?
- I thank the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, for his contribution. He has asked a number of questions and I will do my best to answer to them all.Before I do that, I join the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, in applauding the work of the security services and the various agencies that keep us all safe, and thank them for it. I include in that the officials in the Home Office, who are often rather overlooked when we are handing out praise to our security services, but who do a considerable amount of work and of thinking about how best to apply these rules in an operational situation. I re-assert that the core objective here is to strengthen the Prevent system, which is a vital component of the counterterrorism apparatus, and in giving my answers I will endeavour to explain why.The noble Lord, Lord Coaker, asked me about public confidence and trust in the system and raised the issue of the Dover attack. Of course, the Independent Review of Prevent was led by Sir William Shawcross. He was an independent reviewer, so he decided on the content of the report. I am unable to comment on why he made that decision or what prompted it.It is perhaps worth digressing and looking at the state of play regarding the extreme right-wing threat we face, because that does feed into this subject. We have accepted the Independent Review of Prevent’s recommendation to ensure that a consistent and proportionate threshold is in place across all the Prevent workstreams. Prevent is now guided by the principles of the new security threat check, which is recommended in the IRP. This series of principles informs our strategic approach, which asks us to consider whether actions are proportionate against the UK’s current terrorism and extremism threat picture. That means that the Home Office approaches and products clearly show how they are relevant to meeting Prevent’s objectives and responding to the threat of terrorism.
- 4:15 pm
- Interestingly, left-wing, anarchist and single-issue terrorism currently represents a significantly smaller terrorist threat to the UK than Islamist or extreme right-wing terrorism and is not currently present in the UK on any significant scale, although some activity has met a terrorist threshold in recent years and MI5 investigations continue into those cases.