Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Goodman of Wycombe, for his amendments, which have generated some interesting discussion and points. I will try to respond to those in some detail. It is accepted across the Committee that counterextremism is a deeply challenging and complex area, and that the Government have a duty to protect their citizens from the harm of extremism, violence and hatred. The approach we are trying to take to counterterrorism is something that the Home Secretary, the Security Minister and I take extremely seriously. It is not appropriate that any citizen should be made fearful for their safety or should be excluded from public or political life on the basis of hateful prejudice. There is already legislation on the statute book to deal with these matters. Our society also rightly rejects those who preach, promote or espouse hatred, and as such everyone has both a right and a responsibility to challenge extremist narratives. I hope there is agreement on what the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, said. The Government will continue to uphold and promote those values across the board. I will look at the amendments in detail, starting with Amendment 438E, which, in the noble Lord’s words, seeks to require every police force to publish a report on strategies to tackle non-violent extremism within three months of this Act passing. I understand the intention behind the amendment and the need to tackle non-violent extremism. However—I think this again echoes a point the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, made—police forces already work within national frameworks and report through existing channels and imposing a statutory deadline would risk diverting resources from front-line activity and might lead to incomplete or inconsistent reporting. The measure potentially duplicates existing accountability mechanisms and could, as the noble Lord, Lord Davies, said, add bureaucracy rather than improving security outcomes. Amendment 438EA seeks to impose an annual reporting duty on the 43 forces to report meetings with religious leaders and faith communities. I say to the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and to others who mentioned it—the noble Baroness, Lady Fox and Lady Foster, have talked around these issues—that the impact of what happened in Birmingham resulted in the chief constable of the West Midlands losing his post and it will result in an examination of the practices around that. However, if we take the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, at face value, I am not convinced that such a requirement would improve policing outcomes or community safety. Publishing who met who, when and how, could potentially deter some of the candid dialogue that is sometimes needed behind the scenes to ensure that community cohesion is taken into account. I also do not wish to expose sensitive protective security or safeguarding interactions with places of worship. There may even be some faith communities that do not wish to be seen in their community to be engaging with the police. It is possible, but I want to still encourage the police and those faith community leaders to have meetings. If that engagement is catalogued and publicised, it could undermine some of the problem-solving partnerships that I know the noble Lord wishes to foster. Amendment 438F proposes including non-violent extremism in scope of the youth diversion order, which we will come on to in due course in Clause 167. That clause reflects the intended scope of that order, which seeks to implement a recommendation of the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation. That was a very specific recommendation to introduce a new diversionary civil order to better manage terrorist risk from young people. Including non-violent extremism in the scope of that potential order would go beyond the original design and intent that was suggested to the Government. During policy development, officials have engaged with operational partners and the independent reviewer themselves. In essence, the youth diversion order is not a counterextremism tool for young people who hold divisive, extremist or hateful views but do not pose a risk. That is the key. It would not be proportionate to impose a counterterrorism risk-management tool on a young person who was simply assessed as holding extremist views. There are ways in which we can deal with that. There is the Prevent mechanism generally. There is a range of educational mechanisms that the noble Lord, Lord Marks, referred to for ensuring that we tackle these long-term issues in a much more productive way. I say to the noble Lord that the youth diversion order would not be the specific tool for the type of activity that he seeks to discuss today with his amendment. In addition, I say to the Committee that there is no statutory definition of or consensus on what would include extremism. This would represent a level of interference with and intrusion on the rights of young people that is not yet even available in adult cases. In practice, the amendment would increase the scope of the order and would overlap with the remit of Prevent, which is designed to deal with individuals who are moving into extremist views but have not yet reached the terrorist threshold. The Home Office is undertaking extensive counter- extremism work in collaboration with local government departments and the Commission for Countering Extremism. On the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Foster, I know from my devolved responsibilities in the department that we are discussing those issues with the devolved Administrations. Turing to Amendment 454A, I agree that transparency is important. The noble Lord, Lord Marks, has pushed for this transparency and has supported the amendment. I say this in the hope of being helpful to the Committee but, if documents such as the rapid analytical sprint on counterextremism were put into public domain, it could, for example, undermine policy development. It might impact upon the integrity of how policy is developed, because we would know that such documents were going to be put into the public domain. It would prevent disclosures, which would undermine the policymaking process, and less robust, well-considered or effective policies may well result. However, through a range of mechanisms—this is the important point for the noble Lord and his amendment —the Home Office is accountable to Parliament for its counterterrorism policies and the rapid analytical sprint. Members here can debate, as we are now; they can table Questions, as they do; they can table Written Questions, as they do; I can appear before Select Committees, as I did at the European Affairs Committee with the noble Lord, Lord Ricketts, only last week; I can be answerable for Statements; and I can be answerable in debates. Home Office Ministers can appear in private before the Intelligence and Security Committee, where a private discussion between Members of this House, Members of the Commons and Government Ministers on the conclusions can be done in a way that does not compromise security information. It is absolutely right we are held to account for that. Equally, is it absolutely right that, on some occasions, it is done behind a shielded door, where privacy can help with better policy development. Further, we have just submitted written evidence to the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee’s ongoing inquiry into combatting new forms of extremism. My colleague Dan Jarvis, the Security Minister, gave oral evidence to that committee only last week. There are definitely ways in which we are held accountable to Parliament. However, even if we accepted Amendment 454A and published all those documents, what goes into those documents means that there is a further wall behind them, and so we would not be able to put in them the things that we wanted to. Amendment 454B, also from the noble Lord, seeks to mandate that, within three months of Royal Assent, the Secretary of State must appoint a dedicated counter- extremism commissioner. I was grateful to the noble Lord for his question the other week. That aspect of policy is not my direct responsibility in the Home Office; I answer for it here, but it is not my direct responsibility, so I was not aware at that time of the status of the Commissioner for Countering Extremism. I thought my letter had helped clarify the matter, but apparently it has not. To clarify, the previous commissioner, Robin Simcox, left in July last year. As I said in my letter to the noble Lord on 9 January: “We are currently reviewing the roles and remits of various bodies to ensure our resources are best placed to meet current challenges”. That means that we are looking at a number of arm’s-length bodies, for which I have overall responsibility, to see whether we need them, whether we can rationalise them and whether we can make cost savings in them. The Commissioner for Countering Extremism is subject to that review. The Home Office has been asked by the Cabinet Office to do that as part of a Cabinet Office-led arm’s length bodies review. We are looking at the roles and remits of various bodies. I do not think that I have spent a single year of my now 30 years in either House without somebody asking why we are not reducing the number of quangos that are operational in departments. That is what the Cabinet Office is trying to do; we are looking at the arm’s-length bodies that we have. That is a general demand, and not to say that I know what the outcome of that review is going to be. If Amendment 454B, from the noble Lord, Lord Goodman of Wycombe, was passed, it would mean that we would have to appoint a dedicated counterextremism commissioner. We may well do that, or we may not, but these issues are under review. I welcome the work that Robin Simcox has done. I cannot accept this amendment, given that we are still working through the outcome of the review. I have tried to answer each of the amendments in turn. I am sorry that, in answering them, I cannot accept any of them. However, I hope that I have given legitimate answers as to why we are where we are. I hope that the noble Lord can reflect on those and, in due course, withdraw his amendment.