My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Tyrie. I congratulate him on it and welcome him to the House. I am sure the whole House will be looking forward to his future contributions. In the other place, he had a reputation for and record of original thinking, forensic inquiry, plain speaking and ruthless honesty, and we saw some of that in his maiden contribution in this House. Even his most severe critics would never describe him as a yes-man. Witnesses who sat in front of him in the Treasury Select Committee at the other end of this building would be ready to testify to that, even if they did not always wish to testify to his committee. His words today illustrate a thoughtful, analytical and fearless approach to the issues that come before your Lordships’ House, and I am sure his future contributions will continue that. It was also a pleasure to hear the maiden speech of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier. His contribution was well up to the quality of this debate, which has, so far, been excellent and well informed.
Turning to the Bill, I associate myself with the words of my noble friends Lord Marks, Lady Hamwee and Lord Thomas and those of the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi. In coalition days, she and I had many a quiet chat to see whether we could restore some sanity to the situation, but we did not always succeed as we wished. The noble Baroness, Lady Howe, said wise words about how extremism without violence must not be tangled up in our thinking about offences.
I want to focus on Clause 19. It is a very minor provision in the Bill; indeed, it appears under the subheading “Miscellaneous”. It deals with the granting of enabling powers to local authorities to nominate people who should go to Channel panels. The noble Baroness, Lady Howe, commented on this to some extent. The Explanatory Notes to the Bill explain that, in 2016-17, 6,093 people were referred to Channel panels, and that 332 of those 6,093 were given support as a result of discussion in those Channel panels. Channel panels are established and run by local authorities, and up to now referrals to them have been exclusively in the hands of the police. The proposal in Clause 19 is to allow local authorities to have that right to refer
people to the Channel panels that they themselves organise. It could be seen as just operational tidying up, but there is a little more to it than that. The Government’s impact assessment says of it that it is a magic provision; the word “magic” does not appear but it does say the provision will provide a saving to the police and no additional cost to anybody else. So what could possibly be wrong with it?
I suggest to your Lordships that there are some aspects that need to be looked at a bit more carefully than this entry under “Miscellaneous” currently grants it: first, the reputation and effectiveness of Prevent itself—the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, has said some powerful things about that; secondly, the workloads and competences of those running Channel panels; and, thirdly, something about their success rate and performance.
First, on reputation and effectiveness—this case has already been strongly made by the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, and apart from saying “Hear, hear” I cannot add much more—Prevent is counterproductive and its apparent impact is skewed. A careful reading of the report by the Joint Committee on Human Rights, especially page 24, sets out the case again.
Secondly, on workloads and competences, I make the point that those 6,093 referrals in a year mean 115 referrals a week to Channel panels. The outcome of those Channel panels is that six people a week receive support after referral. Let us just take those figures again: 115 cases come up each week, of which six are, on inspection, decided to be appropriate to receive Channel support. My first question is whether the Minister is satisfied that the 6,000 who are being referred in the first place are in fact an appropriate 6,000, and whether she is satisfied that only 6% of them subsequently being seen as requiring intervention by Channel panels suggests that the right people are coming forward and being selected.
My second question is: what analysis has the department done on which participating agencies are most likely to produce the false positives—the 109 people that week who are referred to a panel but for whom it is not thought to be appropriate that they need Channel support? Who are the people who are getting it wrong, and what can be done for them to get it right? What feedback and learning is there from the cases that do not get Channel support, and where evidently those nominations were inappropriate for one reason or another? What change is Clause 19 expected to produce to those outcomes? Is the clause’s intention that there will be more referrals as a consequence of local authorities having the right to refer, or is it supposed that in some way there will be more priorities for action by Channel panels as a consequence of those referrals? What is the driver for the change, something on which the Explanatory Notes are completely silent?
That brings me to the success and performance of Channel panels and the Prevent system as a whole. What happened to the 332 who received Channel support in 2016-17? Who was missed? The Explanatory Notes quite rightly point out that there were five terrorist incidents where deaths occurred, and seven terrorists were directly involved there. The noble Lord,
Lord King, brought forward some other figures about the quite substantial number of attacks that were intercepted and where plots were foiled. Had any of those people come into the 6,093? Had any of them come into the 332 who were referred to Channel? In other words, is Prevent actually doing what the name suggests it should be doing, or is it simply a cosmetic overlay on a system that is widely seen as clumsy and counterproductive at best?
The Joint Committee on Human Rights wanted to see an independent inquiry. The Government’s rejection of that was really quite abrupt; they said such a claim was unfounded because there had been so many external and internal reviews that basically everything was fine and everything was known. I therefore hope that the questions that I have posed can be simply answered by the Minister today or, if not, that she is ready to answer them in Committee when we get there. It is necessary for the Government to justify the change that is proposed and the base from which that change is being made. What in fact is happening to the 94 out of every 100 people who are referred who have no further action taken regarding their case? I hope that when we get to Committee the Minister will be able to fill in some of those gaps. If not, I will certainly be returning to these matters at that time.