Shabana Mahmood

I thank the shadow Home Secretary for his response and for the way in which he made it. I look forward to working with him and with all Members across the House as we deal with what I hope will always be a shared issue and a shared problem. Where there is agreement and consensus in this House on the measures that we should take, I hope we will be able to progress those matters quickly. The shadow Home Secretary asked specifically about universities. He will, I hope, have seen the comments made by my colleague and right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education, who has made clear to universities what their responsibilities are. It is important that she does that engagement before considering what measures to take if universities fail to take all steps to protect Jewish students on campus. This Government are very clear that universities already have responsibilities and they need to demonstrate that they are reflecting those responsibilities and taking appropriate action. The shadow Home Secretary asked a range of questions on other crimes that are being committed. He will, I hope, recognise that this Government have worked very closely with policing, despite lots of disquiet in some quarters, to ensure that we have absolutely no tail-off in our response to those who support a proscribed terror organisation. He will have seen that there have been many hundreds of arrests. As long as people continue to show support for a proscribed organisation, they will face the full force of the law every time they do so. On immigration powers, I am considering all immigration issues. The shadow Home Secretary will know that this Government have quite significantly increased the deportations of foreign offenders who have been found guilty of committing a crime in this country, compared to the situation we inherited. I note his points on the wider powers of the Immigration Act 1971, which I am reviewing. I will say more to the House on that in due course. The right hon. Gentleman also made a number of points on our proposed amendments to sections 12 and 14 of the Public Order Act 1986. I hope that when we bring those measures forward, they will receive support in this House. I am happy to write to him on any further details about the Public Order Act. I am going to review the wider landscape of public order legislation, particularly in relation to the cumulative impact of repeat protests; we are already going to take steps on imposing further conditions and making explicit that cumulative impact is something that the police should take into account, but I am also going to look at the wider framework. Again, I will return to the House in due course with further updates on that legislation. The shadow Home Secretary rightly noted that the protests have continued both before and after the peace agreement in the middle east. I think we can conclude that not all those protesting truly wish to see peace in the middle east, but it is for them to answer on what their motivations really are. We are very clear that although the right to protest is a fundamental freedom in our country enjoyed by people of all backgrounds, it is often the cause of grave offence to other people who live in this country, and it must be balanced against the right of all people to be able to live in safety. The shadow Home Secretary mentioned Islamist extremism in particular. Let me be clear to him and to the House that this Government, and I as Home Secretary, have a clear-eyed view of where the threats that face this country are coming from. It is true that within our domestic extremism landscape the largest cohort of work that keeps our security services and counter-terror policing busy is related to Islamist extremism. We will not shy away from confronting those issues and dealing with them in the appropriate way. What happened in Manchester on 2 October asks a bigger question of all of us. This threat is something that we have been living with for some time, and we have not yet defeated it. I commit myself and the Government to doing everything in our power to stand up to this particular threat without fear or favour, and to destroy it for good. I also note that the first people that Islamists often suppress, hurt and damage are their fellow Muslims. It is in everyone’s interest to fight Islamist extremism wherever it is found. As the shadow Home Secretary noted, there is a wider and more complex domestic extremism picture in relation to extreme right-wing terrorism, and the emerging threat of those who do not have a fixed ideology but who are fixated on violence. It is important that all of our response is measured and follows where the risks are coming from and that we are always asking ourselves what action will ultimately be effective in dealing with the threats. We will redouble our efforts to interrogate the assumptions that have been made in the past and to assess whether they need to be changed and what new effective action must be pursued. I hope that in that task we will have support from Members across the House.