As the House of Lords settles down to begin its deliberations on the Counter Terrorism and Security Bill, Brian Paddick has given his impressions on the party website. His piece is very much a descriptive narrative of what the Bill aims to do. There’s no facility to leave questions on the website, but if you leave them here, we’ll see if we can get him to answer them.

Brian outlines the rationale behind the Bill:

More and more impressionable and disaffected young people are being brainwashed into travelling abroad to join groups such as the so-called ‘Islamic State’ where they are further indoctrinated, radicalised, trained and brutalised by the barbaric activities of such organisations. There is a real danger that some of these British citizens may be sent back to the UK to carry out the sort of attacks we saw in Paris last week and that we saw in London on 7 July 2005.

It is essential that our response to such tragic events is both proportionate and justified. The Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill seeks to prevent people from travelling abroad to engage in terrorist activity and to manage their return to the UK. This means temporarily confiscating their passports if they are on their way out of the UK and making sure we know which flight they are on when they return so they can be assessed and any necessary action taken when they return to the UK. To ensure they do not pose a threat, existing Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures (similar to the former, far more draconian, Control Orders) will be strengthened to close loopholes identified by the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation. At the same time, the standard of proof required before someone can be made subject to an order will be greater and the definition of terrorism will be tighter.

Interestingly he goes out of his way to mention the requirements on universities even though the Joint Committee on Human Rights specifically requested that this be taken out of the bill. 

There are other provisions designed to try to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism, placing a general duty on places like universities to prevent this and putting on a statutory basis, a previous voluntary scheme to help those at risk.

However, he did hint that the Lords might make changes to the Bill:

As with much legislation, the devil is in the detail and that is where the House of Lords comes into its own. We will scrutinise these proposals line-by-line, suggesting amendments where necessary, to ensure it does what is intended without unnecessarily or unreasonably interfering with our freedoms and civil liberties. Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords will ensure the right balance between security and freedom is achieved.

You can read the whole article here.

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