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Terrorism Bill

My Lords, I always wonder whether the process of taking notes for five hours does not addle the brain, but I will do my best with what I have here. The detail of the Bill is complex, but the outline is simple. Sharp among the detail has been what the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, has said, and of which I very much hope the Minister has taken careful note. For too long, the noble Baroness has been a solitary voice, drawing attention to matters of fundamental importance to this House and the country. In case she should have been thought by some who do not know her to be a fussbudget and a nervous person, she is, as many of your Lordships know, one of the bravest people in the country, and has demonstrated it on frequent occasions. It really is extraordinary that we should be complacent, not merely about the threats to the noble Baroness’s person, to this building and to us, but also about the fact that somebody with known terrorist affinities of the first order should have a controlling interest in a commercial concern which has access to all the most sensitive security sites and processes in this country. The question is too embarrassing to answer, but I hope that the Minister will not spare her own blushes when she replies. The other point of detail which shone out brightly was made by the noble Lord, Lord Brennan. He drew your Lordships’ attention, in a very eloquent, focused and pertinent way, to the victims of terrorism who are, in some cases, scandalously neglected. This may not fall within the scope of the Bill as drafted—it may not come within the scope of the Long Title—but it must surely come swiftly within the scope of government policy. The noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, drew our attention to the crucial nature of the shortage of resources in certain parts of our security and police organisations. That, too, is a matter of detail, but it is of very great importance. Something else she said struck me very much as relating to the outline within which this whole debate is taking place. There can be, she said, no peace without justice. Chiming with that was the focusing of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, on the paramountcy of community relations. What is under attack is British society, which is very far from what it was when I was a child. I was brought up during the war, when our society was exceedingly cohesive because it was under very clear and visible physical attack, which threatened all of us. We had a coherent philosophy, a coherent religious attitude and coherent standards of behaviour which have all, since then, dissolved. So what we are defending now is much more amorphous and vague; it is much more difficult to attract the passionate loyalty of those who wish to defend it. A house that is divided against itself cannot stand, and unless something is done about our divided society, whatever we put in the Bill, we are in peril. Terrorists come into a weak community, with a very strong theology and philosophy of their own. They come upon people questioning the rights of what they do while having no questions themselves about the rights of what they do. My noble friend Lord Hurd said that intelligence, not legislation, was the best weapon. At present, intelligence is scanty. The intelligence we need is about the things that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark drew to our attention when he said that without condoning or excusing violence, we must understand and address its underlying causes. On community relations, the fact that there are, regrettably, a great many people who have been in this country for 30 or 40 years and have to bring their children and grandchildren along as interpreters, shows that we need to know more about our own society and change it. It is not entirely the fault of those who have been here so long, without absorbing even the language of the country of their adoption, that they have not done so. This needs to be addressed urgently but not within the perimeters of this Bill. As my noble friend Lady Park said, how is it that the Muslim extremists in this country have a loyalty to the world Islamic state which trumps loyalty to this country? The nations of this world have duties and obligations towards each other which are exactly parallel to the duties and obligations of their citizens to each other. It is a clear fact that we are one of the very richest nations in the world. There are countries which, by comparison, are destitute. That injustice will always breed violence. It goes outside the Long Title of this Bill, but it is the context in which we legislate. That is what I wish to remind your Lordships of. We have an obligation not merely to defend our state and our citizens, but to create a world in which we deserve the security and peace that the rest of the world could give us, if there were justice in it. It is not a popular thing to say t suggest that we have to do things that will cost money, at a time when our economy, I fear, is on the brink of recession. But in the long term it is in our own best interest. It is remarkable that the teaching to be found in the Good Book so often coincides with what is, in the long run, in our best interests. Our foreign policy and the work of DfID are as germane to this problem as is the contents of this Bill, the detail of which I shall be very interested to discuss with the noble Baroness, covering all sorts of recondite problems, including the question of whether the devolution of the warrant-giving powers of the Secretary of State to Scottish Ministers is a sensible piece of devolution. I have said enough to fill my seven minutes.