If the hon. Lady will bear with me, I will move on to that point shortly, because one of the claims that the Government made was that the new regime would lead to more prosecutions.
It is worth remembering that we are talking about a very small number of individuals, but they pose a serious danger to the public and we need some powers to manage that risk. David Anderson QC, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, has made it clear that those who are subject to TPIM notices are accused of terrorist activities
“at the highest end of seriousness, even by the standards of international terrorism.”
TPIMs are a set of restrictions imposed on an individual who is suspected of, but has not been convicted for, involvement in terrorism. A TPIM order, like a control order, is imposed at the behest of the Home Secretary, with judicial oversight, but can be appealed to the High Court, which must find that the TPIM and all the measures it includes are both necessary and proportionate.
When the Government scrapped the control order regime, they argued that their new regime would allow more suspects to be prosecuted—this relates to the point just made by the hon. Lady. The Security Minister has repeatedly said that the aim of the regime was to secure more prosecutions and that extra resources were being provided to achieve that. I wonder whether he could confirm today exactly how many successful
prosecutions for terrorist-related activity there have been for individuals on TPIMs. Like the hon. Lady, I understand that there has not been one successful such prosecution. David Anderson has commented that the TPIMs regime has not aided the prosecution of individuals, and the Joint Committee on Human Rights has stated that it
“failed to find any evidence that TPIMs have led in practice to any more criminal prosecutions of terrorism suspects.”
All three of the prosecutions attempted in 2012 for breaching the conditions of TPIM orders collapsed. When Mohammed Ahmed Mohamed absconded, he had just answered bail on 20 charges relating to breaches of his TPIM. Some of those breaches lay on the file for 18 months. Given that prosecutions were meant to be a priority, as the Government had said on numerous occasions, perhaps the Minister can explain why he thinks there was such a delay in taking that case to court and whether the Government actually opposed Mohammed Ahmed Mohamed being granted bail. Will he also confirm how he believes the changes proposed in part 2 will deliver what he had attempted to do when the TPIMs regime first came in—secure more prosecutions?
The number of people on TPIMs, as with control orders, has remained very small, but they are believed to pose a serious threat. There were nine people on the control orders regime when it ended in January 2012, all of whom were British citizens, and the Crown Prosecution Service has consistently said that none of them could be prosecuted. All those individuals were transferred to TPIM orders, and another individual was subsequently put on a TPIM order. We believe that there is currently just one person on a TPIM order. It would be helpful if the Minister could confirm that when he speaks.
There are other concerns about the TPIMs regime. In January 2014, the Joint Committee on Human Rights stated:
“We are left with the impression that in practice TPIMs may be withering on the vine as a counter-terrorism tool of practical utility”.
I will be interested to hear the Minister’s response to those comments and how he feels that part 2 will deal with some of the criticisms raised.
I now turn to clause 12 and the issue of relocation, and amendment 4. As I said, the key difference between control orders and the TPIMs regime was the power of relocation, which was removed. It is helpful to give specific examples of how the relocation power was used under the control orders regime and the effects of the changes introduced by the coalition through the TPIMs legislation.
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I want to refer to two particular cases, the first of which is that of Ibrahim Magag. Magag is a British national with links to Somalia. He was previously known as BX. He was first placed on a control order in October 2009, when Lord Justice Collins ruled:
“it is too dangerous to permit him to be in London even for a short period”.
Magag was a member of a UK-based network linked to terrorism in east Africa, as was the other person I want to comment on, Mohammed Ahmed Mohamed. According to High Court papers from 2010, Mr Magag had a history of tampering with his monitoring equipment and lying about why he was late reporting home for
night-time curfew, and he had used a computer in breach of the terms of an order designed to protect national security. Despite this, the surveillance of Magag seems to have been fairly lax. He was able to abscond simply by getting into a black cab on Boxing day 2011, and has not been seen since. He started off on a control order that included the relocation power, was moved on to a TPIM, and managed to disappear.
Mohammed Ahmed Mohamed is also a British citizen with links to Somalia. He was previously known as CC, and is closely associated with fellow TPIM suspect CF. When he was first placed on a control order, the judge described the national security case against him as “overwhelming”. Mohamed was first placed on a control order by the current Home Secretary, and that included a relocation provision. A year later, James Eadie QC, acting for the Home Secretary, argued:
“Notwithstanding that CC and CF have now been subject to controls for longer than a year, it cannot be said that either of them has renounced his commitment to terrorism, nor has the passage of time significantly diminished the risk they present.”
Mohamed absconded by putting on a burqa while inside a mosque, where he also apparently removed his tag. He had a long history of tampering with his G4S-provided tag. On the morning before he absconded, he had appeared in court charged with 20 counts of tampering with the tag and breaching the terms of his order. Despite this, he was granted bail and does not appear to have been under any direct surveillance. It now also seems that the Home Office had neglected to seize Mohamed’s British passport when he was placed on a TPIM, despite this being the normal practice. In evidence to the Home Affairs Committee, Charles Farr, Home Office director of the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism, said:
“when a TPIM is issued it is standard practice for the subject of the TPIM to have his passport withdrawn and it is surrendered to the police and held by the police. In this particular case, an assumption was incorrectly made that that had happened in the case of Mr Mohammed.”
When the Government introduced TPIMs, they removed the relocation provision, against the advice of many learned individuals, including the former Conservative Home Secretary, the noble Lord Howard, who said:
“If you ask me my personal view…I would have preferred the relocation provisions to have remained.”
