Crime and Security Bill

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (David T.C. Davies), who speaks with such authority on these issues because of his experience as a special constable. It is also a pleasure to be the concluding Back-Bench speaker in this wide-ranging debate. Of course, it has had to be wide ranging, because we are discussing 46 clauses that cover all sorts of issues. During these final few minutes of the debate I want to talk about an issue that is not on the face of the Bill. It is based on a press release that the Ministry of Justice issued today, which was mentioned by the Home Secretary during his speech, on the new support for victims of terrorism overseas. I should make it clear that I declare an interest, in that, sadly, I lost my brother in the Bali bombing of 2002. I welcome the proposal and, in fact, I have been campaigning very hard for such an initiative for some time. My worry is that the Bill is so busy and so complicated that it might not pass through its stages in time for this provision to reach the statute book. My experience in Bali when I lost my brother—he was a teacher based in Vietnam who died along with 201 others—was one of absolute confusion and devastation. He left the hotel he was staying in to join some friends in the Sari club, and at 11.05 pm the first bomb exploded in Paddy's bar opposite. People left the Sari club to see what was going on, and that was when the second bomb—the killer bomb—exploded and took out most of the 202 people. Absolute confusion followed. A lady called Lucy, a Briton, who was in Paddy's bar, had fortunately gone to the toilet the moment before the bomb struck. She was in a cubicle made of concrete, which saved her life, but when she came out she found that the three Australians whom she had met half an hour before were blown apart. Lucy suffered no injuries but she received no compensation or support to help her through these difficult times. She is traumatised by that incident. Another person, who has become a friend of mine, Paul, lost his left arm in the incident. He has had to pay for his own prosthesis because when he returned to England, he found that there was no support. Insurance companies do not pay out for terrorist attacks. The fact that the terrorist attack took place abroad meant there was no compensation from the criminal injuries compensation scheme. There was total chaos, to the point where no help was provided by the British embassy. I flew out there and had to do a lot of the work myself, including managing the process of my brother's repatriation, which included sealing the lid of the coffin myself with a Black & Decker drill. That is just one example of the absence of support during that horrible incident. I am pleased to say that the Government have done wonders in correcting many of those failings by setting up emergency response teams based at various embassies across the world that are able to move rapidly to a location when a disaster takes place, and through improvements to the website. The final, missing part of the jigsaw is the compensation for overseas victims of terror. They are not hit because of the person they are. They are being used as a pawn to send a message to the Government. That is why the Government have a responsibility to ensure that they are looked after. It is interesting to make a comparison with the events of 7/7 here in London, where, regardless of the victims' nationality, the compensation scheme made sure that everybody was looked after and compensated, no matter the scale of their injuries or whether the families of those who were killed also needed looking after. That was the level of care that we provided here in the UK. Unfortunately, up to now, once one goes past Dover, all that support disappears. We have been late in catching up with many other countries across the world—including Spain, France, the United States and Australia—in bringing our laws up to date to make sure that we provide the necessary assistance. It is all very well introducing another Bill that builds the walls around us higher and higher—yet another Bill that provides more ways of chasing the terrorists—but we must be able to protect the small number of people who are affected when those laws do not work. When those walls are not high enough, the Government have a responsibility to make sure that British civilians are looked after. I am pleased with the legislation proposed today. My worry is that there may not be enough time to ensure that it reaches the statute book. There has been huge frustration among the survivors and families of British victims of terrorism overseas. On the one hand, we see the energy and determination expended to fight terrorism, which in many cases has not been matched by countries overseas. On the other hand, the energy and determination to prevent the bomb going off in the first place is not matched by the commitment and support to the victims once the bomb has gone off. I am therefore pleased that the terrorism proposal has been put forward. If the blanket of security fails, Britons need to be assured that the Government will ensure that appropriate mechanisms are in place. I hope that, thanks to the new counter-terrorism legislation, we will feel a little safer; and that, when exposed to the same dangers when disembarking at the other end of an aircraft journey, we will now be able to gain the support we expect. Terrorism does not recognise borders, and nor should our support for Britons. Although I disagree with other aspects of the Bill, I certainly commend the proposal to the House.