Anti-terrorism Legislation

My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for the Home Department (Charles Clarke) has made the following Written Ministerial Statement. The House may find it helpful to have an update on legislative and other developments in the field of terrorism since my last Statement to the House on 20 July. I am today publishing the Terrorism Bill, together with the accompanying Explanatory Notes. Also today I am publishing a report by the Independent Reviewer of the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005, Lord Carlile of Berriew, on the Government's proposals for changes to laws on terrorism. I am grateful to Lord Carlile for a characteristically thorough and thoughtful report. My right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary is today publishing a paper on the operation of anti-terrorist legislation in other countries. I launched a consultation on the list of unacceptable behaviours on 5 August and it concluded on 19 August. There were just over 100 responses to the consultation from organisations and individuals. In light of the comments made I modified the list to ensure that it is more accurately focused on the activities that I am seeking to address. On 24 August I announced the revised list. The purpose of the list is to set out some specific activities that are likely to result in a person being excluded or deported from the UK. I decided to publish the list to enable greater scrutiny of the use of my powers to exclude and, in turn, reassurance that they are being applied consistently, proportionately and reasonably. An initial database drawn principally from a list of 100 non-UK nationals provided by FCO posts overseas has been compiled and exclusions of individuals on this list are now being considered case by case. Further names will be added in the coming months. We also propose to add new clauses to the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Bill. These cover excluding those associated with terrorism from asylum, deprivation of British citizenship where this is conducive to the public good, and non-suspensive appeals against deportation orders in national security cases. I am seeking the views of opposition spokesmen on these additional measures and have today written to the right honourable Member for Haltemprice and Howden and the honourable Member for Winchester setting out in fuller detail what these will cover. These will be published in the usual way as amendments to the Bill. We aim to table these amendments at the Bill's Committee stage in the Commons. On 22 September, I welcomed the initial findings of the seven Muslim community working groups brought together to identify proposals for tackling violent extremism. These included proposals for a National Advisory Council of Imams and Mosques, a National Forum against Extremism and Islamophobia, and a country-wide ““roadshow”” of influential, populist religious scholars. On the same day, the Home Office also launched a £5 million ““capacity building fund”” to support all faith communities to play an active role in building a cohesive society. Last Thursday, 6 October, I published a consultation paper on how to deal with places of worship that foment extremism. The consultation closes on 11 November. On Monday 10 October I laid an order under the Terrorism Act 2000 to proscribe an additional 15 organisations. It will be debated in both Houses tomorrow. Also on Monday 10 October, I made a Written Ministerial Statement (Official Report, House of Lords, col. WS8) giving my quarterly report on the operation of the control order regime provided for by the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005. On the international front, the UK hosted a JHA informal council in Newcastle on 12 and 13 September, at which the key issues of data retention and an EU CT strategy were considered by interior and justice Ministers. The EU has drafted an EU strategy and action plan to tackle radicalisation and recruitment. This will go to the European Council in December. United Nations Security Council Resolution 1624—calling on states to prohibit incitement to commit terrorist acts, to prevent such conduct and deny safe haven to any person guilty of such conduct—was adopted on September 14, 2005. The International Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism was signed by the Prime Minister in September 2005 at the UN Special Summit in New York. On October 5 President Putin visited COBR to exchange views on counter-terrorism, being the first foreign head of government to do so. During the week commencing 3 October I visited New York and Washington to discuss CT with key US government representatives and officials, and participated in an EU-US bilateral. Earlier this month, the Prime Minister and I met our opposite numbers in Paris to discuss, inter alia, counter-terrorism issues. The Government have been actively seeking the agreement of memoranda of understanding on human rights assurances with key foreign governments to enable deportations to proceed. The first such memorandum was signed with Jordan in August and a copy has been placed in the Library. We are pursuing similar agreements with a number of other countries. These negotiations are ongoing. The Government have debated with European partners how case-law around the application of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) has developed, particularly in respect to how national security considerations are taken into account in deportation cases involving Article 3. Using normal practice, and with the support of the Netherlands, the UK has been granted leave from the European Court of Human Rights to intervene as a third party in a case which the Netherlands currently has before the court, which turns on Article 3. We will ask the court to revisit the issues surrounding national security expulsions in light of current circumstances.