Lord Carlile QC, the Liberal Democrat peer and former independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, said:
“With my experience from the beginning of control orders until early this year, I wonder why we are troubling to replace a functioning system with another that has almost entirely the same arms, body and legs, but…there is one leg missing from the Bill, and for now, in my view, it gives this legislation a distinct limp. It is the continuing power to order relocation, subject, of course, to the usual court procedures. On the evidence available, I am persuaded firmly—I choose my words carefully—to the view that it would be negligent to remove relocation from the main provisions.”
He went on to say that the fact that
“Magag did not abscond while subject to a judicially approved relocation order, and that he absconded when that was removed, is in itself clear evidence of the poor decision to remove relocation orders…nobody absconded while subject to a relocation order.”
David Anderson QC said:
“The possibility of relocation has now been removed. That step was not required by the courts…which had indeed shown themselves generally supportive of relocation as a deterrent to”
terrorist-related activity. In his annual report on terrorism in 2011, he said of relocation:
“those changes…are unlikely to further the requirements of national security—rather the reverse.”
When Stuart Osborne, the deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan police and senior national co-ordinator for terrorism investigations at the Association of Chief Police Officers, gave evidence to the Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Bill Committee, he said:
“Previously, with relocation, it was easy to identify the environment in which associations may happen. If a lot of people who are on the orders live in one close environment, managing that and looking at those associations is potentially more difficult.”––[Official Report, Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Public Bill Committee, 21 June 2011; c. 4, Q3.]
He went on to say:
“The relocation issue has been very useful for us being able to monitor and enforce at the current time. Without that relocation, and depending on where people choose to live, that could be significantly more difficult.”––[Official Report, Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Public Bill Committee, 21 June 2011; c. 5, Q10.]
Labour opposed removing the relocation element from the TPIMs regime. My right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), the shadow Home Secretary, made a powerful case for its retention, as did several other right hon. and hon. Members, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears), a former counter-terrorism Minister and a member of the Intelligence and Security Committee; my right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth), a former Home Office Minister and member of the ISC; and the late Paul Goggins, another former Home Office Minister and member of the ISC. They all recognised that relocation is important because TPIM suspects tend to be facilitators and organisers, and the danger they pose is diminished by removing them from their networks. Once individuals return to London, it is impossible to monitor all their contacts. That makes absconding more likely, as shown by the cases of Ibrahim Magag and Mohammed Ahmed Mohamed, as well as involvement in terrorist planning.
Let us be clear about this: no individual absconded while subject to a relocation order. The Minister might say that in the early days of control orders there were cases of absconding, and that is correct, but at that time relocation was not part of the control orders regime.
In a letter to the Home Secretary dated 12 November 2013, the shadow Home Secretary said:
“No terror suspect under a relocation order ever managed to abscond. Now two terror suspects who were previously relocated and then returned because of your decision have absconded. Your decision, against advice and warnings, to end relocations has made it much easier for two dangerous men to disappear.”
She continued:
“You told Parliament explicitly that under the new regime, ‘forcible relocation will be ended…They will have greater freedom to associate’.
In Parliament you argued the purpose of TPIMs was about ‘re-striking the balance between national security and civil liberties’. You also claimed that TPIMs would allow suspects to ‘take part in what is regarded as normal activity’ through a system that ‘clearly provides no power for individuals to be relocated to another part of the country’.
After the absconding of Ibrahim Magag, you said to MPs ‘I am confident in the TPIM package that was available—the TPIM measures plus the extra resources’. You were also asked seven times whether removing relocation had weakened the controls, and seven times you defended the regime.”
She concluded:
“As a consequence of your decision, Mr Mohamed’s family have said: ‘It was a lot worse when he [Mr Mohamed] was on a control order’, said a close relative. ‘They used to follow him. But now [under a TPIM] it was more laid-back.’ So laid-back that he and his associate Ibrahim Magag, have both been able to easily abscond.”
We therefore very much welcome the reintroduction of relocation in clause 12, which amends the overnight residence measure and allows the Home Secretary to require individuals to live in a residence and locality in the United Kingdom that she considers appropriate. I want to ask the Minister a few questions about the clause.
Clause 12 amends paragraph 1 of schedule 1 to the Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Act 2011 to provide that the Secretary of State may either agree with an individual a locality in which that individual must reside or require an individual to live in a residence in a locality that the Secretary of State otherwise considers appropriate. If there are premises that are the individual’s own residence at the time when the TPIM notice is imposed, the Secretary of State may require the individual to live in a residence that is more than 200 miles from those premises only if the individual agrees. Clause 12(5) provides that the specified residence may be provided by the Secretary of State, but there is no requirement that it must be.
I wonder if the Minister can help me with a few issues. We have established that, in essence, the clause restores a power of relocation to the TPIM regime, for which Labour and others have been calling for several years. We accept that the Government have reintroduced a relocation power, but, under the clause as drafted, the individual can be sent either to an agreed locality or, if they do not agree, to a locality that is up to 200 miles from their residence.
Do the Government now accept that TPIMs without relocation powers were of limited value? Why have they decided to make this decision at this time when, as I have said, it appears that only one person is currently subject to a TPIM order? Is the Minister concerned about other people whom he thinks should be relocated? If so, why are they not already subject to the existing TPIMs legislation? We know that TPIMs are imposed only when there is specific intelligence—hard evidence—that the person is a threat. They are not a general power to be used as and when we choose; they are specific and we recognise the importance of getting this right. Why is this change required now? What has happened to make the Minister feel that he needs to reintroduce the measure?
The Minister has said that additional resources would be made available under the TPIMs regime because of the additional surveillance activity that would have to be carried out when relocation was not available. Have the costs of that surveillance become prohibitive, and is that why the Minister is moving towards relocation?